This still a tech news aggregator? This is something that should be on reddit, not hacker news...?
It was on reddit a few weeks ago. Personally speaking I read HN every day, at the weekends I don't mind less tech focused stuff....
Easter Island heads have bodies
21–30 of 92 posts
Re: Easter Island heads have bodies
#22That is phenomenal. Raises the question: did whoever built them bury them, or were they buried by natural forces?
I was thinking the same thing. Perhaps originally they weren't buried. Are they designed in such as way as they could have stood upright by themselves? I would guess that the people doing this work would be able to determine the dirt they were digging into was newer or older than the rock itself.
Perhaps they couldn't turn these massive pieces of rock upright without the aid of gravity
Re: Easter Island heads have bodies
#23Anyone else wondering why it took so long to look below the surface?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moai http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ahu_Tongariki.jpg The article has an image of excavated ones that have short bodies. Seems like this one was unusually tall.
Relevant quote from that WP link:
"Though moai are whole-body statues, they are commonly referred to as "Easter Island heads". This is partly because of the disproportionate size of most moai heads and partly because, from the invention of photography until the 1950s, the only moai standing on the island were the statues on the slopes of Rano Raraku, many of which are buried to their shoulders. Some of the "heads" at Rano Raraku have been excavated and their bodies seen, and observed to have markings that had been protected from erosion by their burial."
Re: Easter Island heads have bodies
#24ancient aliens!
Read the book "Behold!! The Protong!" and you'll get an even more intriguing explanation. These statues are a WARNING TO THE FUTURE that the great CATACLYSM, which comes in cycles, will HAPPEN AGAIN.
Below the ground-line (which represents the flood survivors emerging from the murk) these statues are holding the "Bi" - an iconic feature representative of the grand CATACLYSM where the balance of water is tipped, and which you can find in almost all ancient artwork, regardless of the culture that creates it - an ocean-covering flood which occurs when the land masses move in reaction to Solar activity.
Easter Island is a WARNING set up by an ancient civilization to protect us from ignorance.
Let us never learn the extent to which SZUKALSKI was RIGHT!
Re: Easter Island heads have bodies
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
Read the FAQ and tell me how a story about art/discovery/paradigm-shifting is OT... tl;dr hn is not a technews aggregator.
http://www.eisp.org/ has way more information on the topic than the linked blog. I don't think it's off topic, I just think it's a poor article which has no real substance (hence the reddit comparison). Eh. I guess I'll just stick to HN classic.
>Eh. I guess I'll just stick to HN classic.
it's #2 there now (http://news.ycombinator.com/classic)
Re: Easter Island heads have bodies
#26Whenever I see an easter island head, I can't help but draw parallels between our global civilization and theirs.
The eastern islanders consisted of around a dozen tribes, each competing for resources with others. It's thought that all of these statues were put up in a race by chieftains, competing with one another to put up the biggest, most refined and the best statue.
I wouldn't be surprised if they competed in their standards of life too. ("I eat X for breakfast, lunch and dinner!") I certainly wouldn't be surprised by the fact that they might have had political factions, special interests and a life rife with complicated political maneuvering. (it was certainly in the short term interests of statue makers to be against conservation and egg chieftains on)
After all we're the same species and they were just like us.
However what they failed to realize was the inescapable fact that they were living on a small piece of land in the middle of a vast ocean. Their seemingly inexhaustible resources were pitiful by any standards.
As time wore on and their population boomed, a point came when all of these factors came together. Their squandering of resources combined with their unsustainable way of life for a large population faced off with their limited resources, and the result was ugly. Their entire civilization collapsed.
Most of the population was lost to famine. Their civilization descended to cannibalism to survive. This degraded civilization became the perfect breeding ground for disease and even more people died. This cycle went on and on until their entire civilization was wiped out and the entire population nearly eradicated.
I shudder to think what it must have been like to live in this world. It must have been a nightmare.
Today like the eastern islanders with their statues, we keep on building taller and taller structures, better and more lethal weapons, and crazier systems. We compete with one another for status symbols at personal, regional and national levels.
Today we are just as isolated on this tiny blue ball, with a finite amount of resources, a booming population, combined with special interests and huge egos.
Like the eastern islanders we have nowhere to go...
Re: Easter Island heads have bodies
#27Whenever I see an easter island head, I can't help but draw parallels between our global civilization and theirs. The eastern islanders consisted of around a dozen tribes, each competing for resources with others. It's thought that all of these statues were put up in a race by chieftains, competing with one another to put up the biggest, most refined and the best statue. I wouldn't be surprised if they competed in th…
Ok, nice prose of your, but the tiny blue ball thing is bullshit. Any plane on window seat will show you that the Earth is enormous and empty for most it's parts, even in China.
Don't think I advocate more cars and buildings. It's just that the tiny crowded ball argument is wrong, and dangerous, as it can be used to build a nasty antihumanism.
Re: Easter Island heads have bodies
#28This still a tech news aggregator? This is something that should be on reddit, not hacker news...?
Totally agreed. Come to lamernews.com.
Re: Easter Island heads have bodies
#29Whenever I see an easter island head, I can't help but draw parallels between our global civilization and theirs. The eastern islanders consisted of around a dozen tribes, each competing for resources with others. It's thought that all of these statues were put up in a race by chieftains, competing with one another to put up the biggest, most refined and the best statue. I wouldn't be surprised if they competed in th…
Ok, nice prose of your, but the tiny blue ball thing is bullshit. Any plane on window seat will show you that the Earth is enormous and empty for most it's parts, even in China. Don't think I advocate more cars and buildings. It's just that the tiny crowded ball argument is wrong, and dangerous, as it can be used to build a nasty antihumanism.
ask yourself how much land is required to support a single human for a year. mostly empty is how it must be, otherwise we've got problems.
Re: Easter Island heads have bodies
#30Whenever I see an easter island head, I can't help but draw parallels between our global civilization and theirs. The eastern islanders consisted of around a dozen tribes, each competing for resources with others. It's thought that all of these statues were put up in a race by chieftains, competing with one another to put up the biggest, most refined and the best statue. I wouldn't be surprised if they competed in th…
Ok, nice prose of your, but the tiny blue ball thing is bullshit. Any plane on window seat will show you that the Earth is enormous and empty for most it's parts, even in China. Don't think I advocate more cars and buildings. It's just that the tiny crowded ball argument is wrong, and dangerous, as it can be used to build a nasty antihumanism.
"A small amount of resources" does not necessarily have direct correlation with square footage. Even if every part of the earth aside from Europe and NA were empty, there would still be a serious issue with respect to resource consumption.