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 heads on Easter Island?
What purpose do the statues of Easter island Have? Archaeologists suggest that the statues were a representation of the Polynesian people’s ancestors . The Moai statues face away from the sea and towards the villages, by way of watching over the people. So here at Ahu Tongariki these Moai look over a flat village site.
Who built the Moai statues on Easter Island?
The Moai are a collection of large monolithic statues built by the Rapa Nui people of Easter Island.
Who built the faces on Easter Island?
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.
When were the heads on Easter Island made?
The moai and ceremonial sites are along the coast, with a concentration on Easter Island’s southeast coast. Here, the moai are more ‘standardized’ in design, and are believed to have been carved, transported, and erected between AD 1400 and 1600 .
What is the real mystery of 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. ... For example, deforestation took place on the Hawaiian island of Oahu between 900 and 1100, but there is no evidence of human presence there until 1250.
Are there bodies under 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 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.
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!
What really happened on Easter Island?
In this story, made popular by geographer Jared Diamond’s bestselling book Collapse, the Indigenous people of the island, the Rapanui, so destroyed their environment that, by around 1600, their society fell into a downward spiral of warfare, cannibalism, and population decline .
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.
What does Moai mean?
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. ... Almost all moʻai have overly large heads three-eighths the size of the whole statue.
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.
Why did they build moai?
In the Rapa Nui language, the Easter Island statues are called Moai Aringa Ora, which means “the living face of our ancestors”. The most common interpretation is that these statues were created in order to preserve the energy of the natives after death.
Why do the moai exist?
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.
