Almost 1,000 stone carvings of heads are littered throughout Easter Island, in the Pacific Ocean, but researchers have been unsure of their purpose. The purpose and relevance of the statues known as ‘moai’, which were build by Pacific Islanders who inhabited the island until they dies out around the 16th century, has never been understood, but now experts believe they have made a major breakthrough. Up to 90 percent of the statues were produced in a quarry called Rano Raraku – a volcanic crater which makes up just one percent of the island’s area.
An international team of researchers collected soil samples for chemical analysis and found the region to be extremely fertile.
The quarry region was not only used to create the moai, but it was also used to grow crops such as banana, taro, sweet potato, and paper mulberry.
As a result of the quarry’s fertility, the team of researchers believe the statues could have been built to represent fertility and prosper.
Building on that, some 400 statues were left in the quarry, suggesting they were there as the islanders could have believed they simulated and boosted fertilisation in the area in the hope they would yield better crop results.
Geoarchaeologist Sarah Sherwood from the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, said: “When we got the chemistry results back, I did a double take.
“There were really high levels of things that I never would have thought would be there, such as calcium and phosphorous.
“The soil chemistry showed high levels of elements that are key to plant growth and essential for high yields.
“Everywhere else on the island the soil was being quickly worn out, eroding, being leeched of elements that feed plants.
“But in the quarry, with its constant new influx of small fragments of the bedrock generated by the quarrying process, there is a perfect feedback system of water, natural fertiliser and nutrients.”
The team wrote in the research paper published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: “We venture the novel suggestion that based on these data, and on the ritualisation of Rano Raraku and its stone as megalithic resources, Rano Raraku soil/sediment itself was a valuable and protected commodity.
“Soil could have been transported from Rano Raraku to enrich those areas needing increased productivity.”
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Archaeologist Jo Anne Van Tilburg from UCLA concluded: “This study radically alters the idea that all standing statues in Rano Raraku were simply awaiting transport out of the quarry.
“These and probably other upright moai in Rano Raraku were retained in place to ensure the sacred nature of the quarry itself.
“The moai were central to the idea of fertility, and in Rapa Nui belief their presence here stimulated agricultural food production.”
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