The Mystery of Easter Island's Walking Statues
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 6 ก.พ. 2025
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I purchased a pair of boardwalk shoes recently. I've been enjoying them so far...though it hasn't really rained to give me a chance to truly test them out.
I love my Vessi shoes. I'm on my 4th pair and I rarely wear any other type of shoe!
I would like to mention that the Vessi gloves are not completely waterproof. The shoes are freaking great but the gloves start to get wet after a few hours in a wet environment
Edit: In this case it was a warehouse cooler handling milk and dairy products.
I got my Vessi's. I love my Vessi's.
I got more Vessi's. thank you, Simon. they are, now, the only shoes I wear.
Simon believes in nothing which makes him nothing
Apologizes for making a dark joke, then immediately follows up the apology with the same dark joke. Classic Simon lol
Perfect timing…was just looking for something to watch/fall asleep to 😂😂
Thought I was the only one 😂
@@maxarmitage3469is 00:00 ;)
Nah same here 🤣
Same as me 😂
This is how we do. I never finish these videos awake 😁
Simon, that bit about sparrows was one exaggerated cockney accent away from being a Monty Pythons bit 😂😂
Simon sees ancient wonder: well it’s a bit shit innit?
Because Simon can build them better.
About as British as it gets tbh
😂
Whoever decided to make these heads seriously played the best prank on all of humanity. We might wonder about things like Atlantis etc, but these things are indisputably real... Imagine putting that much effort into "lol, people are gonna scratch their heads for ages over this one"
Simon: The statues can't walk!
Narrator: ...but he was wrong.
This comment is even more funny when the fact that Simon is the Narrator is taken into account.
Ancient Alien Theorists say "Simon needs to watch our series Easter Island episodes where we explain how the Moai walk"
"There are THOUSANDS of them??!!" .... LOL Kind of like how many TH-cam channels Simon has 🤣
😅😅😅😅😅
So many channels Simon forgot all about the video he already made on Easter Island (Geographics)
To be fair the canoes the Polynesians used aren’t the small lake ones Simon is thinking of. They were over 60ft long and weighed multiple tons which put them on par with Viking long ships.
That's pretty awesome
That's about how big it has to be for a group to live on the ocean, logistically anyway. It would still be I assume
They weren’t canoes - they were triangle
sailed ‘waka’.
Polynesians are descended from proto-Philipino sailors.
They were still open and self propelled, unless I missed the ‘sails’ part
@@TheUltimateWriterNZYes, they were canoes. In this usage, "canoe" just means a boat whose hull (or hulls) are primarily formed from single tree trunks that have been hollowed out and shaped, as opposed to being built up of many individual planks.
Incidentally, in the 17th and early 18th centuries, colonists in North America often used sailing canoes colloquially called "periaugers", or "piraguas". These were anywhere from 30-60 feet long. The hull consisted of a big hollowed-out log, though side planks were often added to increase freeboard, and some even had a built-up stern structure. They generally had two sails and I assume they could have oar-locks fitted to be rowed. But they were still technically canoes.
‘Thousands of people aren’t going to stay on a boat for a week”
That’s called a cruise ship, Simon
A boat is not a ship ,a ship is not a boat or a vehicle for a cruise .
@@Maxtyur haven't seen a boat big enough to hold thousands of people.
@@HappyBeezerStudios No you never will because boats are small that's what Simon was saying .You're original comment was factually incorrect and not funny.
@@Maxtyurall ships are boats. Not all boats are ships.
This thread is sooo funny. Like Simon’s in trouble for calling it a boat, and you are ON IT😅😅 Nothing’s getting by you😅😅
Decoding the unknown has become more business blaze than even brain blaze!
Can a sparrow fly thousands of miles? Well... Are you talking about a European Swallow or an African swallow? 🤔
He's probably talking about a Sparrow....not a swallow. I did Google it, they are different species
@@rossharper1983 Hah, I don't know how I typed that without seeing my own mistake. Must have been drunk.
And with or without carrying a coconut?
Is the sparrow stowing away on the canoes possibly? 😅
We know it’s not an African sparrow!
I'm gonna need a tangent timer on the next Decoding the Unknown😂
There is a video of researches 'walking' the statues using ropes. It was a pretty interesting video, and does show you can't underestimate ancient peoples and that the human mind can come up with just great ideas.
Anyone who has moved a tall heavy appliance like a refrigerator knows you need to "walk" it slowly to move it
Not only that but...
I suspect they raced them down the hills. That they learned to do this with boat moorings.
I can already imagine the different tribes holding races, to see who could move a Moai the fastest. Probably also how some of them wound up at the bottom of a slope.
I was quite fascinated by this video when I saw it. It makes sense and works as they proved and only needed a few people. I’m surprised that video isn’t referenced in this video. It proved it was very possible and simulated “walking” enough so they could say the statues walked.
I was quite fascinated by this video when I saw it. It makes sense and works as they proved and only needed a few people. It was just a matter of a sort of heave ho two teams and a guiding directing person who was probably the person credited with making them “walk”. I’m surprised that video isn’t referenced in this video. It proved it was very possible and simulated “walking” enough so they could say the statues walked.
20:33 this is dangerously close to a certain Monty Python bit considering the brief coconut tangent earlier.
Ha I had the same thought!!!
I was so excited to see the reference pop up in the video. What a disappointment. I was thinking his parents raised him right for a moment. 😂
Anyone who’s interested should watch the video of the archeologists “walking” the statues. They recreated it and it works. And they did “magical chants” eg - kept timing.
Simon pausing in the middle to look up the relative geography between Easter/Christmas/Cook Islands for 5 minutes and then getting distracted by Angkor Wat is so relatable that it's concerning.
10:15 If by "off the coast of Chile" you mean over 3832.95 miles of featureless ocean.
It’s all relative
Google says it’s Chilean territory.. with roughly 7000 +/- permanent residents .. there are hotels, too!
I love the story of the walking statues, because it’s the perfect example of how a grounded and practical occurrence in history can become embellished over time.
Or just how words can be perfectly accurate, and yet still misunderstood.
Simon, they DID prop up the Leaning Tower of Pisa. They had to, or it was going to fall over.
Honestly, that project may be worth a Megaprojects video.
They also fixed up major portions of the Great Wall of China.
Pretty much every ancient structure has had repair work. Without it, in 1k years the sphinx will just be rubble.
Christmas Island is known for a yearly migration of legions of crabs crossing the island so thick that you can't take a step without stepping on them.They get run over by cars, making the roads slick.
Yes, Make-Make is an asteroid.
The birdman cult could also have been about escape if you think about it. If you live in a hellhole where the environment's been destroyed of course you're going to dream of somewhere else, anywhere else. The birds could escape, the people could not.
I think the use of them as soil enhancers was actually pretty clever. I'm an avid gardener but I also grow vegetables, herbs and berries to offset my grocery costs. I can tell you from experience that when your ability to eat depends on your garden, suddenly you become far more aware of the weather and soil conditions. You learn the flow of heat, wind and water through your land fairly quickly. You learn to spot patterns in the behavior of insects and other pests (such as "hmm, these pesky rats seem to really love these trees, I wonder if I can wrap something around the trunk to keep them from killing the roots! Of course there may not have been anything, but if they ate fish, they had nets. Shame the rats got them anyway.
When they're determined to destroy something or get something rats won't stop until they get it, even if it means injury or possible death. I found that out the hard way in my garden. My former landlord tended to not give a shit when it comes to how the garbage cans were setup. As a result we got a lot of spilled garbage, which attracted rodents. A long time ago when I first moved in and my garden hadn't even been made, I spotted a rat disappearing into an unlocked window in the basement. I told the landlord and he sealed the window up with foam so it wouldn't open. Years later, when the spilled garbage drew the little pests to our building, they would dig huge tunnels through my garden. They were bound and determined, no matter what, that they were going to reach that specific basement window! Keep in mind that I've lived in this apartment building for over a decade now. Nearly a decade later these rats remembered that they used to go in this ONE LITTLE SPOT. There's an old documentary from National Geographic called "Rat Genius" that tells stories of american city dwellers dealing with a rat problem and each of them discovered a behavior in rats that they didn't know rats were capable of.
So what happened to the rats and the basement in my building? They dug their tunnels into the basement next to the furnaces and the soil became very loose and sandy from lack of organic matter (aka the dark brown or black stuff that indicates soil is healthy and fertile). Eventually, one of them accidentally buried itself alive and died. I found a mummified rat smack in the middle of the pile and buried about a handspan below the surface.
As far as the basalt and volcanic rocks go, I know there's an experimental carbon sequestration procedure that requires basalt to work. Volcanic soil is also a requirement for plants like coffee trees to grow. The only place I could find volcanic soil for sale was chewy dot com in the form of an aquariuom substrate used for raising shrimp of all things!!! It was expensive, a 4 liter package cost 35$. A bag of miracle grow soil costs like 8 and it's twice the volume at least!!! It's not the first time I used substrate intended for amphibians, reptiles and fish tanks for soil amendments, and it won't be the last. Not when I can order coconut coir bricks all year round in a package of 3 versus the stuff labeled as being used for gardens and seed starting! Guess what's cheaper per brick... yep, the pet one. I've also used aquarium sand or gravel to help fluffup the soil and act as drainage respectively. I'd tell you all about it but I'm getting so tired I can't see straight. Time to go back to bed.
I’m not even at this part of the video yet but as an indoor gardener and rat enthusiast I heavily appreciate this.
You should do a video about Thylacines aka Tasmanian Tigers and the fact that there are people who believe that they either aren't extinct or went extinct much later than originally thought (there's actually some evidence for the latter). There's websites dedicated to ring cam quality footage of them and people who swear that they are still alive. I would love to see this topic covered.
I've got a pet Thylacine called Sam, so yes, they're still alive!
Its a very sad story. The last known living one died in captivity after someone left it locked out of its shelter in the freezing cold 😢
As Casual Geographic says: "If you saw a thylacine, for their own good, no you didn't".
I sympathize a lot with that one. I think a lot of people just feel guilty that such a unique animal like that went extinct due to humans. It's sort of a symbol for all the destruction and damage we've done to the environment and to other species. A lot of people want it to be alive because of that.
I need a new season of “An Idiot Abroad” with Simon tagging along…
Taking boats from Polynesia and heading East is actually a genius idea.
The currents flow from East to West across that band of the Pacific, which, while it makes it slightly harder to paddle in that direction for the voyage out, it means that you dont actually have to paddle for the return trip back to home if you dont find anything because the currents are already pulling you in that direction.
You've never walked a refrigerator or washing machine across an apartment, have you?
Simon seems like the type of guy that hires someone else to change a light bulb. Forget moving a fridge.
Giorgio Tsoukalos " I am not saying it was aliens, but it was aliens. "
🤣🤣🤣
Rapa Nui/Easter Island is 6930 km from Aotearoa/New Zealand. Their indigenous languages are very similar. That is further apart than London, UK and Chicago, USA and with significantly more sea between them.
I love it when someone brings me a nice present and it buries me in sentiment 😂
I wouldn't take FactBoi's sass, Ilze.
He can't be that factual when he thinks Easter Island closer to NZ and not Chile, bless him lol
“Factboi” barely paid attention in school, by his own explicit admission (depending on the video, you’re watching) and has lived a sheltered, posh life, also by his own implicit admission. He’s even admitted (and DEMONSTRATED) an inability to remember things he’s JUST read, and can’t be bothered to look up words and pronunciations. He’s “factboi” only in that his writers bring us facts we’ll almost certainly remember better than he will. He’s the very archetype of a moneyed know-nothing with delusions of grandeur.
All he has is a decent voice and a semi-functional ability to repeat scripts. He’s the sort of person I’m genuinely glad I don’t actually know.
Allegedly, in my opinion, even when he admits it, supposedly.
His writers are the literal brains of the operation, as far as I’m concerned. I come here for the writing and editing (especially when they poke fun at Simon’s ignorance and absurd behaviors). His tangents can be fun, sometimes, when they aren’t making me grit my teeth at his shallowness (as I perceive it).
In short, I watch his stuff in spite of both him and myself. If it weren’t for the interesting topics and talents of his team, I’d gladly ignore his existence.
There’s a fantastic video on TH-cam where a team of archeologists put the rope-walk theory to the test with a replica. It was incredible to see the pace that they managed to get the statue moving at, for something so enormous!
as much as I am a lover of archeology and find it utterly fascinating it is really funny to hear Simon rag on it 😂
I'm half way through this and this is the most English I've seen Simon be in in a while
'I've seen birds! Chickens can't fly that far! What about sparrows they can't fly far.' Someone queue up a script for today I found out about birds that migrate and can travel insane distances.
'well they (the Polynesians who migrated as far as Hawaii (did they get to the Americas too?)) don't know how big the pacific ocean is do they?' would this be a geographics vid?
I'm with Simon when it comes to Erich von Däniken, as an Archeologist and Egyptologist I vehemently disagree with the notion that Däniken "studied" the great Pyramids and the Geoglyphs. He had and still does not have any Archeological knowledge and many tried to educate him. The disservice this man alone has done to historical science is almost criminal.
Great Video Simon and Team :)
Hey Simon, the Rapa Nui people who live on Rapa Nui ("Easter Island") aren't dead and are also pretty awesome, there's a good book
He literally says natives still live on the island in the video
PLEASE do the Olmec heads sometime in jn the future. I almost never see any of the historical channels discussing them. Maybe it's because we know so little abuse the Olmec in general, but a vid would be interesting regardless.
I don't know if it was Simon's ranting throughout this episode but this is the first time I felt the research was lacking. Until you touched a bit on the bird man cult and tribal wars. I still didn't hear anything about how the people took to living in fortified caves.
I feel as though I see your username everywhere recently :') You must be an esteemed member of the community, and I rate your taste.
Birds can migrate up to 16,000 miles, so yeah they can reach Easter Island from the mainland.
The Moai that were in their correct final position actually faced inward towards the interior of the island.
Aaaahhhhh, I feel so much better now! 🤣😉
10:51 ❤
ive heard tell of migratory sparrows with a fondness for coconuts
African or European sparrow?
@@davechan8613 well u see with the updated mechanics of air pollution particulate matter and higher c02 levels it IS possible for a 5 ounce "sparrow" (if you will) to carry a 16 oz coconut. so either a cheeky european one or an lost african one ;)
In churchgoers’ defense, Simon, sometimes the sermon is very informative. I’ve listened to sermons that showed maps and identified the cities mentioned in the passage, and gave historical context for the passage being studied. That’s always interesting to me.
Just imagine sailing past seeing a giant statue waddling slowly across the island lol
So hear me out: The reality is that they were being walked into place in the night by teams of men, but they told their children that the chief or whoever just commanded them to walk and it happened.
Came from casual criminalist. But actually enjoy this channel and the vibe more! The suspense...
Omg! I am crying watching this video! It’s super informative and the little videos of sayings in between are hilarious
Love the fact that the background music changes on whether or not Simon is on a tangent. 😂
Oh I do so hope someone takes you to Easter Island.. even a virtual trip.
The asteroid he was thinking of was Oumuamua, would be great for a Decoding the Unknown episode.
Simon. I was today years old when I realized I’ve been confusing New Zealand and Papua New Guinea my entire life 😅😂😂
I was in my 40’s.
My wife teased me endlessly when I came to this realization a few months ago. Had to show her Simon admitting to the same failure.
Hearing a British man speak about sparrows just IMMEDIATELY makes my brain think of Monty Python I realized today 😅
2:50 - Mid roll ads
4:25 - Chapter 1 - The grand moai
14:25 - Chapter 2 - The story of the statue builders
24:50 - Chapter 3 - The big question ; why were the moia made ?
34:45 - Chapter 4 - The end of the moia
38:15 - Chapter 5 - The walking statues
45:40 - Chapter 6 - Conclusion
1:35 born too late to explore the world, born too early to explore the universe...
Precisely, lol. We can still explored the oceans and last remote lands we have, though. 😊
Go to remote places end up finding North Sentineles type folk who eat your brain
Yup.
There’s always the depths of the ocean.
I often wonder how much Simon looks up in a rural night sky at our galaxy and realises how mysterious our universe is?
You gotta love the aggressive sarcastic tone in Simon's voice when he's narrating some mythical theory that he doesnt believe 😂😂 just delightful 👌
They knew they had bodies way before 2012. The statues taken from the Island in the mid 1800s had bodies, there's a full sized one in the British Museum, you can't miss it. They covered all this way back in the 90s in an Arthur C Clarke episode.
Love listening to your cheeky banter. Simon.
39:40 Makemake is one of the recently discovered dwarf planets in the Oort cloud, named after the god.
"Not to my nani, because she's dead."
archeologists smoking crack is an image I didn't know I needed
🤣🤣🤣🤣 BRUTAL! Love it! 🤣🤣
Sleep tight, Simon’s Gran…. X
I was eating when that part came up and almost choked.....😅😅😅😅😅 Then I remembered the Simon from Brain Blaze....and I think he is blending the vibes together 😂😂😂😂
Has there ever been a decoding the unknown on the Worlds Longest Graveyard, aka the Great Wall of China? Especially with the couple that decided to drive through it in September 2023 I feel like it could be written into a cool episode for a Lunar New Year(Maybe next year considering it past this year xD or maybe a Chinese heritage month event?)
Deeply appreciate that your sound designer is changing the music between tangent sections and scripted sections 😂 probably unnoticed by most people, but it makes a big difference in the mood of the podcast!
WOO! Top 10!
Love this stuff, I spend my gaming time listening to these for hours!
45:25 the extra terrestrials version of Gilligan's Island 😂
Simon sounds like my internal voice, the stuff I think but would never say ... Or do I? ... Yes, I definitely do.
I just got my first pair of Vesses in the mail today!
A+ video!
Awesome writing, analysis, and topic!
I'm fascinated by that place and I've always wanted to go sometime before I die. Quick point though, what you said about 2012 is mistaken, because archaeologists have been there for decades if not centuries, and some of the ahu had already been restored by the 2000s. I started reading about Rapa Nui in the late '90s and it wasn't news then that they're mostly waist-up figures.
They have determined that rodents were primarily responsible for the deforestation of Rapanui...though chopping down the trees was definitely a big part of it.
Simon and basement writers. Your uploads today have been awesome! Keep up the good work.
Give the basement dwellers extra mushrooms!!!!
@Whistleboy!!! Aiken County, South Carolina, U.S.A. the sheriff is named Michael Hunt and goes by Mike Hunt. His billboards all day to elect Mike Hunt for Sheriff. Nice guy and has been Sheriff for 2 decades roughly. Thought you would be entertained, someone please get him this info. 😂
Yup, I live in
Aiken County. And yes, everybody I know chuckles over his name, but it's good-natured fun, because he isa good guy.
I was going to post this, but you beat me to it!
Shout out to Simon’s dead nan
Loving this channel.
Today, on Decoding the Unknown, learned that I can't watch any Simon channel's where he rants, or goes off script when I am stoned. 😅
Very intriguing place, different styles of moai, which haven't been definitely dated(some stone work very similar to that found in south America). And visiting the quary, where their are so many moai in various states of completion every where you look, haven't heard a theory to explain this satisfactory
Not sure if I'm correct, but I was always under the impression that the British flexed with their gardens xD
If it’s holding a spirit, it needs feet to stand, but no legs to move because they are eternally standing guard
I worked in a NHS dialysis unit. When I was training, I was sent to get a piece of equipment for a patient called Michael Hunt. Aware I was the new girl and likely to be pranked, I went as directed to get this bit of equipment and said " I know this is probably a prank but I've come to get stuff for Michael Hunt, I'm guessing you call him Mike?!" They gave me the stuff for this patient as that was really his name!!
The editing on this one is amazing i havent checked who did the edit yet but i am loving the music choices, would you call it the score? Its great funny, helps me know of i am listening to a tangent or not, so good.
My new favourite Simon-ism of the week: "...I've seen a chicken they can barely move...".
Simon, I bought some Vessi because of you and I can say that they are some of the best shoes I've ever had. They are amazing.
Thank you Simon! Always quality from you
During this video I was kicked in the eye, kneed in the mouth, and had one of my fingernails partially ripped off. Am I doing MMA? No, I have a toddler.
You know what? Time for a rant. Celsius is dumb and imprecise. If you're doing science-y stuff, use Kelvin. If you wanna know whether to bring a coat or sunscreen, use Fahrenheit. There is literally no situation where I care about the state-change temperatures of an arbitrary molecular compound at an arbitrary air pressure.
Also, the people who use Fahrenheit have been to the moon. Mic drop.
Great video Simon! Always a good day to see a new one in my feeds
Recently there were engineering restoration to the tower of Pisa to stop the slowly leaning and possible collapse of the structure 😅 they did the job so well that it can now be restored vertically with no inclination 😅😅😅 but the Italian government told them to keep it crooked for the tourists.
I've been to the Cooks. Love that place. Made me fall in love with the south Pacific and the people there.
as an American, I appreciate the measurement conversions.
Oh, you give me such good belly laughs😂😂😂
Nobody loves Simon more than Simon
Simon was so close to making a Monty Python joke. “What... is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?”
"Look below the ground people" Thats hilarious Simon
why would they not indeed
Regards Amund
Lol close to New Zealand made me laugh so hard. Omg then Christmas island ... that's on t he other side of Australia 😅
Simon's geography fails had me laughing pretty good. The New Zealand thought was hilarious.
Also Makemake is not an asteroid. It's a dwarf planet. But, close enough. You might be thinking of Haumea as well, another dwarf planet lol.
They obviously used trees.
Now people will say there aren't any trees on the island to which I can only say "not anymore"
And that is also why the culture ended. They used up basically all material for fire, housing and tools to move the statues.
But in general, they used the same techniques as megalithic structures, pyramids, and basically every other large engineering project before the industrial revolution: lots of manpower and levarage.
Yep that was the wrong history taught by a religious west for decades. Lucky we have the facts now and know that previously was based on bigotry and ignorance.
Milo's Magical Stones is basically the story of eastern isalnd. Loved that book as a kid
You saying "yea leaning tower of Pisa, pro that shit up!" Is hilarious because..... well.... they pretty much did exactly that not long ago lol they'll be doing it again as it sinks more and more
there is a flight to easter island but you have to fly & overnight in santiago, chile to take it as there are no other direct flight paths to that strip.
Really interesting seeing Simon do a DtU on a subject he's covered in at least two videos
Here’s a crazy thought regarding the lack of forests, storm damage, or drought and fire? The island is small
Ah FactBoi, talking about coconuts and migratory sparrows while staying UTTERLY clueless
The humble little House Martin... take a look at their migratory cycle.
We used to have house martins nest in the eves of our house but one year there was a storm in the Atlantic that killed a number of them and they've never been back since 😢