Category: Chile

Travel expert and lover of the strange, La Carmina lists the reasons you need to visit Easter Island.

Source: A Travel Expert Explains Why Easter Island Is A Dream Vacation Spot

A team of researchers in the US says it may have solved the mystery of how the massive and incredibly heavy red scoria hats were placed atop the select Easter Island statues, or moai, that wear them, according to a Pennsylvania State University news release.

The matter has long perplexed many as the headgear measures up to 6.5 feet in diameter and weighs roughly 13 tons.

The statues themselves stand up to 33 feet tall.

“The best explanation for the transport of the…[hats] from the quarry is by rolling the raw material to the location of the moai…Once at the moai, the [hats] were rolled up large ramps to the top of a standing statue using a parbuckling technique,” Carl P. Lipo is quoted as saying in the release.

According to the statement, “Parbuckling is a simple and efficient technique…[where]…the center of a long rope is fixed to the top of a ramp and the two trailing ends are wrapped around the cylinder to be moved.”

Read more from source: The mystery of how hats were put on Easter Island statues may have been solved

One of the ideal ways to imbibe interesting culture across the globe is to make a bucketlist of popular UNESCO world heritage sites.

With an ethical traveller’s bent of mind, you can help ensure the preservation of natural, cultural, and intellectual heritage.

Explorations to heritage sites must be informed as the history is intriguing. Guided trails are the best choice in these case and if you could time it around a local fest or unique practice (such as summer or winter solstice), then the fun factor is immense.

SAY HELLO TO MOAI FIGURES ON EASTER ISLAND

Region: Rapa Nui

In the midst of the Pacific Ocean, The Easter Island covers 63 square miles of land, nearly half of which is in Rapa Nui National Park. It is home to approximately 900 Moai statues, often called ‘Easter Island Heads’. The giant, monolithic carvings are scattered around the island, many stand straight against the backdrop of the Pacific Ocean, while others are buried up to their necks in mud.

Read more from source: This summer, head to a UNESCO world heritage site for a dose of culture and history

The human bones lay baking in the sun. It wasn’t the first time Hetereki Huke had stumbled upon an open grave like this one.

For years, the swelling waves had broken open platform after platform containing ancient remains. Inside the tombs were old obsidian spearheads, pieces of cremated bone and, sometimes, parts of the haunting statues that have made this island famous.

But this time was different for Huke. The crumbling site was where generations of his own ancestors had been buried.

“Those bones were related to my family,” said Huke, an architect, recalling that day last year.

Centuries ago, Easter Island’s civilization collapsed, but the statues left behind here are a reminder of how powerful it must have been. And now, many of the remains of that civilization may be erased, the United Nations warns, by the rising sea levels rapidly eroding Easter Island’s coasts.

Many of the moai statues and nearly all of the ahu, the platforms that in many cases also serve as tombs for the dead, ring the island.

Read more from source: Easter Island is eroding

For more than 800 years, a series of mesmerizing statues have towered over Rapa Nui, a remote, 15-mile-wide (24-kilometer-wide) island in the southeast Pacific Ocean. The 40-foot-tall (12-meter-tall) statues, known as the moai, may have survived nearly a millennium, but the effects of climate change now threaten to topple the island’s mysterious ancient history.

The nearly 1,000 moai, erected between the 10th and 16th centuries on Rapa Nui (also named Easter Island by an 18th-century Dutch explorer), are being battered by rising sea levels, high-energy waves and increased erosion, as detailed on March 15, 2018, in The New York Times. Ancient human remains are buried beneath many of the works, which appear as giant faces gazing over land and sea.

“Some of the moai have been knocked over in the past — including by tsunamis — and they have been restored. So not every site is in pristine condition,” says Adam Markham, deputy director of climate and energy at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “The difference now is that the danger is even greater. The rate of change is faster than ever.”

Island Vulnerability

Read more from source: Climate Change Threatens the Moai of Easter Island