Scientists Solve Easter Island Statue Mystery: Turns Out We’ve All Used The Same Trick At Home

When I was a kid, Easter Island blew my mind. 

At first, it was because I thought it was full of rabbits, eggs, and candy. 

A little bit of reading revealed that this was, in fact, not the case. 

Still, there were plenty of other interesting things about it. The biggest is, of course, those big ol' Easter Island head statues known as the Moai.

They fascinated me to no end, and the island's greatest mystery has always been how the ancient inhabitants were able to move such large statues up and down the mountainous landscape.

Scientists believe they've figured out how the ancient Moai statues of Eater Island were placed centuries before the dawn of the U-Haul.  (Photo credit should read MARTIN BERNETTI/AFP via Getty Images)

Unfortunately, Easter Island didn't fascinate me quite enough to make studying it a career, but luckily, for others, it did.

Now, they think they've figured out how the ancient civilizations of Rapa Nui moved these enormous statues… and in retrospect, it now seems kind of obvious.

The scientists discovered that the island's inhabitants may have used a system of ropes to rock the enormous stones back and forth, effectively making them "walk."

"Once you get it moving, it isn't hard at all — people are pulling with one arm," Professor Carl Lipo, a Binghamton University professor who co-authored the study, said, according to Daily Mail. "It conserves energy, and it moves really quickly. The hard part is getting it rocking in the first place."

Now, I'm not bright enough to have figured this out (it really is a shame that dashing good looks don't solve ancient mysteries), but I can't believe how obvious this now seems.

I think every human being alive has moved a piece of furniture this way at some point or another. Rocking it back and forth to walk it across the floor. I know I have. I did it to part of my entertainment center like two months ago so I could plug in a video game console.

What I didn't realize at the time was that I was using a method perfected by ancient peoples who lived thousands of miles away in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

They were trying to place some of history's most famous works of art.

I was just trying to plug in my Nintendo Switch 2 (and I still probably struggled more than they did).

Different, but the same.