Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island, is often portrayed in popular culture as an enigma. The rationale is clear: The tiny, remote island in the Pacific features nearly 1,000 enormous statues – the moai. The magnitude and number of these monuments defy easy explanation.Since European ships first encountered these stone giants in the 18th century, outsiders have branded the island as fundamentally mysterious, possibly beyond archaeologists’ ability to explain. This characteristic is part of what makes the island famous. Tour operators market the inexplicable. Documentaries promise unsolved puzzles. Popular books ask how “primitive people” could possibly move 70-ton megaliths.Archaeological researchers have put forward various explanations for the statues, which were made between 1200 and 1700, but there remains no consensus. For decades, experts offered plausible scenarios: powerful chiefs commanding workers, elite-controlled statue quarries, wooden sleds drawn by hundreds of islanders, roller systems, wooden rails and ceremonial pathway markers. Based on authoritative assertions and compelling narratives, these accounts are rarely connected to archaeological evidence.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementI’m an archaeologist who has been studying Rapa Nui for more than two decades. In newly published research, my colleagues and I believe we’ve solved the mystery in three essential ways.First, using 11,686 photographs taken by drone, we created a comprehensive, three-dimensional model of Rano Raraku, the volcanic crater where 95% of Rapa Nui’s moai were carved. It was a systematic documentation – every slope, every carved surface, every production feature captured at a resolution down to the centimeter. The model generated predictions that we and other researchers could test: If production had been centralized, workshops would have been clustered; if they’d been hierarchical, we’d find differences in resources used at each level; if it had been dictated by elites, techniques would be standardized.Our data revealed the opposite: Drone imagery shows 30 independent workshops working simultaneously. Instead of top-down organization, small, clan-level groups seem to have used innovative human engineering.A close-up of a 3D model of the volcanic crater where nearly all of Rapa Nui’s giant statues were carved, with unfinished carvings outlined. Lipo et al., 2025, PLOS One, CC BYPrevious attempts to understand Rano Raraku failed not because the quarry held impenetrable secrets but due to the lack of published documentation and the limitations of traditional mapping methods. Two-dimensional maps couldn’t capture three-dimensional relationships. Statues emerge from cliff faces at various angles. Production areas overlap vertically. Carving sequences intersect across time. Traditional archaeological methods provided impressions but missed details and couldn’t capture the system as a whole.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementOur 3D model changes that. We identified 426 moai in various stages of production, 341 extraction trenches, 133 voids where completed statues were removed, and previously unmapped quarrying areas on the exterior slopes. Each workshop was self-contained, demonstrating decentralization. Three distinct carving techniques emerge, showing that different groups employed different approaches while producing standardized forms.The walking moaiSecond, we generated data to resolve the age-old question about moai transport: How did Rapanui people move these megalithic giants? Despite many decades of attempts, previous transport theories all shared a fatal flaw: They made no predictions that were testable, meaning that scientists could prove or disprove.Our walking hypothesis – based on oral traditions, ideas by our colleague Sergio Rapu Haoa and tested by Czech engineer Pavel Pavel – made specific, testable predicti …
