British archeologists claim they've solved a key mystery on Easter Island -- a place famous for its secrets. They believe they've shed light on how some of the giant stone statues got their red hats.

Dr. Sue Hamilton of University College, London, and Dr. Colin Richards of the University of Manchester, say they found a ceremonial axe and remnants of a road near a rock quarry called "Puna Pau."

The quarry is believed to be the source of the hats.

"We now know that the hats were rolled along the road made from a cement of compressed red scoria dust with a raised pavement along one side," Dr. Richards said in a press release from the University of Manchester.

"It is likely that they were moved by hand but tree logs could also have been used," he added.

Richards and Hamilton are the first British archeologists to work on Easter Island since 1914.

The archeologists said the Polynesians thought of the landscape as a "living thing," and believed that spirits entered the statues, known as "moai," after they carved them.

Easter Island is one of the most isolated places on the planet, more than 3,500 kilometres from the coast of Chile, and is made up of three extinct volcanoes.

"The hat quarry is inside the crater of an ancient volcano and on its outer lip. A third of the crater has been quarried away by hat production," said Hamilton.

"So far we have located more than 70 hats at the ceremonial platforms and in transit. Many more may have been broken up and incorporated into the platforms.

"The mint condition of the obsidian adze -- a seven inch long axe like tool used for squaring up logs or hollowing out timber, perhaps in canoe construction -- suggests that it was not a quarry tool but an offering left by a worker."

Moving the hats would have taken a lot of work -- each one weighed several tonnes. The hats were transported to the statues more than 500 years ago.