What is the purpose of Moai?

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.

Why are moai buried?

The Moai monoliths, carved from stone found on the island, are between 1,100 and 1,500 CE. These events enveloped the statues and gradually buried them to their heads as the islands naturally weathered and eroded through the centuries.

How were the moai carved?

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. One unfinished statue is 69 feet tall, estimated to weigh 270 tons.

Do the giant heads have bodies?

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.”

Do Easter Island heads really have bodies?

Though moʻai are whole-body statues, they are often referred to as “Easter Island heads” in some popular literature. All but 53 of the more than 900 moʻai known to date were carved from tuff (a compressed volcanic ash) from Rano Raraku, where 394 moʻai in varying states of completion are still visible today.

What happened to the Rapa Nui?

The island was victimized by blackbirding from 1862 to 1863, resulting in the abduction or killing of about 1,500, with 1,408 working as indentured servants in Peru. Only about a dozen eventually returned to Easter Island, but they brought smallpox, which decimated the remaining population of 1,500.

How did the Rapa Nui die?

Destruction of society and population. A series of devastating events killed almost the entire population of Easter Island in the 1860s. Such devastating events that contributed to the downfall and collapse of the Easter Island society can be attributed to the rapid deforestation during the time of moai-construction.

Why do moai face inland?

The story goes that the people who built the Moai believed that they were the only people in the whole world. Any invaders or bad people that would be coming would have to come from within the island – not by sea! So the Moai face inwards to protect the community.

Why does Easter Island have no trees?

When it rains on the island, also known as Rapa Nui, the water rapidly drains through the porous volcanic soil, leaving the grass dry again. That’s one reason why the island at the end of the world has stayed almost entirely bare, with no trees or shrubs.

Why could the Islanders no longer eat porpoises?

They became extinct. Why could the islanders no longer eat porpoises? No one can harpoon them.

Why did the Easter Islanders stop producing giant moai statues?

Cristián Moreno Pakarati, who also trains tour guides on the island, explained that locals stopped making moai during a time of high deforestation. Without trees, islanders had to build specialized rock gardens, which kept the soil humid.

Is the Easter Island real?

Easter Island, Spanish Isla de Pascua, also called Rapa Nui, Chilean dependency in the eastern Pacific Ocean. It is the easternmost outpost of the Polynesian island world. It is famous for its giant stone statues.

Did Polynesians reach America?

It has been suggested that it was brought by Polynesians who had traveled across the Pacific to South America and back, or that South Americans brought it to Polynesia. It is also possible that the plant floated across the ocean after being discarded from the cargo of a boat.