ANDREW COLLINS: Easter Island
is in eastern Polynesia within the Pacific Ocean.
And what it's most famous for is the many hundreds
of huge stone statues
of these human forms, oversized human heads
with bodies that are almost always partially
buried beneath the ground.
The local name of these statues is Moai.
And these statues would seem to represent deified ancestors.
They're manufactured from local volcanic rock.
In size, they can be as much as 30 or more feet in height.
And they can weigh anything up to 80 tons apiece.
PAUL BAHN: The Moai are enormous blocks of stone.
And they moved several hundred of them from the quarry
quite some distance to the platforms
around the edge of the island and there have been
many theories over the years as to how they were moved.
The first theory is thought that they must have been
dragged horizontally on sledges or rollers or something
of that kind. On the other hand, many people
including myself would say we think it's more likely
they were moved vertically. It would be very dangerous
to lower a standing statue down to the ground, then drag it
for how many miles and then have to raise it again
at the other end.
GIORGIO TSOUKALOS: The idea that the trees
were cut down at some point falls by the wayside
because wooden rollers would not be able to support
the weight of some of these statues.
So you have to wonder, how were these Moai
transported back in the day?
HUGH NEWMAN: So there were traditions
of something called mana on Easter Island,
which is a spiritual power...
(thunder crashes)
...which was supposed to be imbued, actually,
into the stone Moai themselves and some of the traditions,
uh, describe them walking from the quarry to their platforms.
TSOUKALOS: So one has to wonder if mana
was some type of extraterrestrial technology
that allowed these stones to be levitated into place.