Excavations of the bodies have been going on for many years, you can find out more from the Easter Island Statue Project. It’s generally accepted that the statues were made sometime between 1250 and 1500 AD. There is controversy surrounding why the bodies are buried. Was it time and erosion, or were they buried on purpose? Aliens? The soil surrounding the bodies for so long has preserved interesting carvings (petroglyphs, or rock markings)..
This one below has a sailing ship carved onto it…
I love reading peoples comments more than the story!!!!
Is anyone else reminded of the archaeological dig from Raiders of the Lost Ark? It’s fascinating to learn what lies beneath the surface, but I’m glad I’m not the one digging it up!
I only got about half way down before I got tired of the flames concerning creationism, Noach’s flood, bible bashing, etc.
The actual article is interesting in and of itself. The statues are fascinating. I appreciate historical items such as this. It neither validates nor opposes my faith. The statues are cool. The fact that there is more to them than previously known is VERY COOL. Kinda like science. What we are so dogmatic about today, may one day be seen as foolish, or at best, just partial truth. Science is an ongoing process where we learn more and discard mistaken ideas. People who think they know it all (whether faith in the bible or faith in science) usually won’t change. Too bad. I am so happy that I don’t know it all. Happy that I learned today something I never knew concerning the Easter Island statues. Shalom y’all!
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I am saddened by many comments here. Science is a relatively modern thing, so it is rather sad to see people talk as if it existed before. It is hardly a secret that the Bible was written well before we developed modern science. The Bible, like many other writings of its time, was THEOLOGY. To try to interpret it as something else is very anachronistic. Interpret it as theology and it is very rich.
All that said, the Bible is very historical, reflecting in many ways ancient facts. Most ancient civilizations did expererience major floods, for example. The details in the Bible are THEOLOGY though. Not science which, if most of you had been taught better in school, you would know wasn’t around as a field then.
Denise, while I generally agree with what you are saying, science is hardly just a “modern” thing.
The Bible also pre-dates modern agriculture, but that doesn’t mean that people in Biblical times didn’t practice agriculture!
The Egyptians are credited with some of the first uses of procedural science in how they practiced medicine. This was at the same time that Moses supposedly wrote the Torah. Then there were the Arabs studying the skies at around the time the Old Testament was being finished who used math and science to describe the “heavens”. Around that same time, the Greeks were developing their own scientific methods, which also influenced the procedures that would be used by future scientists.
Here, check out this Christian site for a timeline:
http://carm.org/when-was-bible-written-and-who-wrote-it
What I think is interesting is to consider how intertwined religion and science were for these ancient scientists. And how combative the two have become in the millennia since their inception…
The Bible also says the earth is 5000 years old, that one man lived to be 950 and that incest created mankind. Science is written by logic, the Bible was written by Dr. Seuss.
Oh, I dunno about Dr. Seuss — I’m pretty sure the Bible would have been far, far more entertaining had he written it.
Hmmm, would the Canaanites have had “stars upon thars”, or would they have had plain bellies?
Incest did create mankind… ever taken an anthropology course??
Ummm, care to explain? Even animals (and plants!!!) tend to avoid incest. Can you cite your sources?
thats ridiculous – the babylonians used electricity using citric acid and copper – science me thinks.
I am fascinated by this discovery. I am always delighted when what some have perceived about the past to be factual becomes totally discarded as a result of new discoveries. Seems to me that what we think we know about artifacts like this are hypothesis until proven differently. Nothing, especially historical perspectives are “cast in stone”…Everything is up for scrutiny.
Just to put a little spin on things. I would really like to ask everyone a few questions. If you were a divine spirit that has created all things is there anything you can’t do with your power? If you were such a supream being that understood everything, would you give a world of free willed beings all the secrets and answers when you want them to search for the truth? And if people can’t understand even their own family members for the things they have done do you think everyone would understand you if gou aere God? If I flood the world and you don’t see the water ratio or dead bodies, I’m God I don’t have to show you what I have destroyed, pharaoh and his armies were killed in the Red Sea, I’m God I don’t have to show you what my hands have unmade, Sodom and Gomorrah were turned to ash, I don’t have to show you the things I have destroyed but what was made good out of it. If anyone can find an answer that says God has to show evidence for everything he does let me know. Jesus and Moses lived (there is evidence) so were are their bodies?(no evidence)
what are you on about? there is no proof to anything, if we cant trust man then we cant trust his greatest invention (God)
If I were a divine spirit, I would be totally baffled why all the other divine spirits would be fighting about who or why our God is, why they can’t prove he exists, who created us and why we are here.
Wait, we are God and He is us?
Confused. Going back to my universe now.
Wait,
Science says man came from apes then why today we can’t see the apes evolving and what did apes evolve from? If everything was created by a big bang who lit the match and why is most living things made up of water and not fire? Why isn’t the world still flat? Is the moon still made out of cheese? Where is the giant rock that killed the dinosaurs? When will our star super nova? What came first the chicken or the egg and if it was the egg who laid it? If you say aliens who laid them? Why are planets round and not sqare? Why are theories made when things can’t be explained? Why can I feel wind and not see it? Should I trust to believe man when man don’t know what the hell they do most of the time or go by faith? Hmmm!
“Should I trust to believe man when man don’t know what the hell they do most of the time or go by faith?”
No, you should absolutely doubt Man. Just don’t forget to doubt God, too.
Okay, the “ape” evolution has already been covered above — please read.
The “Big Bang” didn’t require a “match” — you are limiting your understanding to what “faith” has “taught” you rather than what science can. With say, dynamite, which requires ignition, the energy in the dynamite is stored as chemical potential. When the heat of the ignitor comes in contact with the dynamite’s chemicals, the transfer of energy from the ignitor to the chemicals causes a chemical chain reaction that quickly releases all the stored potential energy.
One theory of the Big Bang is that the gravitational force at the center of the singularity that would become the “Big Bang” had reached a critical mass which “ignited” a nuclear chain reaction, thus exploding the singularity and releasing all the stored potential energy and matter that had been building up prior to the Big Bang. What? There was something before the Big Bang?!?! Of course there was. The Big Bang just marks the beginning of our known universe. We can’t truly know what was before it, because it was destroyed. But, just like with archeology on Earth, we can try to find clues from what remains and make theories.
Which is at least as good as “God did it”.
Living things of water not fire: wow, this just betrays a stunning level of biological ignorance. So much so, I cannot even comment…
Flat world: wow, now ignorance of religion’s history, too! Um, that’s all the Bible’s fault, buddy. Although they got it from the ancient Egyptians.
Cheese moon: I hope you’re being facetious. Please, do the most basic of Internet searches and learn the fable, proverb, and history of the “cheese moon”. It has nothing to do with science!!!
Dinosaur ELE: the crater exists. Isn’t science wonderful?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicxulub_crater
Sun’s death: ummm, again, if you did only a modest level of research, you’d know that our Sun will not super nova, but will still die in about 5 billion years when it runs out of matter to sustain it’s nuclear reaction.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun#Life_cycle
Chicken and egg: wow, now that’s original. Of course it was the egg! “Who” laid it? The proto-chicken that would mutate into what we know today as a “chicken”. Many animals lay eggs, not just birds. Even insects, arachnids, and fish. Hmmm, I wonder why?
Spherical planets: again, a stunning dearth of knowledge. Spend a little time learning about physics, especially gravity. You may find it illuminating…
Theories and the unexplained: like others have said here, you misunderstand the difference between hypothesis and theory. You come up with a hypothesis before you experiment and collect data. This is when scientists “guess”. After you have your data and begin synthesis, that’s when a theory may emerge to explain why the experiment revealed what it revealed. Or, the data may be inconclusive and you have no theory.
But in no case will a (reputable) scientist just “make up” a theory if the data doesn’t support it!!! And theories have to go through peer review before they become accepted and depended upon by the scientific community. It took over 2000 years to get from Aristotle’s primitive understanding of gravity to Newton’s theory which almost perfectly described gravity. Then over 200 years more, Einstein solved the last problems with Newton’s theory when he developed the theory of relativity.
Yes, science is not perfect knowledge. They get things wrong. But because even when they accept a theory, they continually leave open room for doubt, the problems eventually surface, new questions are asked, new experiments conducted, and new truths revealed.
But how does faith work? It works on belief in perfect, divine knowledge, passed down through the ages by imperfect men. Don’t doubt it. Don’t question it. Even when it is wrong. (Like the flat Earth part.)
Sorry, I’ll take my imperfect, but ever-improving science knowledge over that any day of the week, and twice on Sunday.
Wind felt but not seen: Really? Again, please learn some physics so that you know something about molecules, gases, and air pressure. Why does air inflate a tire and hold it firm? I can’t see it — so it must not exist. And yet my tire can hold up my car when air is introduced into its chamber. Hmm, must be “magic”.
Bravo!
That’s not what it says, it says that man and ape decended from a common ancestor.
I just can’t let this hang. Do some research on the theories you want to attack next time(you’ve made many people face palm). You’re mocking peoples life work as if they sit around making up stuff off the top of their heads and saying its fact. What bothers me most is how little the religious care about the true history of their religions. The bible for instance has been rewritten countless times and edited many times by political leaders, yet people trust it more than a dinosaur bone I could hit them in the face with. Why is it so wrong to pursue answers to questions and why is it so acceptable to say “We’re done.. this book or that book or this dogma is all I could ever need to know.” Are you saying the free will God gave us is being abused because most of us have moved on from religion to just plain morality and science? I’m sure free will is working just fine providing the rest of us with thoughts that lead to discoveries and inventions that will continue to further human culture, there-in giving god something interesting to watch. You seem to think he wants to watch reruns, considering how overly “human” people have made his persona I’m sure he’s bored with the bible by now, I know I am.
Oh, and by the way, if you want to wax scientifically metaphorical, we are made of fire — and water. We are full of electrical and chemical “fires”, which are required for our cells to do anything. What do you think makes us warm-blooded? It ain’t the water…
You can’t see apes evolving because it happens very slowly, and is a large statistical effect. You can observe it if you take a large enough sample over a long enough time. This is a matter of statistical averages.
Actually, most of the chemicals that exist in the world are made in fusion reactions in stars, so you could argue that we are made from fire.
The world was never flat, that makes no sense at all.
The moon was never made out of cheese, that makes no sense at all.
We don’t know that the dinosaurs were killed by a meteor (Although that’s the best theory) – there are several craters that could account for it.
The sun will supernova in about 5 billion years or so. I wouldn’t worry about it too much.
The egg came way before the chicken. Chickens evolved from creatures that weren’t chickens, but still laid eggs.
Planets are approximately round because gravity pulls matter into a sphere, this is energetically favourable to being square.
If you don’t have a theory for something, you don’t have a starting point for working out how it works. Many of the chemical elements we’ve discovered were predicted through theory before they were discovered for example. (and many of these are rather handy.)
You can’t see wind because it’s mostly made of nitrogen and oxygen. If it was made of something you could see, you’d probably die.
There’s nothing stopping you trusting science and your faith at the same time. I guess you could abandon science altogether, although I don’t think your bible has an internet connection.
Oh and for the record, these questions aren’t exactly complicated difficult problems that only white-bearded physics professors from universities understand. I could answer all of these questions when I was 10 years old.
If you want to flummox physicists, try some of these:
How do you predict volcanic cycles? earthquakes? Tornados?
Is there a Higgs Boson?
Why do we need dark matter to make sense of all of our relativistic equations? Is Dark matter just another ether, or flogisten?
Is the Riemann Hypothesis true or false?
How come the earth’s magnetic poles swap over every few ten thousand years? How on earth could that even happen?
How do you account for the discrepancies in your theories outlined in the horizon problem?
Your questions can only be answered by studying the theories of different scientific disciplnes more deeply. Your questions clearly indicate someone who hasn’t studied evolution, big bang, dinasaur extinction, what happens to meteors when they hit earth/crater study, theories on the death of our sun, chicken and egg (again evolution study required), cosmology and planet formation, human biology of the eye & senses (why we cannot see the wind but feel it).
You cannot throw these questions as an argument for God without having thoroughly studied many disciplines – The answers are there – go find them ;-)
It is a great leap to say I don’t understand so God did it – that’s way too easy.
Actually, five minutes with google should answer these questions, they’re really very easy.
Failing that: A wizard did it and ran away.
Ah, you almost had me there, SK. I thought at first you were being serious. Took awhile to catch onto the joke. I’ve seen it done better, BTW.
Troll Christian is trolling.
All the above statements could help to explain the existence of the INWARD search called “mysticism.” Since the experiences of meditators cannot be shared by setting up controlled observations, they don’t argue much among themselves. As a group, their serenity and slight smile (see statues of the Buddha) are intriguing to me. Try some, you may like it!
Me he quedado con el culo torcido,
This is awesome! OK now go check what’s under the Sphinx’s in Egypt please!
I checked. It’s a giant stone newspaper.
Absorbing reading, right?
Best read of comments on topic that is no longer really about the article I have had in long time :) :) :)
It’s a solid conversion that puts all the issues of this argument on the table.
As usually happens in this argument the “theories” of science hold up to numerous types examination from different angles, subjects & people, where the “theory” that it comes from the Bible doesn’t hold up to the multiple examinations of the same similar kind.
It is very possible to believe in both the Bible and Science because in many cases they are both right. But this conversion is one that the “churchies” lose & the scientists win. Now only if they would stop invading schools with it.
Blind faith without thought is never good in any religion.
I am a Christian been all my life can’t be Born again cause I never left. And I side with science. The Bible is something to live by not take every word literally.