How did they move the Easter Island heads?

With one rope around the head of the statue and another around the base, they “walked” the moai replica forward by swiveling and rocking it from side to side. Using this method, Pavel Pavel estimated that an experienced crew could move a statue approximately 650 feet each day.

Why were the Easter Island heads built?

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.

What is the history of Easter Island heads?

Located nearly 2,000 miles off the coast of Chile in the Pacific Ocean, Easter Island is famous for the nearly 1,000 enormous stone statues, known as moai. The massive works were erected there starting around the 13th century A.D. by the Rapa Nui, an ancient Polynesian society that later collapsed mysteriously.

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.”

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 happened to all the trees on Easter Island?

There is good evidence that the trees largely disappeared between 1200 and 1650. Assuming that wood was used to move statues, a popular proposal was formulated that the islanders, besotted with their moai, cut down all the palm trees in order to move statues.

What does moai stand for?

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.

Why was moai toppled?

Why were the Moai toppled? Yet by the end of the 19th century, the Moai reportedly had all toppled and fallen over. There are different theories about this – some believe it was because of earthquake activity, others say the statues were toppled during tribal wars as a way of humiliating their opposition.

How did the moai statues fall?

Construction of the moai statues appears to have stopped around the time of European contact in 1722, when Dutch explorers landed on Easter Day. Over the next century the moai would fall over, either intentionally pushed over or from simple neglect.

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 owns Easter Island today?

Known as Rapa Nui to its earliest inhabitants, the island was christened Paaseiland, or Easter Island, by Dutch explorers in honor of the day of their arrival in 1722. It was annexed by Chile in the late 19th century and now maintains an economy based largely on tourism.

What makes Easter Island so special?

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 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.

Are Easter Island statues buried?

Most production of Moai had ceased in the early 1700s due to western contact. The two statues Van Tilburg’s team excavated had been almost completely buried by soils and rubble.