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 mystery about Easter Island?
Deforestation, slavery and rats were all factors in the Pacific island's population decline. Most people have heard of the decimation of the population of Easter Island (also called Rapa Nui) and have seen pictures of the massive stone statues (moai) that line the coastline.
Is there a body under the Easter Island heads?
Easter Island's monumental stone heads are well-known, but there's more to the story: all along, the sculptures have secretly had torsos, buried beneath the earth. 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.May 1, 2015
What happened to the Easter Island heads?
The statues still gazed inland across their clan lands when Europeans first visited the island in 1722, but all of them had fallen by the latter part of the 19th century. The moai were toppled in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, possibly as a result of European contact or internecine tribal wars.
Are there human remains on Easter Island?
Surprisingly few of the human remains from the island show actual evidence of injury, just 2.5%, and most of those showed evidence of healing, meaning that attacks were not fatal. Crucially, there is no evidence, beyond historical word-of-mouth, of cannibalism.
Why do the heads on Easter Island have bodies?
Among the statues that stand on the remote island, around 150 of them have been buried by shifting soils and sediment, creating the illusion that each sculpture stops at the neck.
How did Easter Island heads get buried?
Mysteries hundreds of years old 1455. 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.
Do the statues on Easter Island have legs?
Easter Island statues are known for their large, broad noses and big chins, along with rectangle-shaped ears and deep eye slits. Their bodies are normally squatting, with their arms resting in different positions and are without legs.
How many moai statues are on Easter Island?
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..
How many statues are on Easter Island?
1,000 statues
What are the heads on Easter Island for?
Easter Island is famous for its stone statues of human figures, known as moai (meaning “statue”). The island is known to its inhabitants as 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.
Where are the giant heads on Easter Island?
Rano Raraku Quarry
Where on Easter Island are the heads?
The Easter Island heads are known as Moai by the Rapa Nui people who carved the figures in the tropical South Pacific directly west of Chile. The Moai monoliths, carved from stone found on the island, are between 1,100 and 1,500 CE.
How many giant head statues are on Easter Island?
There are nearly 900 statues of what look to be giant heads! These big stone carvings — the tallest is almost 10 metres and weighs 82 tonnes — are made from volcanic rock. Called moai (say "moe-eye") they made Easter Island one of the most mysterious places on Earth!
Where are the tiki heads on Easter Island?
Nearly half are still at Rano Raraku, the main moai quarry, but hundreds were transported from there and set on stone platforms called ahu around the island's perimeter.