Table of Contents
Funny Olde World walks Rapa Nui and presses on how the statues were made, buried, and stopped. He puts the first human traces near the year 800, with Polynesian settlers raising moai on stone platforms that also held burials. Clans fought and still made close to a thousand figures before Dutch ships in 1722. Illness followed, which he ties to bodies that had never met those diseases. Burial depth is the larger puzzle. Soil over some statues is too deep for slow dusting, given seventeenth century work and 1722 sketches. Fast wear since 1914, and fresh stone below the neck, suggest a wetter time and a landslide. The usual material is soft volcanic ash. A few harder basalt figures, he thinks, came first. At Vinapu the sequence stays open, with a carbon result near 1200. An origin story has people leaving an island called Hiva, and a leader bringing back a finished figure. Sweet potatoes, chicken lines from South America, and a date near 1228 are his reasons for a second arrival, left as a possibility beside the oral accounts.
Key points
- The visit retells Polynesian settlement, moai on burial platforms, and a mostly spoken culture with a small unread script.
- Nearly a thousand statues were made despite clan conflict, and disease followed Dutch arrival in 1722.
- He reports batteries dying near standing figures and mentions magnetic observations on the island.
- Burial under deep soil, fast wear since 1914, and fresh stone below the neck lead him to suspect a wet period and a landslide.
- Soft volcanic ash replaced a smaller basalt series, and the Vinapu sequence is left open around a date near 1200.
- An origin story from Hiva, sweet potatoes, and South American chicken lines are his case for a second contact, not a settled fact.
Short quotes
there is around 20 ft of sediment that buries the moai some of them entirely
Funny Olde World, Rapa Nui statues burial and contact
The host says soil, not a later collapse, is what buried many of the statues. Watch at 4:58
rapanui had sweet potatoes that were found to have come from South America
Funny Olde World, Rapa Nui statues burial and contact
Sweet potatoes are one clue he offers for a South American link with the island. Watch at 15:08
Video by Funny Olde World. Watch on YouTube.