The Statues That Walked

Unraveling the Mystery of Easter Island

By: Terry Hunt, Carl Lipo

Narrated by: Joe Barrett

Length: 6 hrs and 36 mins

Publisher's summary

The monumental statues of Easter Island, both so magisterial and so forlorn, gazing out in their imposing rows over the island’s barren landscape, have been the source of great mystery ever since the island was first discovered by Europeans on Easter Sunday 1722. How could the ancient people who inhabited this tiny speck of land, the most remote in the vast expanse of the Pacific islands, have built such monumental works?

No such astonishing numbers of massive statues are found anywhere else in the Pacific. How could the islanders possibly have moved so many multi-ton monoliths from the quarry inland, where they were carved, to their posts along the coastline? And most intriguing and vexing of all, if the island once boasted a culture developed and sophisticated enough to have produced such marvelous edifices, what happened to that culture? Why was the island the Europeans encountered a sparsely populated wasteland?

The prevailing accounts of the island’s history tell a story of self-inflicted devastation: a glaring case of eco-suicide. The island was dominated by a powerful chiefdom that promulgated a cult of statue making, exercising a ruthless hold on the island’s people and rapaciously destroying the environment, cutting down a lush palm forest that once blanketed the island in order to construct contraptions for moving more and more statues, which grew larger and larger. As the population swelled in order to sustain the statue cult, growing well beyond the island’s agricultural capacity, a vicious cycle of warfare broke out between opposing groups, and the culture ultimately suffered a dramatic collapse.

When Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo began carrying out archaeological studies on the island in 2001, they fully expected to find evidence supporting these accounts. Instead, revelation after revelation uncovered a very different truth.

Download the accompanying reference guide.

©2011 Terry Hunt and Carl Weber (P)2011 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Hunt and Lipo make a major contribution to global history. They decipher the tangled skeins of Easter Island’s history with cutting edge scholarship and vivid writing. Their meticulous research tells a tale not of ecological armageddon, as so commonly believed, but of brilliant human achievement under difficult, isolated circumstances. This important book revolutionizes our understanding of ancient Polynesia and is a must-buy for anyone visiting this extraordinary place." (Brian Fagan, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Barbara)

"Finally, a fair and balanced account of the deeper human and environmental histories of Easter Island by people who not only know the records intimately but also helped produce them. In the midst of an ocean of sensationalist accounts of these histories, The Statues that Walked rights many wrongs." (Donald K. Grayson, Professor, Department of Anthropology and Quaternary Research Center, University of Washington)

"A great read and a genuinely exciting account of how the science of archaeology is done at its best." (John Edward Terrell, Professor and Regenstein Curator of Pacific Anthropology, Field Museum of Natural History)

Mystery of Easter Island is solved by archeology

If you could sum up The Statues That Walked in three words, what would they be?

Mysterious Polynesian People

Which scene was your favorite?

Engineering of Rapanui people: how they curved and moved the statues are amazing.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Not really, there were too many examples of archeological surveys in other areas.

Any additional comments?

Archeological survey does not always reveal truth, because sometimes it is based on hypothesis.

Great structure

They did a great job of presenting "established" myths and then debunking them one by one. Really held my interest!

Interesting Listen

Any additional comments?

I've always been fascinated with the archeology of Easter Island. I hope to get a chance to go there some day, but this was a good second best alternative. Hopefully some day it will help me enjoy my trip there that much more.I was curious how they would fill 6 hours talking about the mysterious statues. They did so quite elloquently by dealing with a lot of related issues. I would certainly recommend it.

Fascinating story

What made the experience of listening to The Statues That Walked the most enjoyable?

The most enjoyable were the clear and convincing arguments for what really transpired on the island, and the realization that the island's history is vastly different than what was believed until very recent times.

What did you like best about this story?

The most enjoyable part of the story was the authors reasoning for purpose of statue building and how that played an important role in the island's delicate ecosystem.

What about Joe Barrett’s performance did you like?

Very clear and well read. Excellent preformance.

Any additional comments?

Also fascinating were the lessons that can be drawn from the island's history, which can provide valuable insight into present day global issues of diminishing resources.

Great Archeology

Who doesn't think Easter Island is cool? OK, I have a BA and MA in history and am just fascinated by this stuff. The mystery of physical artifacts such as the giant statues on Easter Island are a soft spot for me. So, I picked this up and enjoyed it.

The book is ultimately a fairly dry account of the findings of Terry Hunt and a team of graduate students who did some archeology on the Island a few years back. In addition, Hunt does some synthesis of older works including that of Thor Heyerdahl. Of course Heyerdahl was trying to show that ancient South American's brought statue moving technology to Polynesia... Never the less, well written and engaging.

The high point of the story is the myth of the statues walking. It turns out that they were made to walk with a little help of a team of islanders and then modified to stay in place once moved. Hunt's chapters on how the 9 to 19 ton statues moved from the quarry to their posts on platforms around the island is really interesting. Other explorations of how grass grew - not so much. Never the less, this is a complete history of the island and it's people based on the most current study. Well researched, well written and clearly articulated. I enjoyed this book, though I am not sure a non "history geek" would be riveted. If you are interested, this is a relatively short study. If you are not a fan of non-fiction, this is not a good book to experiment with.

Well read

If you could sum up The Statues That Walked in three words, what would they be?

Academic AND Interesting!

What did you like best about this story?

I learned a lot of different things: it was well well-read, and easy to come back to in the car.

Enlightening AND entertaining.

This book was written and narrated very well. Not only did I learn new things (like lithic mulching), but was entertained while doing so. the book builds a case for the author's findings, so more than one mystery gets solved.

Fascinating story well told

As absorbing as a good well told as a police procedural. Filled with archeological and cultural science explained and not much it appears oversimplified.
I have a preference for the straight not over dramatic delivery of this narrator whose delivery focused the listener on the story rather than the performance

The process of solving a great mystery

The description of this book is not very good. Here's the story: there's an island, it's isolated from those near it. It's devoid of trees. It has no reefs, so there are few fish to catch. There are no large animals to hunt. It's only 64 square miles large. Oh yeah, and somehow and for some reason the indigenous people didn't die out but managed to make over 900 multi-ton statues of human faces and move them from a quarry in the middle of the island to the shores, all facing inward. So what happened?

This book, written by two scientists who have studied Easter Island for many years, take you through the evidence in the soil, the remains and the artifacts and tackle one individual mystery after another until your perception of this small island and these amazing people has completely altered. It's a little clerical, a little less storytelling than scientific analysis, but it's an amazing read. The thought process and the way these people look at the real data and come to completely new conclusions that in hindsight make such sense, is the way people should confront the problems in their own lives.

Also, it's such a good story of history and pre-history that you should definitely add it to your cart.

I want to visit them!

Where does The Statues That Walked rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

Fascinating non-fiction.

What was one of the most memorable moments of The Statues That Walked?

Learning how they were moved.

Any additional comments?

This was a very enlightening account of what has been learned about the statutes.