The Mind-blowing Scale Of Moai Building

Guys, look at this. Boom. Boom. That moai.

Huge moai. Massive moai. 200 ton moai. 20 m.

Easy peasy. Check out this part here. 1 2 3 4 five moai. All collapsed [music] in a line.

Straight from their quarry. Oh, six, seven, really. If you include those ones, all in a line, all in the same part of the quarry. It's crazy.

It's crazy. Look at this. Zooming out, you can see the whole Rapanoui quarry, guys. An [music] explorable 3D map of Rapanui Quarry has just been released.

I know you want to check it out. The link is down below. I had the pleasure of chatting to [music] Professor Carl Lipo, an absolute expert on Rapanoui on these incredible moai. Guys, pull it up and come explore Rapanoui with me right [music] now from the comfort of your own home.

There's literally nothing better to do right now than that. I promise you. [music] Could you possibly introduce yourself for those who who may be unaware? >> Yeah.

Uh, I'm Carl Lipo. Uh, I'm an anthropologist here at Bingmpington University, which is a university in upstate New York. >> Okay. And I think I first became aware of your work when I saw Moi walking across a path, I [laughter] think.

>> Yeah. >> But could you tell us like your main area of interest? Why would you know? >> Yeah.

Yeah. Um, Rapanui is this sort of mind-blowing place. I mean, it's this tiny speck of land, you know, thousands of miles from anything else out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. And it has just some of the most incredible archaeology that you find anywhere.

All condensed in this 6x10 mi wide area. And it's always been I mean since since I was a kid, I was always interested in the fact that people in the past did really remarkable things. Kind of things that we consider crazy. Whether that's stone or pyramids or earth and mounds, there are things that people did that don't make sense to us.

uh that have always wondered like it had to make sense to them you know it doesn't make sense to us why would you do this in a remote place like that but it must have made sense to them and you know I work I was working with Terry Hunt who's at the University ...