Moai statues from Easter Island

There's a significant body of archaelogical literature on this subject, and there is general agreement among academics about the purpose and means of construction, as well as what happened to the society of the island. Not much mystery here, despite the hysterical panty wetting that the Discovery Channel indulges in.

At 30 plus feet tall and believed to be solid granite it is estimated that they weigh in excess of 150,000 pounds. There is a lot of speculation among archeologists and historians as to how they were handled in order to get then to their location, but if you ask the locals they will gladly tell you that they are hollow and made of the same material as the very sturdy furniture you find at McDonald's.

I don't really think there's any mystery here at all - the quarries were abandoned because their island could no longer support them. As Automatt said, the trees on the island were used for transporting them which destroyed their ecosystem and eventually their food supply. I don't think it's even a real mystery why they seemed so stupid as to destroy their ecosystem as we can't assume they knew as much about ecology a we do now.

I guess the real mystery here is how a human society could be so stupid as to completely destroy a limited ecosystem. The Easter Islanders cut down all the trees on the island partly to build and move their statues around. It's not a big island -- the person cutting down the last tree could almost certainly see that there were no more trees. With the change in habitat the wildlife and climate on the island changed and it could no longer support the society.

Very curious about their true purpose and meaning (not that celebrating the gods mumbo-jumbo).