A replica moai was created and transported in an experiment,
filmed for NOVA “Secrets of Lost Empires: Easter Island”, 1997.
This is an edited version specifically for publication on this
web site of a paper originally published in “Onward and Upward!
Papers in Honor of Clement W. Meighan” (K. Johnson, ed. 2005) ©
Jo Anne Van Tilburg and Ted Ralston Our model for Rapa Nui
statue carving is Polynesian canoe building. Experimental
anthropology has established maritime methods for pre-contact
Hawai’i and elsewhere in Oceania. Canoe builders and handlers
were, like statue carvers, specialists who performed expert (and
often sacred) work at the behest of powerful chiefs and for
their communities. Canoe experts were socially and politically
powerful. In addition to the adze, the tool kit employed in
canoe building contained the clamp, chisel, cordage and drill.
Apprentices began by developing basic skills, including
roughhewing and hauling massive logs. When wood materials were
inadequate to build the desired size