If anyone recently spotted advanced aircraft buzzing over Easter Island to surveil the mysterious moai statues, they weren\u2019t UFOs. Instead, these drones belonged to terrestrial researchers, interested in answering a very down-to-earth question: Who was in charge of this megalithic endeavor?<\/p>\n
Historic and archaeological investigations of the Rapa Nui people who carved the statues between 400 and 1,000 years ago suggest they lived in decentralized, close-knit family clans. However, many have assumed that their construction and transportation imply a more top-down hierarchical civilization, like the ancient Egyptians who built the pyramids. New research<\/a> published in PLOS One suggests that, unlike the statues themselves, there was no big head at the top of the Rapa Nui directing the work.<\/p>\n Read more: \u201cAn Ancient Site with Human Skulls on Display<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n Using more than 11,000 aerial images taken by drones of the site, Carl Lipo of Binghamton University and Terry Hunt of the University of Arizona constructed a detailed 3-D model of the primary quarry, Rano Raraku. This model showed a hodgepodge of moai carved from multiple sites with statues in various stages of completion. Analysis of the statues remaining in the quarry revealed a variety of carving types as well. Rather than a centralized, top-down construction effort, the authors say, it more closely matches the works of a patchwork of freelancers consistent with their decentralized living arrangements.<\/p>\n This new finding is bolstered by Lipo and Hunt\u2019s earlier research<\/a>, which showed that it only takes a handful of humans to move these moai, around 18 in a test case. If anything, these studies make the construction and transportation of these magnificent megaliths an even more impressive achievement.<\/p>\n Enjoying\u00a0 Nautilus<\/a>? Subscribe to our free newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n Lead image: Horacio_Fernandez \/ Wikimedia Commons<\/p>\n