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Comment by mattlondon | Hacker News Reader

Transport would also be a major cost. I don't think they are entirely sure how they were moved around, but one suggestion is a team of approx 20-30 men rocked/walked them to their final positions (i.e. upright, two teams on either side alternating pulling on ropes etc) over a period of days.

UK minimum wage is £10.42/h so:

10.42 * 30 men * 8 hours * 5 days = £12,500 just for delivery. That doesn't include installation costs.

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UK minimum wage takes into account the current supply of labor and many layers of politics / economic theory. This is not comparable to the cost of labor wrt supply in ancient Maori culture.

And disregarding the fundamental error in comparison, the currency needs to be converted to the present Easter Island conversion rate -- does that even exist?

Additionally, total cost is probably not the bottleneck. These were allegedly hunter gatherer's, so TIME was more precious than cost because current theory is hunter/gatherer's didn't have spare time to spend on statues until agriculture.

The question was how much it would cost to do it today, and anywhere.

Question was not how much it cost to do it then. Please do try to keep up.

It would be interesting to try to recreate it "as period-perfectly accurate as possible" but yeah, I was thinking using modern equipment, but the same materials, how hard would it be.

A crane can be obtained that can lift one, probably no more than $10k a day maximum, heavy-haul trucks probably similar, so it's really the materials and the workmanship.

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