Rapa Nui (Easter Island) monument locations explained by freshwater

March 25, 2019 7:50 PM

Carl Lipo, Terry Hunt and their colleagues continue to identify possible descriptions to the mysteries of Easter Island’s culture and statues (Ars Technica): Rapa Nui islanders survived by building strong communities around limited resources, contrary to Jared Diamond's proclamations (An annotated version of Jared Diamond’s 1995 article “Easter’s End” – Part I, Part II and Part III). Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo: The Statues That Walked | Nat Geo Live (32:28, YouTube)

Rapa Nui (Easter Island) monument (ahu) locations explained by freshwater sources (Robert J. DiNapoli, Carl P. Lipo, Tanya Brosnan, Terry L. Hunt, Sean Hixon, Alex E. Morrison, Matthew Becker | PLOS, Published: January 10, 2019 | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0210409)

Explaining the processes underlying the emergence of monument construction is a major theme in contemporary anthropological archaeology, and recent studies have employed spatially-explicit modeling to explain these patterns. Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile) is famous for its elaborate ritual architecture, particularly numerous monumental platforms (ahu) and statuary (moai). To date, however, we lack explicit modeling to explain spatial and temporal aspects of monument construction. Here, we use spatially-explicit point-process modeling to explore the potential relations between ahu construction locations and subsistence resources, namely, rock mulch agricultural gardens, marine resources, and freshwater sources—the three most critical resources on Rapa Nui. Through these analyses, we demonstrate the central importance of coastal freshwater seeps for precontact populations. Our results suggest that ahu locations are most parsimoniously explained by distance from freshwater sources, in particular coastal seeps, with important implications for community formation and inter-community competition in precontact times.

Links to the full paper. More from Carl Lipo on Binghamton's Academia.edu account, and LipoLab.org.

See previously: "Easter Island is not Earth."

Read more: The Statues that Walked: Unraveling the Mystery of Easter Island, by Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo (Google books preview)

posted by filthy light thief (10 comments total)

See also: Carl Lipo's publications at The Open Repository @ Binghamton (The ORB).
posted by filthy light thief at 7:53 PM on March 25, 2019 [1 favorite]

Interesting! It's cool just to learn about the seeps themselves, which I hadn't heard of:

The volcanic islands of Hawaii have an unusual feature, where fresh water flows down through the volcanic tubes into the ocean. "There's actually places offshore where freshwater will be flowing," said Lipo. "Fishermen will know you could scoop water right from this spot in the ocean and it will be fresh."

Fresh water is also a limited resource on Easter Island. With his graduate student, co-author Tonya Broadman, Lipo decided to investigate whether the same thing might be happening there and discovered it was, based on the conductivity measurements they made of how salty the water was along the coasts. "At low tide, when the saltwater's down, fresh water pours right out at the coast," he said.

posted by LobsterMitten at 8:01 PM on March 25, 2019 [5 favorites]

As a kid before I could read (so like 2nd grade) I remember seeing pictures of those statues in a golden encyclopedia type of book and thinking that the heads were attached to equally gigantic bodies that were buried in the sand.
posted by jamjam at 9:06 PM on March 25, 2019

Some of them actually do!
posted by drinkyclown at 9:20 PM on March 25, 2019 [6 favorites]

Goodness!
posted by jamjam at 9:33 PM on March 25, 2019 [1 favorite]

That's a really interesting analysis that turns my conception of Rapa Nui culture upside down. Looking at figure 4 if their paper, though, the last image shows some ahu at almost the farthest possible points from fresh water. In fact, they almost track the knots where lines of least-availability meet! I wonder if those are effectively there for the opposite reason: maybe they're so far from water that they were particularly hard to erect, and that's what made them significant.
posted by Joe in Australia at 10:04 PM on March 25, 2019

I remember... thinking that the heads were attached to equally gigantic bodies that were buried in the sand.

Here's one interesting way of looking at that.
posted by LeLiLo at 11:23 PM on March 25, 2019 [4 favorites]

one interesting way of looking at that

Globe Earth Clues
posted by flabdablet at 2:15 AM on March 26, 2019

Almost every academic who has studied Easter Island in detail has thoroughly discounted Jared Diamond's research. It's almost comical. It's sad because of the popularity of Diamond's books, his 'misinformation' will be out in the world for decades, but such is the way of popular science.
posted by gen at 2:28 AM on March 26, 2019 [2 favorites]

As a kid before I could read (so like 2nd grade) I remember seeing pictures of those statues in a golden encyclopedia type of book and thinking that the heads were attached to equally gigantic bodies that were buried in the sand.

You and Jack Kirby.
posted by rochrobbb at 4:53 AM on March 26, 2019 [2 favorites]