Gratitude Friday 4 4 2025 Our Moai

“Alfred Métraux (1902–1963, a Swiss ethnologist who studied Easter Island extensively) wrote, “When the Easter Islanders of today are asked about the means by which the statues were transported, they only say: ‘King Tiikoihu, the great magician, used to move them with the words of his mouth.”” ― Robert M. Schoch, Forgotten Civilization: New Discoveries on the Solar-Induced Dark Age

I have never seen a Moai, and it is unlikely that any of my eight faithful readers have either. The Moai are massive stone statues carved by the Rapa Nui people on Easter Island. The word "moai" comes from the Rapa Nui language and means "living face of our ancestors.” Easter Island of course is one of the most remote places on the planet, it part of Chile and the home of 7,750 people known as the Rapa Nui. The nearest inhabited islands of around 50 people is Pitcairn Island, 1,289 miles away, the nearest town with a population over 500 is Rikitea, on the island of Mangareva, 1,619 miles away; the nearest continental point lies in central Chile, 2,182 miles away. The definition of remote.

The Moai are characterized by long noses, strong brows, deep insect eyes, and prominent chins. They are typically 13 feet high and weigh 14 tons. They are believed to represent the spirits of ancestors, chiefs, or other high-ranking figures.

They were erected on temple platforms (ahu) along the coast of Easter Island between 400 and 600 years ago with the peak of construction around the year 1500. If we stop and consider what it must take in quarrying, chiseling and transporting these behemoths from inland to the coast with rudimentary tools it is nearly beyond comprehension. It had to have been a major effort for this small society on Easter Island. The focus of these resources were not on food and shelter but for some other purpose, to honor their ancestors or perhaps to show future generations they existed.

While the prevailing narrative is that deforestation of the island to transport the Moai and for fuel to cook food led to the collapse of the ecosystem, more recent studies suggest the spread of diseases from European travelers from which the natives had no immunity is the most likely cause of what occurred in respect to a decline in the island population. Yet the broader point is that we do not know what happened to them or the value the Moai had in their society. What we know is that they intended to create edifices that would stand for generations. They are gone, the Moai remain.

I found myself wondering about our Moai. What do we toil to erect that will stand beyond our time, perhaps well into the future to some point in the future in which they remain and the context of who we were and how we lived is long forgotten? We have monuments and structures that probably will be around well beyond when we are dust. We also have unleashed chemicals and radiation that mark our era in ways that will be detectable 10,000 years from now. An example of that all the steel we have made since the 1940s is called high background steel. The way that steel is produced is prone to contamination from airborne radionuclides, such as cobalt-60 in our atmosphere which are deposited into the steel, giving it a weak radioactive signature. There is a whole economy for what is termed low-background steel, made before this era in things like medical equipment that cannot have a radioactive signature. Incidentally, the largest world supply of that kind of steel is at the bottom of Scapa Flow in the Orkney Isles. It is there that the German Naval fleet was scuttled at the end of WWI and is now valuable in a way that no one in that era could have possibly considered. Is that our Moai?

Perhaps as I stand at the threshold of 60, I am thinking about such things more often now. What do we leave as we turn to dust? I hope that for me, some of my deeds live on in their impact on those around me. Things like donating blood has a positive ripple effect so that people have lives and enjoy time emanating out from an event when their lives were at a crossroad and a small gesture on my part made all the difference for another life in a way I will never know. I would wish that some of my written words and ideas survive in the future. Yet the truth is we have no idea what our Moai will be or who if any will leave a mark that lives well beyond us.   

In some ways reflecting here, it seems a bit foolish to even consider. Why should I care? On some level it is the equivalent of carving one’s initials into the tree of time with the words “I was here” and the date. But still, I am here and in some odd way it is intrinsic to the human condition to have this drive. I was here. This drive has had benefits in my own life that I can see, because in the darkest moments of my life, I contemplated the ravages of addiction and understood viscerally that I did not want my life defined by the baseness of addiction and its devastation. I wanted to leave a positive mark. I hope that I have. I certainly have tried, and I am not done yet. I think that in many ways, the benefit of recovery, not only in my own life but the impact that has had on those around me is my Moai. At the end of the day (literally and figuratively} that is enough for me, and I am grateful for that. What is your Moai?

What are you grateful for today?