The statues that walked?

Since my last post concluded that climate change probably wasn't the cause for the collapse on Easter, my following posts will be talking about other possible causes. Today however, I thought I would just share a very interesting video I came across on National Geographic's website that shows an alternative method of statue transportation to the classic story (using numerous logs to roll them).

The video shows a group of archaeologists moving statues down a path using just rope - and to be honest, if a group of pasty archaeologists can do it I'm fairly sure the hardened Polynesian's could have handled it easily enough as well! If the Easter Islanders did in fact move their statues using just rope, this suggests the deforestation on the island wasn't a clear cut case of them cutting down all the trees to satisfy their need to construct statues. Therefore, it is likely something other than just the islanders played a part in the severe deforestation, but this is something I'll come onto in another post.