Post #607551 by kraken on Tue, Sep 20, 2011 10:40 PM

An interesting question. More likely the taste for moai traveled from
Colombia to the Pacific islands, not vice versa, because currents and
winds down there make it almost impossible to sail eastward in the
sort of craft believed to exist then. Thor Heyerdahl demonstrated
fairly convincingly that travel from South America to the Pacific islands
was far more probable.

For a good short summary of Heyerdahl's experiments and reasoning,
see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thor_Heyerdahl