Looks like they will survive to me. 🙂
Posted on 10/07/2022 5:26:03 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Fire has damaged Easter Island's iconic megalith statues known as moai. An unknown number of the nearly 1,000 stone-carved statues were affected.
Ariki Tepano, director of the Ma'u Henua community in charge of management and maintenance at the UNESCO heritage site Rapa Nui Natural Park, said the damage is "irreparable and with consequences beyond what your eyes can see."
"The moai are totally charred and you can see the effect of the fire upon them," Tepano said in a social media post.
The city of Rapa Nui said in the post that the site is closed to visitors while investigations are underway to assess the damage.
Chilean Cultural Heritage Undersecretary Carolina Perez Dattari tweeted that fire swept through the World Heritage Site on Easter Island.
More than 247.1 acres, including the moai sector, were hit by fire affecting "one of the major archaeological sites," the city of Rapa Nui said in a Facebook post.
The statues, created by the Rapa Nui people between 1400 and 1650, are considered to embody the spirit of a prominent ancestor with each one considered to be a living incarnation of the person.
According to a UNESCO description of the Easter Island site, "A society of Polynesian origin that settled there c. A.D. 300 established a powerful, imaginative and original tradition of monumental sculpture and architecture, free from any external influence. From the 10th to the 16th century this society built shrines and erected enormous stone figures known as moai, which created an unrivaled landscape that continues to fascinate people throughout the world."
Ping
I thought there was no more organic fuel on EI.
Who’s the jackass who caused the fire?
Taliban?
Like, dude, the rocks were like totally charred.
The smoke damage will wash off during rain periods.
Doubtful that was the first ever fire on the island.
I didn’t know rocks burned.
Of course, you can figure out what happened. There was fire!
Looks like they will survive to me. 🙂
Oh noes! Some of the statues are now in blackface! Let the protests begin!
If they burned, could they be petrified wood?
Isn’t this all just a little bit too dramatic?
They are made of freakin’ rocks and it is a grass fire in sparse grass.
Color me stupid, but how does one burn stone?
Climate change, of course.
The island is a bleeping VOLCANO. The heads have been HALF BURIED in volcanic ASH for, oh, idunno, maybe a few centuries, maybe a couple thousand years. They are made out of BASALT which came out of the volcano. The notion that a grass fire would do any more than get smoke in their eyes is somewhere out beyond DUMB.
They could always call someone with a pressure washer to clean off the soot. Had they never thought of that?
/s
The heat from fire can cause rock to crack which would cause damage, BUT as you pointed out, it looks like a grass fire in sparse vegetation. I don’t see how that kind of fire could get hot enough to crack such large stones. The article is seriously lacking in details.
Natives saying send us money for granite statues that cannot burn. “It wuz climate change I tells ya”
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.