What are the heads on Easter Island?

On average, they stand 13 feet high and weigh 14 tons, human heads-on-torsos carved in the male form from rough hardened volcanic ash. The islanders call them ” moai,” and they have puzzled ethnographers, archaeologists, and visitors to the island since the first European explorers arrived here in 1722.

What are the stone statues on Easter Island called?

Averaging 13 feet (4 meters) high, with a weight of 13 tons, these enormous stone busts–known as moai –were carved out of tuff (the light, porous rock formed by consolidated volcanic ash) and placed atop ceremonial stone platforms called ahus.

What are the giant heads on Easter Island called?

Called moai (say “moe-eye”) they made Easter Island one of the most mysterious places on Earth! The Rapa Nui people who still live on the island aren’t sure as to what the statues were for — they may have been made to honour ancestors or for religious purposes.

Do the Easter Island statues have names?

The statues, whose traditional name is “moai,” were carved from volcanic rock between A.D. 1100 and 1500 by ancient Polynesians. The new excavation work intends to document for the first time the complex carvings found on the buried statues’ bodies, which have been protected from weathering by their burial.

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 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.

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.

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.

How many moai are there?

Archaeologists have documented 887 of the massive statues, known as moai, but there may up as many as 1,000 of them on the island. Most were carved from volcanic rock between 1100 and 1680.

Who lives on Easter Island?

About 5,000 people live on Easter Island today, and thousands of tourists come to see the anthropomorphic “moai” statues each year. Amid strain from a rising population, the island faces challenges ahead. It has no sewer system and continues to draw on a limited freshwater supply.

How were the moai moved?

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.

How did the statues fall?

Statues getting toppled The most common theory to this is that the statues were overthrown in tribal warfare to humiliate the enemy. An argument for this is the fact that most statues have fallen forward with the face into the earth.