The giant statues of Easter Island are called moai. They’re the subject of a Nova/National Geographic special about who those statues might have been moved into place. The technique that islanders used to move them may have involved tugging at ropes tied around the statue and extending out opposite sides. The statues could then be moved by tugging from alternate directions and “walked” the way you might move a heavy object like a refrigerator. The indigenous term for this technique is neke neke, which translates as “walking with no legs.” This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Easter Island “Neke Neke” Means “Walking with No Legs””
The giant statues of Easter Island in the Pacific are called Moai, that’s M-O-A-I.
And they’re the subject of a Nova National Geographic documentary that shows how those giant stone carvings could have been moved into place. And the idea is that they were moved by people pulling on ropes on either side of the Moai, rocking it back and forth. And the indigenous people of Easter Island have a term for this technique. They call it neke neke, which means walking with no legs.
And the reason that I know all of this is because of an email that we received from Alice Peach. She is a librarian in Yuma, Arizona at Crane Middle School there. And she was in the process of changing the library around, which included moving around some furniture and some heavy boxes. And she was telling her family about it over dinner. And she was describing moving this large, heavy, awkward box. And her teenager asked if she moved it like a Moai.
And without really thinking, Alice replied, oh, it was a combination of sliding and neke-neke. And she wrote to us to say, I don’t know which was more astonishing, my daughter asking if I moved the box like a Moai or my response?
And she says, in any case, I’m going to use the word neke neke in conversation more often.
And I tell you, the following week, I was having to move a refrigerator into place.
And I said, let’s neke neke that.
That’s how language changes.
That’s how language moves.
Right?
We pick up things like magpies.
