South American adventure: Ross Coulthart explores Rapa Nui, aka Easter Island | Reality Check

(upbeat music) - G'day and welcome to a special edition of Reality Check. I'm your host, Ross Coultert, coming to you from Bolivia, Peru, and here on Rappenui, Easter Island, in the middle of the Pacific. We're here on the trail of megalithic mysteries. Ah, for example, these stone basalt blocks carved with 90 degree angles here on Rappenui, evidence of some prior civilization that's unknown to us humans, or are they just a lot damn cleverer here on Rappenui than we ever realized previously? Join me, and what I hope will be a very interesting tour of some of the world's most fascinating, megalithic mysteries. - Ahutongaliki is the largest platform in the island. It's 220 meters long, and it could be restored because plenty of people took pictures of this platform before the tsunami hit the island. - Oh, so I can feel the fact why this is so. - Yeah, and we know the original position of all of these statues. Actually, when the tsunami happened, the largest statue on the platform, number five from here, is so massive, that statue, I think, it weights around 74 tons. It couldn't be moved by the tsunami weight. So it's the only statue that kept its original position. Not standing, but toppled down on the platform. So was. - It could go right over the top of the. - Yeah, yeah, all the way inside this bay. There was a village here. You can see all of those rocks over there. - Are what is left of the village. All the boat houses and stuff, so it's all mixed there. You have that moist statue over there that moist statue doesn't have the ice socket. So it's an ancient moist statue that was abandoned. Yeah, during transportation. Actually, this is one of the most important villages in the island. We are in the territory of Clantupa Hoto. And Clantupa Hoto, they were the owners of the mountain where the mois were carved. So that's the reason why they have the largest platforms in the island. And some of the largest mois also. - They moved from Clantupa to here. - Well, that's the biggest mystery. - I just think that thing of the top of the tent. Remember, I told you that they lived at statues you see in stones underneath. When the statues are in a like 45 degree position, they will use the same method to place the hat on their head and wrap it with some ropes and keep on lifting them both. - It's quite something to be standing here on Repenui, Easter Island. And to be looking at these magnificent carved statues of the ancestors of the people of Repenui. What a great tribute to your relatives. It's an enormous amount of work spending up to a year carving each moai. And then having to card them by sheer human physical labor over hills and mountains using nothing other than ropes and human sweat and cursed peccacy. What an effort. It really is, it's quite something to see these statues in the roar. They take your breath away. They are absolutely enormous. These entire group of statues at Tongareiki were knocked down in 1960 apparently by some huge tsunami. But thanks to the help of a Japanese businessman, they were able to be restored and returned to their plinth here on Repenui. And here they are in all the imaginations of this day. - Got me, take a breath. - His head got locked off in the tsunami. So they bolted it back on again with metal spikes. A bit of modern engineering to support a 1200 year old memorial to Repenui ancestors. I don't even want to think about the logistics of lifting a block that size onto the head of this enormous moai. It's quite a commitment to do this for your ancestors. What's wrong with the limestone, gravestone? - If a moai is dropped into the ocean, it doesn't last for too long because the material is too soft and also coral grows very fast in the ocean. So you can have lots of algae and other stuff growing in the rocks and you won't recognize that as a moai statue later. So there was a Japanese man, you know that this tsunami goes all the way to Japan and it destroys some coast cities and actually hundreds of people lost their lives in Japan. And a Japanese man, a man with the last name, Tadano, he came here later in the '80s and when he learned the history of this place, he decided that he needed to help local people with the restoration of this platform. So he's the one who got the idea of asking the elders of the island and back in that time, Augusto Pinochet was the dictatorship back then. The permission to take a statue with him to Japan so he can raise the money through the nations and as when they gather all the money they needed, they will, he will bring back the statue to the island. So the elders agreed to that. So they allowed him to take this one to Japan. This was exposed in the Osaka Warfare in the year 1982 and this statue was moved to different cities for different expositions for four years and then when they raised all the money they needed, it was brought back here. You can see why for so many explorers and adventurers, the carved stone Moai of Rappanui are a wonderful story. This is what the Moai were meant to look like when they were properly positioned. They used ground up corals to put white in their eyes and some kind of black stone to give their pupils an obsidian black shine. Some people call this statue Moai to Kuturi. Kuturi means to be kneeling. You can see this is the kneeling Moai. It's the only statue in this island that have been carved with legs and feet and it's kneeling with its hands on its knees. In Rappanui culture we have different kinds of music. There is a kind of music that we call "biu" and the "biu" is a lament, a sad story of the past that people remember because it was a tragic, important story. So usually when we call these lament, there are very sad songs. People are stealing down like this Moai. Usually a female, just as you mentioned before, usually women do this, but actually men also had to sit down like this in the past to perform that music. So there are different stories about this statue. We actually are not very sure of the origins of this one because at that time when there was only 111 people here there was very few people that remained of this clan and most people in the island didn't know about the existence of this one. This statue was founded in the first Thorhier Dal Expedition in the '50s and they dig out the body of the Moai and lift it up in this position. There's one other secret on Rappanui, Easter Island that I want to share with you and it's where things get a little bit weird. As you know, there's a long history of goblins in modern human mythology all through different cultures and countries all over the world. And Rappanui has its own goblin story as Alejandro will tell us. You know, I was telling JP that this statue always remind me of the face of Tutankamon's mask with the chin, yeah, right? It looks very similar to the farrow's face. And you know what is weird is that this statue has a similar story to the one of Tutankamon, not the life of this ancient farrow, but you know that when this scientist found the tomb of Tutankamon then they died a few weeks later because of strange stuff. Well, in our traditional history there was a Rappanui man that showed this statue to Thor Hiredal and his people when they were here in the '50s. And this Rappanui man died a few weeks later after showing this statue in very, very strange phenomena happening around him. And his family was telling him, "This spirit is looking for you because of something that you did." And it was that he showed this statue to the Norwegians. So you know, before nobody wanted to show Thor Hiredal the statue because the people used to believe that there was a spirit protecting the statue and they would get punished if they show him. And this Rappanui guy that showed him died a few weeks after it happened. Some people believe that the statues with the round heads are more ancient, more statue. There is some people that believe that this is actually one of the last statues that was carved here. So here we are right at the top of one of the highest points in Rappanui, Easter Island. And there's a beautiful story behind this island down below, Motonui Island, that after hundreds of years of tribal warring, the people of Rappanui realized all they were doing was killing each other. So they came up with a competition called the Birdman Competition, where the warriors who were the first to perform a feat of endurance and retrieve an intact bird's egg from Motonui Island were the ones who would be king for the year. and in order to achieve that incredible exalted position, they had to swim from the edge of this incredible volcano here. You had to climb down from the edge of this incredible volcano, climb down a 200-300-foot wall, and then as soon as you got out into the ocean, you had to swim across to a motonoe island. And then when you got to a motonoe island, you had to climb those perilous cliffs, retrieve an intact bird's egg, tie it with a cloth around your head so that you could freely swim back and then swim back to the mainland, another two kilometres. And he who got there first, not only were they king for a year, they got their choice of the most beautiful woman on the island as their mate, great life, hell of a way to resolve conflict. Maybe we should bring back some of the old tasks. Anyway, great way to resolve getting out of warfare. There are still unfinished statues sitting in the bedrock all over this quarry. They can't do, they can't finish a war like that. So the only way to fix that problem is that you remove those rocks by making the statues smaller. So this is what will affect the height of the mine statues. Sometimes they wanted to do like a 12 metre tall statue, but those rocks wouldn't allow. And I cannot, I cannot, I cannot, I cannot choose to get rid of that. Yeah. Tira, how long it took to carve them away? We believe that for the biggest statues of the island, one year, for small statues, it will be very fast actually. The problem was to transport them. That's what we don't know. You can see that it's impossible to breathe that statue all the way down here. Well, that statue, it wasn't going, it wasn't coming down actually. This statue was going to be wrapped in ropes and move up the volcano most probably and then transported over the edge of the volcano to the lowest part of the crater and then transported to this platform. This might be the top two or top three of the island. It's a 12 metre tall statue that weights over 100 tons. You know, this one? This one. Yeah. There is another 12 metre tall, just a little further away. We passed right through it. And so this will be the second and third largest statue of the island. The largest one is a 21.6 metre tall statue that's in the mountain. I don't know if you notice that what we were walking here. But later we're going to get closer to that one, you will see. So this statue also is one of the most stillish-edmine in the island because it has been carved with the best techniques that belong to the last generation of carvers that after many, many generations of passing down the knowledge, the last generation of carvers were the ones that have the better skills, the best skills to carab statues. So this statue might have been carved around the year 1680 when this tribal war started in the island and this place was abandoned very suddenly in a couple of months or years, maybe. So let's go up to this lookout here. My grandfather told him, "You can reinterpret the story of the migration of King Hottomatuha as a story of an interplanetary migration. It's like people was living in a world that was collapsing. So they look for another place to move their population and so they found this world and they migrated here. So he said, "When people ask you who are the aliens, we are the aliens, the usower and sisters that have got here in the ancient times." But they were decimized that there was a prior civilization here. What do you think is the evidence of a prior, a megalithic civilization? Well actually, there is not much, if there was an ancient civilization, there should not be like evidence around because actually the island erodes very easily. So most of the material that you see here is at surface level. There is nothing that we can dig out to see that if there was something underground. But lots of people could have lived here in the past and that we don't know if that they just didn't live any evidence. I heard about a, is there a polygonal wall? Yes. Are we going to see that? Yeah, we're going to see that in the day after tomorrow. So who built that polygon wall? Well, it's a. It's the anchor. One of the clans of the island, actually they are correct for because of their buildings, because many of the platforms they had in their territory, they look as perfect as that one. But most of them were destroyed just recently, 100 years ago or more. So that one is the only one that remains with that polygonal wall, but there used to be more here. The oral history says your ancestors died? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So how did they chip the granite? Oh, it's not granite. It's a basalt stone. It's a basalt stone. Yeah, yeah. It's porous basalt. Yeah. So, how did they do it? Well, they used a more solid and compacted basalt stone that. There is a specific quarry that's in the middle of the island. That's where you get the best quality tools for carving. No, why did they do it? We don't know, but I mean, it's an altar to have more statues. Maybe they were just what is said is that they were just looking for the best architecture, so they can be more resistant, so it can last for a longer time. But there is a theory, you know, this Noregan explorer called Thor Hyderal, he used to believe that it might have been the Incas that traveled all the way here, and they moved people here. Yeah, but there is no DNA evidence in the bones of this island that American people came here. But what is still possible is that the Papandri people travel all the way there, or to other places like Ankor Wat in the other side of the Pacific. And they could have seen or learned from these other cultures, and then came back and reproduced this kind of architecture. But later when we visit that place, you will see that there are two different architectures in the same platform, the people that built it sophisticatedly, and an older one that looks more, how you say, rudimentary. In the oral history here, it's quite clear that there are conflicting stories about whether when his ancestors first arrived here on the island, it was indeed empty. The intriguing thing about East Ireland is there is suggestions of a pre-existing, megalithic civilization that the ancestors of Alejandro went on to emulate. There are megalithic blocks here that intriguingly are connected and shaped very similarly to the ones that we've seen in Peru and Bolivia. Parliagonal blocks, perfectly cut out of very solid stone, that the street continues. And there you see that those rocks are not carbon-poly, if you can see more over there. So actually this is like the official story by archaeologists that, you know, one thing I forgot to mention before is that the moai platforms were changing in different generations. Sometimes one platform will have one moai, so we'll have certain dimensions. And then a new generation wanted to add a second moai, so they have to discern the platform and large it, make it a new one, and then put two moai statues or three or four or fifteen like we saw before. So in this case, we see like what they say, a new generation of people came here to build on top of all this layer. I get that, but how would a civilization, your ancestors, with presumably stone tools or at best meteorite rocks, how would they shape a lump of basalt like that with such accuracy? And why is it that it seems to resemble so closely what we saw in places like Saksaiwaman in Peru and some of those great, megalithic rocks that we saw over in South America? Well, the carving of the Basalt stone is not a big mystery. Actually, there are still some tools that you can find in private collections around the island. But what you mentioned about being the same as you see in America, this had led the people to believe in the past that maybe it was Inca, people or other people that traveled the way to Rapanui to reproduce this kind of architecture here. And those kind of theories were discarded when people analyzed the DNA of local people and they saw that bones with American DNA are no other than 300 years old, which is about the period where the first Europeans are right here. But there is another theory that says that maybe Rapanui people went there and they could have learned from those people and then came back with these traditions and reproduce something similar in this island. This is actually something that still been discussed because in America they have found cemeteries of 80 people from like for example them and Puchet people or this new research about the Colombian people and they found Symmetry of a pollination people very along with them so it looks like pollination people was navigating all the way there and They will get mixed with those people stay living there for the rest of their lives and even have descendants and But we believe that some of them might have come back to this island with this kind of knowledge There's actually stories in our culture of people that left the island and came back later from very faraway places Toena how old this wall is it's around 500 years old according to Carbon 14 dating from the 50th century to the fourth-thousand century Maximum and well later we're going to get closer to that one look at the airplane up there The other platform you see over there, which is called a Huwina Poo is the oldest one and the one that gives the name to this site Vinapoo I just find it very interesting that there's that that individual stone the tiny little wedge stone in the middle there A larger version of what we see in Corri Cancher the temple of the Sun in Cusco and Saksiwa Man, but it's just larger It's a completely unnecessary somebody with a sense of humor really But none of this here has knobs like you see in Egypt or This wall was much bigger one So the common date of maybe I might have knobs, but in the inside part not not exposed to the exterior because There is another more platform in the North Coast of the island that the people regards it It's the like the second most perfect platform. This will be the first one and that one called Ahu Tepeu is the Like the the second like most beautiful my platform you when you go to see that platform that's a more isolated area you have to walk all the way there and The stones in that platform not all of them are perfectly carved and polished like this But it looks like it's like the ancestor took their time to look all the best Rock to fit together and you can see that some of them actually have not starved on them, but as the platform is Destroyed some of those knocks are exposed outside, but it looks like they had this connection But where was the stone quarried from? Was it around here? Yeah, Basalt stone is actually all around the island It's like the stone that you find the most usually in the coast and up there in the volcano there are lots of Basalt quarries and how would they have moved? I mean some of those blocks are enormous. How would they have moved those? Well the movement of the stones is a mystery But they have done they might have done some like similar stuff like similar to what the ancient gypsies did or Well, I have to show you later Some pictures that are found on the internet about a National geographic issue of 1920 know a team of researchers went to an island in Indonesia called Nias and in that island there was a group of people that were still moving giant megalites right in the early 20th century And they managed to take some pictures and in those pictures You can see that the people was using the rolling wooden logs to move giant basalt stones just like like that one You see over there and they were using a different system that looks like placing the stone on two big canoes You know there is an ancient story of the island that I haven't tell you that was recorded by Sebastian Engler that says that the The people that produced agriculture in the island were very important people because they had to produce lots Lots of sweet potato and taro because they were be cooked and when they are very soft They will use this material to pay the way from where they will like transport the big stones So I think that there are some Lots of Information pieces missing that there if you mix all of this information together it gives you like some kind of image of how they So you're not buying the Graham Graham Hancock line in his Netflix series that this is an example of perhaps some Pre-civilization here on Easter Island. Oh, no, I actually I don't think so but I believe that maybe In ancient times that could have been people that did the same thing and it's like humans have been replicating in different generations Maybe learning from somewhere else or maybe getting into the same Technology got advanced something we definitely have to ask the aliens when we get What's the similarity between all these cultures? Yeah, this is a prototype There's more that was hidden around the island. Well actually I told you before that here We're in the territory of an ancient clan that we call Haumana and many of the platform the my platforms that belong to clan Haumana There are European records of the late 1800s that say that the walls were as perfect as this but all of them were destroyed just a few hundred meters from What we just showed you those exquisitely carved polygonal stone blocks Here on Easter Island Rappanui you find These blocks also carved out of basalt and I have to say a hell of a lot less convincingly carved Frankly, you can't hold a candle with these Against what we've just seen down below This is completely different stonework And frankly, this is the kind of stonework you'd expect to see with somebody with a stone axe I presume Come on Alejandro now want you to defend your position my friend I'm not convinced I don't believe you could carve with such exquisite accuracy a Basalt block like the ones down below and I just wonder whether these are a pale attempted limitation There are two things that tell you that this might have been like I said before because This platform is called Ahubina Poo is considered the oldest platform of this site and the entire site here We call it Vina Poo because of this platform was present here in ancient times and Another thing that is that You know yesterday or in the rest of the two's we saw the foundations for both houses that we call Banga Those are perfectly carved rectangular shaped stones you can even find some that are curved You know that go by the end of the house that has this like a elongated oval shape and People was carving them even in the 1800s in the early 1800s So you see the technique used for carving those kind of tom is the same as carving those stones over there So it's probably pretty patronizing of us to assert or to speculate that that it wasn't the people of Repanoe Yeah, yeah, you think it was I think they were but Where they took this knowledge from that side I think it's still I mean It could have been developed by the techniques of the people here But it could also have been that people travel to somewhere else and learn from other people or I don't know maybe they found some ancient stuff like around and then reproduce it again in a new generation or maybe Or maybe it was someone else. Yeah, yeah I believe that the ancient world was far more connected than we are led to believe that people were traveling everywhere around the world I have to say I do find the similarities between what we saw down below those beautifully shaped stone best old blocks and What we saw at Saksai woman and Kara Cancha I do find those similarities quite profound So just a couple of hundred meters up the hill from those exquisitely shaped basalt stone blocks you come to this site Which I suspect is an attempt by the locals to emulate to replicate what happened down below But was it the same civilization? I'm not so sure it was have a look at this I mean these are Incredibly well carved stone blocks when you consider that they didn't have anything other than stone adzers to carve them and There are huge gaps the shaping is not as accurate There's certainly no 90 degree angles and they haven't been able to affect that Bulge that characterizes the other blocks down the road. So who done it? It's impossible really to reach a definitive conclusion one way or the other frankly about Whether there was any pre-civilization here on Easter Island Rappanui I have to say coming to the end of our journey What we've seen in Peru Belivia and perhaps also here in Rappanui Suggests there may well have been a civilization before the known Humans that occupied these territories that shaped the stone in such incredible ways and Left their mark on the landscape It's intriguing and it's almost impossible to know I guess the investigation and the Tridactors might actually help us provide an answer if they do turn out to be real beings if they do turn out to be Part human part hybridized beings the implications are Extraordinary what we might be looking at here is a prior Rehuman or contemporaneous civilization that lived continuously with humans that only the locals knew about The implications however which way you see it are extraordinary It is quite amazing because when you think about it what we've seen on this journey is a Series of megalithic mysteries. We've seen stone blocks shaped in ways that defied explanation with the conventional tools of that time. It's very like Egypt. You've seen in Egypt, as we did last year, these incredible blocks of granite and limestone shaped in ways that frankly couldn't have been shaped with the tools of that era. Then you come around the world to Peru, Bolivia and here on Rappanui, and you see these extraordinary constructions, these gigantic carved stone blocks. Supposedly made by a civilization that only at best had stone tools, or maybe a few hard metal meteorite rocks to carve with. How did they do that? Where did they get their inspiration? And why are there so many similarities between these exquisitely sharp angled stone blocks here on Rappanui and what we saw in Peru and Bolivia? And I guess just to tie this all up with a bow, then there's the mystery of the Tridactors and the other alleged beings that we saw in Lima, Cusco and Icar. Are they real beings? It's impossible to say for sure at this stage, but what I would like to see and what I'd like to help see happen is DNA testing that might enable us to reach a definitive answer, independent, peer-reviewed forensic examinations of these objects. Let's call them that for the moment, to see whether they are in fact real beings and not artificially constructed objects as so many skeptical debunkers assert. I have to say having seen and indeed held the Tridactors in my own hands for myself, it would take a hell of a lot of persuading to convince me that they are artificial toys or constructed objects, hoax objects as some of the skeptics have suggested. I'm not buying it. There's a mystery here and it's worth investigating. Thank you so much for joining me on what has been an incredible three-week adventure across Bolivia, Peru, Chile, Rappanui, East Ireland. I'm your host, Ross Kultert. A pleasure to be with you.