Ing. Pavel Pavel

* 1957

  • "I also built a copy of the Stonehenge gate in Strakonice, one of the gates of Stonehenge, which means 4.5 metres of vertical stones and a five-tonne concrete lintel over it, and we spent six months testing how to put it in by hand. We finished in 1991. And I visited the British Heritage and they gave me the documentation according to which we used to build it. And I showed them how to deploy the translation in a couple of people, ten people. Which was a shower for British archaeologists. But fortunately, I've since been cited as explaining one of the mysteries of how Stonehenge was built. Oh, and the aforementioned Lake Titicaca - Indians, Peru, Bolivia, the Nazca plain. There, the Indians were transporting 10, 20, 30-ton stones across Lake Titicaca. The Indians only had reed boats. How? So I developed the theory of Archimedes' Law in the Indian way: when the stone was suspended underwater, under the boats, Archimedes or Archimedes' Law says that the water is lifting. So I also explained the transports on Lake Titicaca, and I was lucky enough to meet the man who was digging the canals that went from the lake to the site, and he didn't know why the canals were there and why the locks were there. Well, and then when he saw the pictures of me and the pictures from Trebon, where we were transporting the three-ton stone from beach to beach, he was delighted that he had an explanation for their archaeological mystery. So that's how I entertain myself, by repairing old fallen wigwams or moving chapels that interfere with traffic or construction. I call it romantic transports."

  • "I have been contacted by an incredible number of people. I've had letters from people who invented it long before me, accusing me of stealing it from them. I said, 'Please, I didn't make it up. I only believed what Miloslav Stingl and Hayerdahl wrote, that the statues walked standing up with a swaying motion. Because I'm an engineer, I was able to calculate it, and because I had experience from the boating club and from sports, from skiing, from working with the collective, I was able to put together people who were interested, and we did it. And I became famous not because I invented it, but because I made the first attempt at a concrete moai statue and then I got permission to move a real moai statue on Easter Island. Which is no longer possible today under UNESCO protection and I was the last person to touch the statue. So that's where my, when you say, fame comes from. The fact that someone discovered it, it's in the books That's how the old craftsmen moved, by canting. You can't even patent this, it's a common practice. But to apply it to moai statues was innovative, incredible, daring. And it turned out well."

  • "After all, it was just a young Czechoslovakian jumping to the other side of the world, and into a rather interesting mystery. Many scholars who wrote and published about it inflated the mystery so beautifully that when it was discovered that there was a solution to how it went, it was a worldwide sensation. And even during that stay on Easter Island, journalists from major media, periodicals from all over the world circled around Heyerdahl from morning to night. For me it was doubly demanding on my psyche, because I was not built and prepared for that. Fortunately, it worked, the statue walked, nobody was hurt - neither the statue nor the natives. I was stressed out by the Minister of Culture of Chile, who said to me at some gala banquet where we were invited, 'What happens if the statue falls?' And I said, 'Well, if it falls, there's a risk of breaking its neck, because that's where the material is the weakest.' And he said, 'Well, if you break the statue, I'll have you shot.' Which in Pinochet's Chile wasn't such a joke. But everybody at the table was laughing. And I, to save it, I said, 'Well, if it breaks, I'll give you the one I have in Bohemia, mine.' And he said, 'We shoot fast.' So I was kind of mentally prepared that I had to try very hard to make it work."

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    České Budějovice, 27.03.2023

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This is how I have fun. I call it romantic transports

Pavel Pavel, 80s
Pavel Pavel, 80s
photo: Archive of the witness

Ing. Pavel Pavel was born on 11th March 1957 in Strakonice to Růžena and Ladislav Pavel. He graduated from primary and secondary school in Strakonice, followed by studies at the University of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering in Pilsen at the turn of the 1970s and 1980s. After successful graduation, he worked at the Agrostav in Strakonice as a designer. In 1986, he conducted a successful experiment on Easter Island in Polynesia, thanks to which he showed how the many-ton moai statues there could be manipulated without heavy machinery, using only human power, levers and ropes. In the sub-discipline known as experimental archaeology, he then conducted a series of other experiments that offered possible explanations, for example, for the construction of Stonehenge or the transport of huge stones across South America’s Lake Titicaca. After the Velvet Revolution, he founded a company for moving and shifting heavy loads, and was also involved in politics. Pavel Pavel is the author of books and numerous articles, and has participated in many international congresses and symposia. In 2023 he lived in his native Strakonice.