Where are the giant moai statues located?
Easter Island
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.
What do the Los moai statues represent?
They stand with their backs to the sea and are believed by most archaeologists to represent the spirits of ancestors, chiefs, or other high-ranking males who held important positions in the history of Easter Island, or Rapa Nui, the name given by the indigenous people to their island in the 1860s.
What is the most famous moai?
When dawn breaks on Easter Island, it is the moai that first feel the sun. These 15 moai at a site called Tongariki are perhaps the most famous. Carved out of volcanic rock, they’re placed on a stone platform called an ahu. The tallest is nearly 30 feet.
Why did they stop make 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. Hundreds of years of sun, wind, and rain have battered the moai.
What is the history of Moai statues?
The moai of Rapa Nui The moai were probably carved to commemorate important ancestors and were made from around 1000 C.E. until the second half of the seventeenth century. Over a few hundred years the inhabitants of this remote island quarried, carved and erected around 887 moai.
How did Easter Island statues get buried?
The heads had been covered by successive mass transport deposits on the island that buried the statues lower half. These events enveloped the statues and gradually buried them to their heads as the islands naturally weathered and eroded through the centuries.
How did the moai statues get there?
After the carving was completed, the moai were detached from the rock, moved down-slope, and erected vertically, when their backs were dressed. Then the Easter Islanders moved the moai into places around the island, sometimes setting them onto platforms arranged in groups.