Where are the Moai statues located?

Moai statues are massive megaliths at Easter Island, and these are what this island is famous for. The moais were built in approximately 1400 – 1650 A.D. by the natives of this island also known as Rapa Nui. Many know them as the Easter Island heads.

Are there bodies 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.”

How many Easter Island statues are there?

Moai Stats She reported, “A total of 887 monolithic statues has been located by the survey to date on Easter Island 397 are still in situ in quarries at the Rano Raraku central production center..

What country does Easter Island belong to?

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.

Which way do moai face?

The moai statues face away from the ocean and towards the villages as if to watch over the people. The exception is the seven Ahu Akivi which face out to sea to help travelers find the island.

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 in the world?

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.

Can you buy land on Easter Island?

Decades ago, the property was acquired by the government, and then traded between private owners. By law, only Rapanui can own land on Easter Island. But the law is not strictly enforced.

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.

What language do they speak in Easter Island?

Rapa Nui or Rapanui (/ˌræpəˈnuːi/), also known as Pascuan (/ˈpæskjuən/) or Pascuense, is an Eastern Polynesian language of the Austronesian language family. It is spoken on the island of Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island. The island is home to a population of just under 6,000 and is a special territory of Chile.

Can you stay on Easter Island?

The best places to stay on Easter island provide a perfect base for enjoying and exploring this most unusual of locations and many are situated in and around Hanga Roa from where there is easy access to all its best bits. Easter island is not as inaccessible as you may think, with regular flights from Chile and Tahiti.

How did humans get to Easter Island?

Linguists estimate Easter Island’s first inhabitants arrived around AD 400, and most agree that they came from East Polynesia. These linguistic links point to a genealogical bond that ties the people of the Pacific to one another. Indeed, in 1994, DNA from 12 Easter Island skeletons was found to be Polynesian.