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November 22nd, 2008

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Former celeb turned political star

Pavel gained international notoriety for making Easter Island statues 'walk' in '80s

By Benjamin Thomas Cunningham
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
September 5th, 2007 issue

VLADIMÍR WEISS/THE PRAGUE POST

The politician stands next to a replica of one of the Moai stone statues found on Easter Island in the South Pacific.

COURTESY PHOTO

"Manipulating heavy objects" is the slogan on Pavel's campaign stickers.

COURTESY PHOTO

Pavel theorized that workers in ancient civilizations used simple engineering rather than brute force to build things. He tested his theories in a park in his hometown of Strakonice, south Bohemia.

STRAKONICE, SOUTH BOHEMIA

Meeting politician Pavel Pavel in this touristy town may not be exactly like meeting Arnold Schwarzenegger in the California governor’s office, but it might be the closest thing you can get.

That’s because the 50-year-old engineer is still well-known in the Czech Republic for the international notoriety he gained in 1986 for showing Thor Heyerdahl how it was possible to move the massive Moai stone statues on Easter Island.

Heyerdahl, a Norwegian explorer, first attracted worldwide attention for his book Kon-Tiki about the simple raft he took in 1947 to the island in the South Pacific.

Based on the popularity of the Easter Island project, Pavel was invited to talk to archaeologists in the United Kingdom about Stonehenge and archaeologists in Egypt about the pyramids. Similar basic engineering techniques may have been used on ancient monuments around the world, Pavel says.

It’s very satisfying to come up with educated answers to solve 5,000-year-old mysteries on how to move heavy objects, Pavel says. He points out that some archaeologists and pop culture thinkers at the time suggest some of the monuments were built by extraterrestrials.

“It’s important to know that our ancestors were clever, even if they didn’t have mobile phones,” Pavel says. “It’s good to believe that everything that we now see in our lives comes from our ancestors, not from UFO people.”

In a park in Pavel’s hometown of Strakonice, he shows off where he first tested his big ideas in 1981. There’s a semi-circle of 20-foot (6-meter) high concrete blocks, two of them topped by another concrete block. It looks very much like a mini version of Stonehenge.

With his mechanical engineering background, Pavel says he figured it was much easier to raise heavy blocks and maneuver them with ropes rather than drag them along the ground, which requires more force.

He suggested to his colleagues at the time that he planned to use 10–15 men to raise the 12-ton piece of concrete on top of two others by using a system of ropes and pulleys.

It took six months to do the planning needed to get the concrete blocks ready for the first experiment and to teach workers what they needed to do to complete the task, Pavel says. He points out the special grooves in the edges of the top block and explains the specific measurements.

When it came to the actual experiment, it took 10 workers two days to put Pavel’s idea into practice.

“It’s very complicated from a technical point of view, and it’s dangerous to do this, but, in the end, it worked,” Pavel says, motioning to the blocks.

It’s that matter-of-fact engineering solution that captured the imagination of a generation of Czech students, many of whom later flocked to the high-school courses Pavel taught in a local classroom and other classes at the nearby university. Using similar methods, he also started an engineering company for large infrastructure projects — roads and buildings and the like.

“It’s very easy to say a god or an extraterrestrial person did something, because then we don’t have to think about how to solve the puzzle,” Pavel says. “Mechanical engineering students should learn the old methods, even if we now also have computers.”

Communist officials reluctantly let Pavel travel outside of the country in those heady days to discuss his popular theories. But often they would wait until the very last minute before granting him a visa — Pavel remembers waiting six months to get permission to travel to a conference in Europe. It was 4 p.m. the day before he was scheduled to leave that he was told he could go.

Those trips were valuable, though, in showing Pavel a little bit about how other governments worked and how to be a good collaborator with other academics.

These days, Pavel uses the tools he learned then to do his current job as director of a regional government board with a staff of 80 people. The regional government of 55 has an 11-member board, and Pavel’s regional constituency is about 120,000 people.

One of Pavel’s immediate goals is to get as much as 200 million Kč ($10 million) from the European Union to develop tourism in his region. Next fall, he hopes to win a seat as senator in Parliament. He modestly brushes away questions that he could some day serve as president or prime minister.

Just as Pavel was on a mission all those years ago to make his engineering ideas known to Heyerdahl and the world, he now wants to capture the imagination of voters. He often goes door to door to campaign for votes in his district. And in a world where politicians are often seen as untouchable figures manipulating millions of crowns in development projects, Pavel tells people that he wants to be a humble custodian of the public trust.

“I tell them, ‘Yes, you know me, but I have a new message for you — I want to develop our town and our region and our country,” Pavel says. “Please forget that I am a scientist and politician and think of me as your friend, your staff and your servant.’ ”

That voter-friendly attitude can only go so far in a governmental system where political parties are usually stronger than individual candidates, however, says Tomáš Jirsa, another board member and a friend of Pavel’s.

“For sure, he was very famous as a mover of the statues, and the whole Czech Republic knows him,” Jirsa says. “If he is good, he will be re-elected on the candidate lists.”

Pavel already ran for Senate once, and lost, Jirsa points out. But he was elected to the regional government board from the 55-member regional council and also served as deputy mayor of Strakonice, Jirsa says. Pavel is also well-regarded in the business community because of his engineering company, which his wife now runs.

“He is at the top of the region, [but] he is also a normal guy,” Jirsa said. “To be famous usually helps you get elected in politics, but, in his case, it might not. I wish him the best.”

Just as Pavel once read the news accounts and books of Heyerdahl’s expeditions, Loužilová Věra, 27, read about Pavel and saw him on TV while she was growing up. When Věra applied for a job in the regional government office, she says she was a little intimidated by Pavel’s celebrity status.

But now that she has worked in the office for three years, Věra says she is used to Pavel bouncing in and out to encourage his staff on new projects. Her job is to apply for tourism development grants from the EU.

Pavel is known around town more as the guy who donated the bagpipe sculpture erected at the central traffic circle than as the one who was internationally famous, she says.

“I think when I started he was more like a celebrity. Now I know him, and he’s a regular guy,” Věra says.

The region’s entire budget is approximately 400 million Kč, so if Věra can get all the grants the area is eligible for it will increase the budget by one-third, Pavel says. That could mean a lot more economic development for a region already known by its neighbors as a great place for hiking, biking and canoeing as well as some of the country’s most well-known breweries and historical monuments outside the capital.

“We know Prague is No. 1 from a tourist point of view, but this will also improve our quality of life, so we must try to do it,” Pavel says.

Benjamin Thomas Cunningham can be reached at bcunningham@praguepost.com

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