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Easter Island heads have bodies

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Re: Easter Island heads have bodies

#61

Post by gus_massa »

copper wrote: post #56
tripzilch wrote: post #41

Of course they have bodies! How is this news to anyone? A good part of these statues are well above ground including their bodies, and we've known the sunken ones have bodies below the ground for several decades already. They've been excavating these statues for quite a while already. Here, go read the Wikipedia article on Moai, it's way more interesting than this article (which is just a copy of the first few paragr…

I think the fact that they're referred to as Easter Island heads , rather than statues might have had something to do with it :) More seriously, the iconic pictures of the heads are from Rano Raraku (IIRC), and that is just heads and a bit of neck sticking out of the ground, isn't it?

According to Google Image Seach :) more than a half has body, and some have a hat http://www.google.com.ar/search?hl=en&q=moai&gs_sm=e...

(IIRC, all most of them had had a hut, but in most of them the hat had fallen an been lost.)

Re: Easter Island heads have bodies

#62

Post by Tichy »

spindritf wrote: post #37
GeneTraylor wrote: post #26

Whenever 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…

That's a really captivating story with a strong message but it's far from obvious whether it happened, and whether it happened like you describe: http://www.marklynas.org/2011/09/the-myth-of-easter-islands-... Especially the claims of cannibalism seem a little far fetched.

Interesting, he also posts a response by Jared Diamond: http://www.marklynas.org/2011/09/the-myths-of-easter-island-...

I had heard about the "JD is wrong, rats were the culprits" theory before and always wondered about JD's reaction.

Re: Easter Island heads have bodies

#63

Post by GeneTraylor »

spindritf wrote: post #49
GeneTraylor wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I might be wrong, but I'm sure I read a detailed discussion somewhere about how they analyzed burial pits and found large amounts of cuts as if the flesh had been flayed and so on. Apparently they did detailed DNA analysis and even found human bone fragments in waste pits. I can't seem to find that discussion online right now. However I did find a rebuttal by Jared Diamond on the same site to this argument; http://ww…

That's the response from Jared Diamond who wrote a book (mentioned in the comments below: "Collapse") with pretty much the same story as yours, of course it will end with a similar conclusion.

Yeah, I'm thinking about buying the book as soon as I have the spare cash.

Re: Easter Island heads have bodies

#64

Post by GeneTraylor »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #52
GeneTraylor wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>> nice prose of your Thank you, but my prose is far from being nice. You should see my boss with a red pen around my prose. :-) >>>but the tiny blue ball thing is bullshit Carl Sagan has another take on the matter. :-) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p86BPM1GV8M >>>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 buil…

The earth is where we have to make our stand Why? We have a whole solar system right on on our front porch. but the total possible water supply we can access (and this includes the glaciers) Water doesn't just get used once and then disappear forever. Now, one could certainly make an argument against (say) sucking water out of the Oglalla Aquifer faster than it gets replenished, but that's a localized problem. We are…

>>> Why? We have a whole solar system right on on our front porch This is an honest question, not a rebuttal. How would you get those resources here, or us over there?

>>> Water doesn't just get used once and then disappear forever. Now, one could certainly make an argument against (say) sucking water out of the Oglalla Aquifer faster than it gets replenished, but that's a localized problem. We aren't going to "run out of water". Really. Well it would have been labored to add that although it would take a large amount of energy to purify water, or perhaps desalinate our oceans, the loop can be closed. The problem really is that it takes resources to keep that loop closed.

I think that all of our issues today boil down to how we convert energy to extract work, if we do manage to make something like fusion work then all of these concerns could be undermined with technology, but how do we get from here to there?

Re: Easter Island heads have bodies

#65

Post by copper »

gus_massa wrote: post #61
copper wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the fact that they're referred to as Easter Island heads , rather than statues might have had something to do with it :) More seriously, the iconic pictures of the heads are from Rano Raraku (IIRC), and that is just heads and a bit of neck sticking out of the ground, isn't it?

According to Google Image Seach :) more than a half has body, and some have a hat http://www.google.com.ar/search?hl=en&q=moai&gs_sm=e... (IIRC, all most of them had had a hut, but in most of them the hat had fallen an been lost.)

Well, I believe this particular head is the one I've seen most commonly in books[1], and that was quite a long time ago (I wish I could remember if the original Aku-Aku book had pictures.)

[1] http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Moai_Heads.png

Re: Easter Island heads have bodies

#66

Post by electromagnetic »

gus_massa wrote: post #61
copper wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the fact that they're referred to as Easter Island heads , rather than statues might have had something to do with it :) More seriously, the iconic pictures of the heads are from Rano Raraku (IIRC), and that is just heads and a bit of neck sticking out of the ground, isn't it?

According to Google Image Seach :) more than a half has body, and some have a hat http://www.google.com.ar/search?hl=en&q=moai&gs_sm=e... (IIRC, all most of them had had a hut, but in most of them the hat had fallen an been lost.)

Well IIRC most moai were placed at the shore or on the cliffs, and the hats were generally rounded. So giant wheel + hill + ocean is definitely going to end with the majority of the hats being lost.

Re: Easter Island heads have bodies

#67

Post by randallsquared »

GeneTraylor wrote: post #33
gbog wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>>> nice prose of your Thank you, but my prose is far from being nice. You should see my boss with a red pen around my prose. :-) >>>but the tiny blue ball thing is bullshit Carl Sagan has another take on the matter. :-) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p86BPM1GV8M >>>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 buil…

we would drink up 2 205 000 000 000 litres of fresh water in a day, but the total possible water supply we can access (and this includes the glaciers) is only 3.5 × 10^19 litres...

That's quite an easy way to run out of water.

Water doesn't vanish after it's used. Also, putting your first number in scientific notation helps put this in perspective: 2.2 x 10^12 . Seven orders of magnitude. Close to 15 000 0000 times as much.

That's not to say that work isn't needed to develop cheap recycling appliances, and to build water systems that recycle and reuse waste water rather than dumping it all into the environment, but it's not a very hard problem on the scale of things humanity can accomplish -- it mostly just requires more energy.

Energy will continue to be the limiting factor for a long time, and eventually (after essentially perfect recycling of all material civilization requires) the limit will be waste heat. But as others have mentioned, we have a whole solar system to use as well, and moving the highest heat processes to space would allow us to radiate it away without affecting the earth. Technology which is clearly within our reach would allow the earth to support trillions of humans -- admittedly at a more crowded level than I would prefer. :)

Re: Easter Island heads have bodies

#68

Post by electromagnetic »

lisper wrote: post #5
ComputerGuru wrote: post #3

This blew my mind. I don't know why, I find it incredibly eye-opening that the first thought that one might think of on seeing a head in the dirt (that there's the rest of it underneath) has just simply never occurred to generations of people because we were "told" by someone that they're just heads. How powerful words can be in casting an illusion, in defeating creativity, and hiding the truth!

A Google Images search for "Easter Island" reveals many heads with above-ground bodies, and a few heads buried up to their noses. That some of the bodies are buried up to the neck should come as no surprise to anyone.

What I wonder is, were these buried statues left like that by the islanders. I mean to get the hat on the statue, the statue has to both be stable and you have to access the head.

So was the easy method of doing this burying the statue? If so how fast did the islanders die off that they couldn't dig out the statues back to their intended state.

What's scary is what these peoples last days must have been like if they abandoned so many of these before completion.

Re: Easter Island heads have bodies

#69

Post by randallsquared »

GeneTraylor wrote: post #64
Turing_Machine wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The earth is where we have to make our stand Why? We have a whole solar system right on on our front porch. but the total possible water supply we can access (and this includes the glaciers) Water doesn't just get used once and then disappear forever. Now, one could certainly make an argument against (say) sucking water out of the Oglalla Aquifer faster than it gets replenished, but that's a localized problem. We are…

>>> Why? We have a whole solar system right on on our front porch This is an honest question, not a rebuttal. How would you get those resources here, or us over there? >>> Water doesn't just get used once and then disappear forever. Now, one could certainly make an argument against (say) sucking water out of the Oglalla Aquifer faster than it gets replenished, but that's a localized problem. We aren't going to "run o…

How would you get those resources here, or us over there?

There are a number of high-startup-cost, low-running-cost schemes for putting stuff in LEO, and as someone once said, LEO is halfway to anywhere in the solar system, energy-wise. Some possibilities are laser launching, space elevators, launch loops, and electromagnetic guns.

Some of these have much higher startup costs (to be effective for human launching, a gun would have to be very, very long and possibly cost the most of any of these, but shorter ones could launch material at very high acceleration with much less up-front cost), and some of them have awful failure modes (the space elevator could spread destruction in a narrow path wrapped all the way around the earth if it failed in the wrong way, via separation from the counterweight), but they're feasible.

The cheapest ways of getting to orbit, therefore, approach the cost in electricity of the task, which is less than 10 KwH per kilogram, or about $2USD per kilo. A recent flight from coast to coast cost more than that for me.

Re: Easter Island heads have bodies

#70

Post by jmelloy »

GeneTraylor wrote: post #63
spindritf wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the response from Jared Diamond who wrote a book (mentioned in the comments below: "Collapse") with pretty much the same story as yours, of course it will end with a similar conclusion.

Yeah, I'm thinking about buying the book as soon as I have the spare cash.

Put your college professor mindset on, because you're going to need it.

For books about war, famine, disease, and horrible death, I find his books incredibly dry.

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