The ancient Polynesians who settled the island of Rapa Nui – formerly known as Easter Island – may have worked out an ingenious way to make their iconic moai statues 'walk'. It's not just local legend; it's physics, say anthropologists Carl Lipo and Terry Hunt, and it could be yet another reason the self-destructive 'ecocide' theory of Rapa Nui is wrong. In a new paper, Lipo and Hunt argue the ancient people of this remote island hadn't recklessly cut down their trees to transport moai statues