The return of the Moai at Coral Castle
Sources, Resources, and Further Reading
Welcome to Digging Up Ancient Aliens. This is the podcast where we examine alternative history and ancient alien narratives in popular media. Do these ideas hold water to an archeologist, or are there better explanations out there?
We are now on episode 74, and I am Fredrik, your guide into the world of pseudo-archaeology. This time, we will look back at two sites we covered in the past, but with some new information and approaches. Today's excursion is based on the Ancient Aliens episode "Mysterious Structures" from season eight. This is basically a clip show from past episodes. A bit of the issue with Ancient Aliens is that they tend to reuse material over time. But to add some new things, I'll discuss Ancient Aliens, Graham Hancock's latest season of Ancient Apocalypse, and a TikToker who is trying to say that Rapa Nui or Easter Island is either Aliens, Atlantis, or both.
In the second half, we will look at the Coral Castle and if this modern megalithic structure could be an alien intervention. A hint: it's not.
I want to thank all of you who support the show. You are really helping out producing this content, and I'm humbled and grateful for your support. If you want to help out, I'll tell you how to do that and get some bonus stuff at the end of the episode.
Remember that you can find sources, resources, and reading suggestions on our website, diggingupancientaliens.com. There, you can also find contact info if you notice any mistakes or have any suggestions. And if you like the podcast, I would appreciate it if you left one of those fancy five-star reviews I've heard so much about.
Now that we have finished our preparations, let's dig into the episode.
Moai
So, let's return to the Moai statues. We have already visited Rapa Nui or Easter Island twice, but it's apparently time to return to the island. We first went here in episode 27, where we discussed the Moai statues. The second time was in episode 34, where the focus was more on Thor Heyerdahl's racist approach to the island and the 2020 Ioannidis et al. paper claiming a link between the Polynesian Islands and Colombia.
Like a lazy sitcom, I could make this segment into a clip show, but let's try to avoid this. Instead, I want to grab things from Ancient Aliens that they bring up, some of the TikToker Jahnnah James and a bit from Graham Hancock's new series Ancient Apocalypse. So it will be a bit of a clip show with some new information.
As we learn, this episode is one of those episodes where the writers have run out of ideas. There are not many new clips or information. What is interesting is that they do bring up a myth that's actually been studied from an archaeological perspective.
"According to the oral history of the Rapa Nui, the Moai were moved in a very unusual way."
"They all reply basically the same thing. The Moai walked to the ahu, and that's the only explanation that they give." – Charles Love, Ph.D.
Right, so this is something we did, in fact, cover in episode 27. Lipo, Hunt, and Haoa conducted experimental archaeology in 2013 and demonstrated that you can move these blocks by walking them. Here, we have a great example of how archaeologists investigate myths and use them as a foundation for an experiment. They tested the idea of a walking Moai statue and succeeded. But this is an experiment not covered by the alternative history crowd, and you can ask yourself, why not? Here is precisely what they are asking for: Academia uses myths as a basis in their experiments.
It so happens that Graham Hancock visits Rapa Nui in Ancient Apocalypse in the new season. While I've not watched it, I had to read the transcript due to a certain TikTok reference in the episode. What struck me was that Hancock never mentioned the movement of the statues or seemed to see that as a mystery. He does bring up that they were moved but not how. It's strange that the study from 2013 was not brought up because it's something Hancock is actively asking for. We take these myths and test them. Instead, we get this weird idea that the island has some sort of lost civilization. The Polynesians came there, and the statues were already in place. How he gets to that conclusion is a bit unclear, especially since there's no evidence of an earlier population on the island. He suggests it and then takes it as fact since how would one prove it? You can't C14 stone.
What we can do here is to look at the archaeological record. What traces can we find of human activity? It can be trash, agriculture, slaughter, burials, fireplaces, and the list can go on and on. Of course, we have found evidence of human activity on Rapa Nui (or Easter Island), but it did not really start until 1200 CE. While some radiocarbon dates have shown older dates, they have been problematic. Terry Hunt does discuss in the Scientific American that the most likely date for people arriving on the island is around 1200 CE. While he does humor the idea of an earlier population, he notes that it would have been so small that it would not appear in the archaeological record. So, would this small group be able to erect all those statues without leaving a single trace? Well, as we discussed in the episode of the Kensington Runestone, people do leave traces, especially if we have to build or occupy an area for a longer time.
But that's kind of the thing here. The Hancocks and the Ancient Alien proponents of the world are not here to offer answers but to sell you a mystery. It then gets even worse when we go out on TikTok, where the source criticism of Ancient Aliens seems to be a paragon of light in comparison. You should be lucky if you are unaware of the "comedian" Jahanna James. This is not a person new to the show or my social media; I've done some videos debunking her claims in the past. However, she is a presence on TikTok and has been involved with the Cosmic Summit and similar events in the past.
Quite recently she did put out a video discussing Rapa Nui, she even went there to investigate the Moai statues herself! If you find Ancient Aliens' use of sources frustrating, things do not become better on TikTok. In this video on Rapa Nui, James claims to have read multiple articles and gives us this quote.
"This is the carbon dating evidence of human presence and its age. And there is a piece of evidence for human presence. 2400 years old. And I could not see in the paper what that was referring to. But it's there."
On the screen we see graphs showing the amount of samples and how old they are. The paper is never mentioned, nor is it listed in any sort of sources provided by James. In the graph, we see that there is one sample that is 2400 years old. The issue is that the graph is meant to show the number of samples taken and the number of reliable samples. Parts of a few bars are in a different color to show samples that were not contaminated or otherwise problematic from a scientific perspective. The 2400-year-old sample was one of those that were very uncertain and showed an extensive range of possible dates.
We should note, though, that this was not a paper but an article from the American Scientist. If you are curious, the article in question is called "Rethinking the Fall of Easter Island," written by Terry Hunt. So, if we read the article, we learn that the samples taken in situ and in good condition are more or less 900 years old, indicating that the settlement started around 1200 CE.
Hancock and others have objected to this relatively late settlement date. To show that it's possible that people have been on Rapa Nui for longer, Hancock in Ancient Apocalypse talked with Sonia Hoa Cardinale. In episode three, Hoa Cardinale talks about a banana seed with a 3000 BP C-14 date. A bit of a red flag is that this seed and date are not yet published. If Hoa Cardinale gets the data out there, it might be an exciting find that might correlate with the settlement process of Vanuatu. In 2020, a team could, based on dental calculus, show that bananas made it to the island around 2900 BP. From the information we have, there is a case to be made to have a bit of caution regarding the claim.
But it's interesting to see how these competing ideas regarding Aliens vs. Lost Civilization use a site and different narratives in their cover of a site. They can rely on the same myths or stories, but one gets Atlantis, and the other gets Aliens.
Let's shift over to the USA and a site that's not really ancient at all.
Coral Castle
Welcome back. We moved quite a bit from Easter Island to Florida during the 1900s. We're here to visit the Coral Castle, one of the few modern megalithic sites built. It's a place loved by ancient alien believers, conspiracy theorists, and alternative energy people. The backstory for the place goes something like this:
"He was in love with a woman, and he wanted to build this facility in memory of her. And he waited for her to come from Europe, and he waited and he waited, and she never did. But the big question is, is how did this frail little man move these thousands of pounds of block by himself." – George Noory.
If you are not familiar with this site, it's a park built by Edward Leedskalnin. Construction started in 1928 and continued until Leedskalnin died in 1951. While the place is known as the Coral Castle, it's not a castle, and the coral is, in reality, local oolite limestone. Leedskalnin started the project as a tribute to his 16-year-old fiancée, who broke off the engagement a day before the wedding. Edward, originally from Latvia, decided to move to the US.
But how could this man alone construct this park? Something often left out of the discussion is that Leedskalnin came from a family of stonemasons. He was even trained as a mason who specialized in gravestones. Oolite limestone is quite a porous and soft stone that can easily be quarried and worked with simple tools. So, when it comes to the quarry and masonry at Coral Castle, there is no need for aliens or specialized tools. It can simply be explained by Leedskalnin's training and expertise on rocks. In addition to this, he worked in lumber camps and cattle drives, and he was no frail man. He was used to hard work and figuring things out as he went. There are also claims that Ed didn't use tools, but a wide assortment of masonry tools are today on display in his old toolshed.
People often focus on how this man could move the blocks in this alternative history. Here, the answer is that, for the most part, he seems to have used block and tackle, something we can see in images of him using these tools. The methods used by Wally Wallington, the man who created his own Stonehenge in his backyard, explain more. With simple tools, Wallington moves heavy blocks by himself. For example, with a simple pebble as a fulcrum, Wallington moves blocks weighing 1 ton as if they were nothing.
It seems likely that Leedskalnin knew of some of these tricks, too. For example, we can see this in one of the giant stone gates at the park. This massive stone slab seemed to weigh a lot, yet it was possible to operate it with a single finger. The mystery of the door was finally revealed in 1986 when it broke, revealing the slab was standing on a truck bearing on top of a metal shaft.
So, if it's just a bit of ingenuity and tricks, how has the park become so connected with aliens and alternative technology? Well, that is due to Leedskalnin's ability to sell a story. As Karen Stolzno points out in an article on Coral Castle, when Ed was asked about how he moved the blocks, Ed would just say, "I have discovered the secrets of the pyramids." Suppose someone would suggest some mystical technique like "Tibetan Monk techniques," such as singing to the stones, using extraterrestrial help, or possessing superhuman strength. In that case, Ed seems to have just nodded and gone along with it. Another often-heard claim is that he worked alone at night often; this appears to have some truth to it, according to Stollznow. This might not be so much for secrecy but to escape the Florida sun, but of course, things are more complicated to see in the dark from a distance.
Edward Leedskalnin also cultivated his advanced technology myth by publishing pamphlets on magnetism and electricity. These writings have been adopted by the free energy movement, for example. Most of this writing does not seem to contain much advanced knowledge today. It is primarily strange ideas about magnetism and some darker themes. Brian Dunning mentioned that these magnetic ramblings also contain "... a political rant that sounds like Hitler could have written it."
The museum has continued selling this mystical story today. In an article for LiveScience, Benjamin Radford mentions that the museum website wrote, "Coral Castle has baffled scientists, engineers, and scholars since its opening in 1923." But while Coral Castle might be impressive, we should, if anything, appreciate it as a testament to human ingenuity and persistence rather than a source of unsolved mystery. The techniques used by Leedskalnin were not mystical or alien in origin; they were based on principles of physics and engineering that have been understood for centuries. The perpetuation of the myth serves more as a marketing tool than a reflection of reality. In the end, Coral Castle stands as a monument not to extraterrestrial intervention or lost ancient knowledge but to what a determined individual can accomplish using essential tools and hard work. It's a reminder that sometimes, the most extraordinary feats are achieved not through mysterious means but through ordinary human effort.
Sources, resources, and further reading suggestions
DiNapoli, R.J., Lipo, C.P. and Hunt, T.L. (2021). Triumph of the Commons: Sustainable Community Practices on Rapa Nui (Easter Island). Sustainability, 13(21), p.12118. doi:https://doi.org/10.3390/su132112118.
Dunning, B. (2009). Coral Castle. [online] Skeptoid. Available at: https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4149.
Fehren-Schmitz, L., Jarman, C.L., Harkins, K.M., Kayser, M., Popp, B.N. and Skoglund, P. (2017). Genetic Ancestry of Rapanui before and after European Contact. Current Biology, 27(20), pp.3209-3215.e6. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2017.09.029.
Horrocks, M., Baisden, T., Flenley, J., Feek, D., Love, C., Haoa-Cardinali, S., González Nualart, L. and Edmunds Gorman, T. (2016). Pollen, phytolith and starch analyses of dryland soils from Easter Island (Rapa Nui) show widespread vegetation clearance and Polynesian-introduced crops. Palynology, 41(3), pp.339–350. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/01916122.2016.1204566.
Ioannidis, A.G., Blanco-Portillo, J., Sandoval, K., Hagelberg, E., Miquel-Poblete, J.F., Moreno-Mayar, J.V., Rodríguez-Rodríguez, J.E., Quinto-Cortés, C.D., Auckland, K., Parks, T., Robson, K., Hill, A.V.S., Avila-Arcos, M.C., Sockell, A., Homburger, J.R., Wojcik, G.L., Barnes, K.C., Herrera, L., Berríos, S. and Acuña, M. (2020). Native American gene flow into Polynesia predating Easter Island settlement. Nature, [online] 583(7817), pp.572–577. doi:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2487-2.
Radford, B. (2018). Mystery of the Coral Castle Explained. [online] livescience.com. Available at: https://www.livescience.com/41075-coral-castle.html.
Stevenson, C.M., Puleston, C.O., Vitousek, P.M., Chadwick, O.A., Haoa, S. and Ladefoged, T.N. (2015). Variation in Rapa Nui (Easter Island) land use indicates production and population peaks prior to European contact. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(4), pp.1025–1030. doi:https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1420712112.
Stollznow, K. (2010). Coral Castle: Fact and Folklore. Skeptical Inquirer, [online] 41(1), pp.49–53. Available at: https://skepticalinquirer.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/2010/01/p49.pdf.
Tromp, M., Matisoo-Smith, E., Kinaston, R., Bedford, S., Spriggs, M. and Buckley, H. (2020). Exploitation and utilization of tropical rainforests indicated in dental calculus of ancient Oceanic Lapita culture colonists. Nature Human Behaviour, 4. doi:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-019-0808-y.