The sea breeze whips my face as I crane my neck trying to see the 15 moai sculptures in front of me.
Up to two stories high and with their backs turned to the turbulent Pacific, the empty eye sockets of the statues, once decorated with white and red volcanic stones, are eternally staring towards the interior of Easter Island.
Their bodies are furrowed with enigmatic symbols, and their faces, with prominent eyebrows and elongated noses, look both comfortingly human and terrifyingly divine at the same time.
There are a total of 887 moai sculptures scattered around Easter Island, or Rapa Nui as the locals call it, and these 15 stood on the Ahu Tongariki pedestal, the largest ceremonial structure on this remote Chilean island.
Looking at those oversized heads and legless torsos, I find it hard to imagine how these giant monolithic figures - weighing up to 88 tons and made at least 900 years ago - got here in the first place.
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But I wasn't the only one taken aback: researchers have long wondered how these massive moai figures were hand-transported across the island.
There are several theories that have been offered, among them is the one according to which logs were used to prevent the statues from rolling, but also the one according to which extraterrestrials helped in this endeavour.
In any case, it seems that the secret lies in the combination of ingenious design and impeccable construction skills that made it possible for the human-like statues to be able to stand upright and, tied by ropes and directed sideways, have the ability to "walk".
These movements are roughly similar to the ones we use to move an upright refrigerator, when we alternately move each side a few centimeters.
"But the Rapanui (indigenous Polynesian people on the island of Rapa Nui) went further, and even machined the bases of the statues themselves and added certain angles to make them easier to move," explains Karl Lipo, an archaeologist specializing in moai sculptures in a 2013 study , which explains how the statues were moved.
It was the first study to successfully "walk" the five-ton replica, and the walking theory it posited was "a mixture of oral tradition and science," says Ellen Caldwell, a professor of art history at San Antonio College in California and an expert on ancient oceanic art.
She notes that the walking statues are part of the Rapanuan oral tradition where the term "neke neke" means "walking without legs" in the Rapanuan language.
He also says that this is a phrase that the older Rapanui people and their successors use when answering questions about how the statues were moved without the help of any machinery.
Children's songs on Rapa Nui Island also tell of walking statues, while legends say that chiefs with supernatural powers helped the Maos walk.
"Oral tradition on the island tells of moai walking from the place where they were made to their final destination," says Patricia Ramirez, who has lived on the island since she was five years old and now works as a tour guide.
"Traditionally, history on the island has been passed down from generation to generation through songs, chants, dances and poetry. There are many legacy songs and stories that mention walking moai."
However, although local residents have long claimed that the statues walked, it took more than two centuries for foreign scientists to accept the theory about how the moai were transported.
"It really was like that, European and other researchers were saying 'No, there must be some other way, it couldn't have been like this,'" says Lipo.
"We couldn't even think in a different way except that it was necessary to have a large number of people to move the statues.
"It turns out that wasn't true. The archaeological record does point to that."
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Almost all the statues were created in the Rano Raraku volcanic site, before being transported to pedestals (ahus) located at various points on the coast itself.
Lip's research indicates that unfinished statues, as well as discarded ones lying by the wayside (i.e., those that had to be moved) had wider bases in relation to the shoulders compared to statues standing on plinths.
They were also visibly tilted forward by 17 degrees, thereby influencing the center of mass to be positioned above the rounded front edges.
Such adjustments made it possible for the statues to be rolled from side to side and thus transported to their final destination.
"What was amazing was that they were leaning so far forward, they couldn't stand on their own at all because they could tip over," he says.
These features suggest that the statues were modeled after "the way we walk ourselves," Lipo says, explaining that when we walk, we rotate our hips and lean forward.
"The Rapanians practically created a structure that could do the same thing. Leaning statues fall forward and thus take the next step".
Walking moai are usually supported and guided with ropes, and groups of Rapanui stood on each side of the statue and moved it, while a smaller group walked behind the statue and was in charge of its stability.
When the statue reached the plinth, stonemasons would carve out the eyes and reshape the base to shift the center of mass, allowing the statue to stand upright on its own.
The reason why they chose to make the statues walk on the island instead of dragging or rolling them with the help of logs was very practical, according to Lipo.
The weight of the statues would crush the logs, while pulling such large statues would require a huge number of people.
On a remote and bare island with few resources, walking the statues was the most efficient method.
“It was an engineering feat that was able to create and transport the statues at the lowest possible cost.
"The people of Rapanuja did all this despite all the restrictions imposed on them by the island itself, exclusively with joint effort and cooperation and all the ingenious solutions they came up with," he says.
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My walk from Rano Raraku crater all the way to Ahu Tongariki was only 800 meters long, but I didn't mention the 88 ton moai with several ropes.
Other statues I had the chance to visit stood on plinths up to 18 kilometers away from the quarry, so my bike ride was a pleasant excursion compared to the obstacles facing the ancient civilization of Rapa Nui Island.
Making the walking statues was a painstaking process.
There are about 400 statues in various stages of construction around Rano Raraku, an indication that stonemasons used the valley as an artistic laboratory where they experimented with different prototypes before choosing the one that could be moved, Lipo said.
"It is truly a document of historical craftsmanship that documents all the experiments, attempts and failures," he adds.
When the statues were finished, they would be directed towards the exit of the valley, towards the pedestals.
The ancient roads leading from Ranu Raraku were concave, which helped and made it easier for the statues to waddle.
In spite of everything, not all statues managed to reach the pedestal - some lost their balance along the way and remained overturned on the side of the road.
Visitors to the quarry can see the crumbling remains of dozens of derelict statues scattered across the nearby hillsides and roadside - there is no better place on the island to see the scale of the maoi that were created here.
Lip's study also revealed that all of these fallen sculptures had cracks caused by falling from a vertical position, which only confirms the theory that the statues were walking.
When the statues reached their final destination and were reshaped to stand upright, they would be raised on an ahu - pedestal.
It was the moment when stone hats (pukao) were placed on top of the moai to give them a "living face" (aringa ora) or, in other words, a "human form", says Jo Ane Van Tilburg, an archaeologist specializing in stone art. Rapa Nui.
This human form was very important to the people of the Rapa Nui Islands because the statues were used in rituals dedicated to the dead and because they were made in honor of the chiefs.
The Rapanui believed that the world of the dead and the living was still going on, explains Ramirez.
"They were not satisfied only with the symbolic memory of their ancestors - they also wanted to have their physical presence through the characters that will represent them," she adds.
"And that's exactly what moai statues are. They are the faces of their dead ancestors."
Lipo suggests that the stonemasons may have sung ceremonial songs as the statues were moved, in order to maintain the rhythm of the movement, with different songs for different sizes of figures.
However, there is little left in the oral history of the Rapanujacs, so that this theory could be confirmed.
"Many songs and stories were lost during the period of colonization and missionary work," says Tilburg.
"First contact with Europeans destroyed their culture. It's the same saga that befell all the other Polynesian islands."
Although scientific research has revealed answers to some of the most mysterious questions regarding the statues, the lack of oral and written history continues to keep the island of Rapa Nui shrouded in mystery.
But it was that element of mystery that attracted me in the first place, as well as tens of thousands of tourists every year, to come to this remote spot from the island.
I imagined the 15 statues on Ahu Tongariki waddling across the bare landscape of the island, the sound of ceremonial chanting filling the air.
Even after walking along the ancient, unpaved roads of this southern Polynesian island, these giant moai statues still stand quietly and quietly, and their appearance alone speaks of the genius of those who created them in the past.
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