Easter Island Construction Research Paper

Construction projects are all around us, whether it be your house, or the building you work at, even canals and statues are construction projects. Each construction project has a purpose, a meaning behind everything. Take the Panama Canal for instance, it was made for ships to get to get from one ocean to another without the trouble of going around South America. Also, take Easter Island’s one and only moai, a structure of art that puzzled millions to this day not know how or why the ancient people of Easter Island made these structures. As you can see, these 2 very different structures, but at the same time they are very similar to each other in some sort of way. They were both extremely difficult projects. Thousands of people died on the

First up is…the Panama Canal! The Panama Canal was a life changing but tough project to complete. You needed to have crazy engineering skills to get through this one. The Panama Canal was used to make ships travel from one ocean to another in as little as 8 hours. Before the construction of the canal, boats had to go around South America to get to the other ocean which took weeks to accomplish and was very dangerous at the same time! In 1880 a French company finally decided to attempt to build the canal but it went horribly wrong. People were dying there was not enough money and terrible weather, the French finally gave up 20 years later on the project when they went bankrupt. Then in 1904, the U.S came in the way and decided to finish the canal, which now belongs to Panama. The canal was going to be used for the United States’ military but the US eventually handed the canal over to Panama. In passage one: The Panama Canal the text states, “. It cost over six hundred million dollars to build and employed a total of 80,000 workers, both French and American. Of those workers, over 30,000 died during the construction.” Although it gave thousands of workers a job, it also took the lives of almost half of them, but at least the Panama Canal had its purpose in the end and now you can just go across from one

The Moai of the small island puzzled millions of explorers even to this day. No one knows the true purpose of the Moai, how they were made or how were the moved, but one things for sure is that these Moai are one of the most fascinating structure ever seen in ancient history. The Moai were gigantic statues carved from volcanic ash and were from the height of 3 ½ ft. to 72 ft., but here’s the catch…they were made between 1400 A.D. and 1600 A.D! Explorers from all around the word come to see these statues and hopefully one day find the answer to how they were moved and what was the purpose. One archaeologist, Joanne Van Tilburg studies the Moai and even has a television series for them called, Nova. In passage 2: the mystery of the Moai the text states, “Joanne Van Tilburg concluded that it took many kinds of materials and many people to carve, move, and raise a moai. It probably took a long time to move just one moai from the volcano area to its ahu. No one idea for moving the model moai and raising it seemed to be 100 percent correct.” Although It’s still a mystery to us, the people of Easter Island already know how these statues came to be, they tell you what they believe. They believe that moai walked and stepped onto their ahu when they were told to. The power to make them walk was called mana. But to us foreigners, the mystery of the Moai still remains a mystery, but