The Quarry

 

One of the main highlights of the trip was a visit to the Rano Raraku quarry, where all of the moai on the island were carved.  BTW—there is still no definitive evidence on how those multi ton statues were transported to their final locations.  The rain of the previous days had ceased and we were left with a very windy and sunny day.  So windy that it was hard to hike some of the higher trails around the quarry for fear of getting blown over.

The quarry is made up of volcanic tuff, which is compressed volcanic ash.  It is much easier to carve than basalt, and the tools that carved the moai were made of hawaiite and basalt, the hardest volcanic stones to be found on the island.  Here you can see the outcropping of the volcanic tuff above the slope where the partially finished moai are embedded in the ground. 

Estimates are that a little over 400 moai are left there in incomplete stages of completion, most buried in the hillside.  That is about 45% of all moai on the island.  All moai were carved between 1250 and 1500 CE. 

During his time on the island in the ‘50’s, Thor Heyerdahl excavated this massive moai down to the bottom of the feet.  Up until that time, all of the ones in the quarry were thought to be only upper torsos or just heads.  Here is a photo from that excavation.  The moai is 37’ tall.

The moai was reburied.  Here it is now as we walked past it.  The darker green area in front is where the excavation pit was filled in.

In geologist Robert Schoch’s book, he writes that the layers of sediment would have taken a lot longer than estimated to build up to such a depth around the moai. Thus, he estimates that they are much older than believed.  Another mystery!

Here is a photo of the carvings on the back of an excavated moai.  They all probably had this, but the soft volcanic tuff on the exposed surfaces has mostly eroded away.

Here I am trying to keep from blowing away!