Posted on 11/05/2003 2:33:17 PM PST by blam
German Firm Hired to Save Easter Island Sculptures
Tue Nov 4,12:24 PM ET
BERLIN (Reuters) - UNESCO has awarded a German firm contract to preserve the world-famous but decaying Moai head sculptures on Easter Island, which are suffering the effects of the weather, tourism and past restoration attempts.
Stefan Maar, founder of Berlin-based Maar Denkmalpflege GmbH said Tuesday his company planned to begin treating the statues with chemicals in early 2005 in a project estimated to cost about 10 million euros ($11.5 million).
"Something has to be done," Maar told Reuters. "But with over 1,000 figures, it is a really big undertaking."
Maar's scientists are developing a chemical treatment for the unique volcanic tuff stone from which the heads are carved.
"The stone is not like anything else," Maar said.
The Moai statues are between 400 and 1000 years old and average 13 ft in height, weighing up to 82 tonnes.
The chemicals should prevent moisture passing through the stone and stabilize it, stopping the growth of large cracks now forming rapidly, said Maar, who gained experience in preserving historic monuments on German projects.
"After the fall of the Berlin Wall, there was money to research preservation techniques for monuments that the German Democratic Republic had not restored," he said.
Also known as Rapa Nui, the 166 sq mile Chilean-governed Easter Island is isolated from other land masses by thousands of miles of South Pacific Ocean.
The ancient Rapanui people, who sailed to the island either from Polynesia or South America, carved the heads and hauled them to the island's beaches. How they moved the massive statues with human power alone is one of archaeology's great mysteries. ($1=.8714 Euro)
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Stefan Maar, founder of Berlin-based Maar Denkmalpflege GmbH said Tuesday his company planned to begin treating the statues with chemicals in early 2005 in a project estimated to cost about 10 million euros ($11.5 million).
Today's efforts will one day be looked back on as damaging "past restoration attempts."
So it will. We do the best we can with what we have and so did they.
That price sounds a bit high.
GloAll Industrial Concrete Sealer is a waterbased biodegradable thermoplastic sealer which may be used on most porous substrates. It provides a rugged, durable seal and is resistant to chemicals, acids, oils, detergents, gasoline, foods, fluids, acid rain and ultraviolet light. It can be applied with blended closed loop mops, lambs wool applicators, airless sprayers or low pressure pump-up or agricultural type sprayers.
A 55 gallon drum goes for $838.00 ($15.24 gal). Even if you needed a full drum for each statue, you're still talking less than a million bucks for the material (and you'd probably get a bulk discount). Surely it can't cost another $10 million just to ship it to Easter Island an spray it on the dang statues.
And GloAll is just the first product I came up with when searching the Web. Competitive bidding from other suppliers could bring down the price even further.
The question is which object is the denser?
Yup. The November/December edition of archaeology magazine has a real good article about the Hagia Sophia (Justinian's great church in Istanbul) and how they are reparing the previous restorations, lol.
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Impossible! Only white, right-wing gun nuts are capable of that!
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Just updating the GGG info, not sending a general distribution. |
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