A new 3D mapping of Easter Island's main statue quarry indicates that the iconic moai were likely carved by small, independent community groups rather than under a centralized authority. Researchers used drones to document distinct work areas at the site. This challenges traditional views of the island's political structure and societal decline.
Easter Island, known as Rapa Nui and located in the Pacific Ocean, has been inhabited by Polynesian seafarers since around AD 1200. The island's hundreds of massive stone statues, called moai, have long puzzled archaeologists regarding their creation and the society's organization. Archaeological evidence suggests the Rapa Nui people were not politically unified, but debate persists over whether moai production was coordinated by a central authority.
The island's sole quarry for the volcanic rock used in moai, Rano Raraku, holds many unfinished statues. Carl Lipo at Binghamton University in New York led a team that employed drones and advanced mapping tools to produce the first detailed 3D map of the site. Their survey identified 426 moai features at various completion stages, 341 trenches outlining blocks for carving, 133 voids from successfully removed statues, and five bollards likely used for lowering moai down slopes.
Notably, the quarry divides into 30 separate work areas, each with distinct carving techniques, indicating independent operations. Lipo's team combined this with prior findings that small crews could transport moai and that groups claimed separate territories at freshwater sources. "The monumentality represents competitive display between peer communities rather than top-down mobilisation," Lipo stated.
This perspective reframes the debated decline of Rapa Nui society. Some historians attribute deforestation and collapse to overexploitation driven by centralized leaders, but Lipo argues that decentralized competition shifts blame away from such authority. "If monumentality were decentralised, and that emerged from community-level competition rather than chiefly aggrandisement, then the island’s deforestation could not be blamed on megalomaniacal leadership," he said.
However, not all experts agree. Dale Simpson at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign acknowledges the lack of an overarching chief, unlike in places like Hawaii or Tonga, but believes clans interacted more closely. "I just wonder if they’re drinking a little too much Kool-Aid and not really thinking about the limitation factors on a small place like Rapa Nui where stone is king and if you’re not interacting and sharing that stone you can’t carve moai just inside one clan," Simpson remarked.
Jo Anne Van Tilburg at the University of California, Los Angeles, views the conclusions as premature, noting ongoing research into Rano Raraku's use. The findings appear in PLOS One (DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0336251).