Dr. Terry Hunt publishes "Walking Statues: Oral History meets Archaeology"

More than 1,000 moai were carved on Rapa Nui, some over 10m tall and weighing 80 tons. For centuries, Rapanui oral traditions said the statues “walked” from the quarry—but Western scholars dismissed this as myth, assuming instead that log rollers were used.

Research by Dr. Terry Hunt and his colleague Dr. Carl Lipo, Binghamton University, published this month in Journal of Archaeological Science, analyzes 962 moai—especially 62 abandoned along ancient roads—and found that road moai lean forward, have wider bases, and lack eye sockets. These features make no sense for horizontal transport but facilitate upright movement.

To test this, they made a 4.35-ton replica of exact proportions that they “walked". Physics explains how: a forward-leaning moai acts like an inverted pendulum, rocking side to side as it advances. The results show that small groups could move even the largest statues upright—vindicating Rapanui knowledge and reshaping how we understand their extraordinary engineering.