The Mystery of the Red Hats of Easter Island is Solved
In Easter Island (Rapa Nui), over 300 giant heads sculpted in volcanic stone called moai are scattered around the island. Around 750 years ago, the islanders started placing heavy and mysterious red hats on the statues. Archeologists Sue Hamilton of the University College in London and Colin Richards of Manchester University have just proved they were “rolled along a road” built with cement made of compressed red slag in the slope of the ancient Puna Pau volcano, “maybe manually or using tree logs”.
For the moment, over 70 crowns have been localized in the ceremonial platforms and along the road, though many more may have been broken. In order to build all the hats, the natives apparently used a third of the lava from the crater of the volcano.
However, the new study does not answer the biggest enigma about these hats, that is, how the islanders were able to place them on the giant statues scattered around the remote island. Richards and Hamilton, co-directors of the project "Paisajes de Construcción de Rapa Nui" (Construction Landscapes of Rapa Nui), will keep working in the island over the next 5 years in order to solve this mystery and find out the exact date in which the moai were built.