It was discovered at the bottom of a dry lake.
On Easter Island, a previously unknown sculpture of a moai – a stone dummy, for which the island is known, was discovered. It was found at the bottom of a dried-up lake, Live Science reports.
“We think we know all the moai, but then new, new discoveries appear,” said Terry Hunt of the University of Arizona.
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At the moment, about 1000 moai are known. The new statue was found in an unexpected place: at the bottom of Lake Rano Raraku. For a long time, water filled the volcanic crater until climate change caused the lake to dry up. According to available data, it almost completely dried up in 2018.
The moai, whose bodies are hidden underground, are known for their carved heads and “pukao” – a hat-like covering made of soft red stone. The dimensions of such figures are huge: the height of the largest statue, known as Moai Paro, is 10 meters, and the weight is 90 tons. But the new statue is smaller than most of its “sisters” on the island.
Local residents built such statues for about 500 years between the 13th and 18th centuries.
The new discovery is good news because in In recent years, several moai have been damaged. For example, in October, a fire attributed to arson led to the fact that many stone statues were burnt. In 2020, a local resident damaged one of them with a pickup truck, “causing irreparable damage”. p> Related video
Earlier scientists said that the main theory of the decline of the Easter Island civilization may be a myth. Researchers built four models, none of which supported the idea that the population of the island survived a demographic crisis until arrival of Europeans.
