Easter Island – The Statues and Rock Art of Rapa Nui. Using basalt stone picks, the Easter Island Moai were
carved from the solidified volcanic ash of Rano Raraku volcano
. They are all monolithic the carvings are created in one piece and an average weight of 20 tons and measuring 20 feet tall or more.
Where are the Easter Island heads from?
listen), or moai (Spanish: moái, Rapa Nui: moʻai, meaning “statue” in Rapa Nui), are monolithic human figures carved by the Rapa Nui people on Easter Island in
eastern Polynesia
between the years 1250 and 1500.
Is there a body under the Easter Island heads?
As a part of the Easter Island Statue Project, the team excavated two moai and discovered that each one had a body, proving, as the team excitedly explained in a letter, “that
the ‘heads’ on the slope here are, in fact, full but incomplete statues
.”
What do the heads on Easter Island mean?
What do
moais
represent? Moais with full bodies visible at Ahu Tongariki. Moai statues were built to honor chieftain or other important people who had passed away. They were placed on rectangular stone platforms called ahu, which are tombs for the people that the statues represented.
Who made the heads on Easter Island?
The island is most famous for its nearly 1,000 extant monumental statues, called moai, which were created by
the early Rapa Nui people
. In 1995, UNESCO named Easter Island a World Heritage Site, with much of the island protected within Rapa Nui National Park.
Why are there no trees on Easter Island?
Easter Island was covered with palm trees for over 30,000 years, but
is treeless today
. There is good evidence that the trees largely disappeared between 1200 and 1650. … However there is evidence the Polynesian rat (Rattus exulans) was present from 900 and it seems clear that these rats caused widespread deforestation.
Are there any Easter Islanders left?
The Rapa Nui are the indigenous Polynesian people of Easter Island. … At the 2017 census there were 7,750 island inhabitants—almost all living in the village of
Hanga Roa
on the sheltered west coast.
What is the tallest moai?
The tallest moai erected, called
Paro
, was almost 10 metres (33 ft) high and weighed 82 tons; the heaviest erected was a shorter but squatter moai at Ahu Tongariki, weighing 86 tons; and one unfinished sculpture, if completed, would have been approximately 21 metres (69 ft) tall with a weight of about 270 tons.
Where are giant stone heads?
The
Easter Island heads
are known as Moai by the Rapa Nui people who carved the figures in the tropical South Pacific directly west of Chile. The Moai monoliths, carved from stone found on the island, are between 1,100 and 1,500 CE.
How were the moai carved?
The moai were
individually carved out of single bays of the rock
rather than a big open area like a modern quarry. It appears that most were carved lying on their backs. After the carving was completed, the moai were detached from the rock, moved down-slope, and erected vertically, when their backs were dressed.
Why is it called Easter Island?
The first known European visitor to Easter Island was the Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen, who arrived in 1722. The Dutch named the island Paaseiland (Easter Island) to
commemorate the day they arrived
.
How tall are Easter Island heads?
On average, they stand
13 feet high
and weigh 14 tons, human heads-on-torsos carved in the male form from rough hardened volcanic ash. The islanders call them “moai,” and they have puzzled ethnographers, archaeologists, and visitors to the island since the first European explorers arrived here in 1722.
Who built the Moai heads?
The Moai are a collection of large monolithic statues built by
the Rapa Nui people of Easter
Island.
Does Easter Island have a flag?
The
flag
of Easter Island (Rapa Nui: Te Reva Reimiro) is the flag of Easter Island, a special territory of Chile. It was first flown in public alongside the national flag on 9 May 2006.
Who lives on Easter Island today?
Today, the people living on Easter Island are
largely descendants of the ancient Rapa Nui
(about 60%) and run the bulk of the tourism and conservation efforts on the island. Many locals living on Easter Island have livelihoods that involve the water—which makes sense!
