Cal State Long Beach archaeology professor Carl Lipo has gained recognition for his book “The Statues That Walked: Unraveling the Mystery of Easter Island,” which breaks the tradition of labeling Easter Island as a “what-not-to-do” society.
The book, co-authored with Terry Hunt, recently won the 2012 Society for American Archaeology Book of the Year Award in the Public Audience category because of its appeal to a broader audience. It will be featured in a NOVA TV documentary.
Lipo and Hunt’s findings are the culmination of nearly nine years’ worth of research, which began through studying the roads and paths on Easter Island used for transporting the statues.
“The book reads like a mystery novel,” Lipo said. “It’s a story of pre-history, and then there is our story.”
Lipo’s book contradicts the common speculation that Easter Island’s Rapa Nui civilization suffered an environmental catastrophe and collapsed before European settlers arrived.
“We assumed that the collapse story was a done deal,” Lipo said.
There are over 800 Moai statues on the island, weighing 14 tons on average, leading many archaeologists to believe that more natives must have lived on the island to move the statues from the quarry to the coast, where many of them stand now.
However, in the documentary Lipo and Hunt will demonstrate that as few as 18 people can move one of the statues as they move a five-ton statue 100 yards in 40 minutes.
The traditional European perspective sees the Rapa Nui civilization as full of savages who moved the statues with brute force. Lipo and Hunt’s conclusions contrast other archaeologists’ findings, stating that the Rapa Nui people were “very resilient people.”
In the novel, Lipo tells another story of how the Moai statues were designed to “walk” upright, using a back-and-forth motion.
Lipo notes that some people are critical of their findings because it disregards the theory that the Rapa Nui civilization collapsed.
“People love mysteries,” Lipo said, “but sometimes the question has more value than the answer itself.
The NOVA TV documentary is set to air this fall, and the article in National Geographic, highlighting Lipo’s and Hunt’s research, will hit stands on June 15.