EASTER ISLAND
MOAIS
EASTER ISLAND
Easter Island, also known as Rapa Nui,a
special territory of Chile, is an island in the
southeastern Pacific Ocean. Easter Island
is one of the most remote and isolated
inhabited islands in the world.
Easter Island is most famous for its
monumental statues, called moai, created by
the early Rapa Nui people. It is estimated that
the sculptures, which are not exactly known
when, were built between 1000 and 1600 AD.
Despite numerous studies, it is not known for
what purpose they are made. According to
estimates, these stone sculptures are the
ancestors of the natives who communicate with
spirits. Each statue represented the deceased
head of a lineage.
Although often identified as "Easter
Island heads", the statues have
torsos, most of them ending at the
top of the thighs; a small number
are complete figures that kneel on
bent knees with their hands over
their stomachs. Some upright moai
have become buried up to their
necks by shifting soils.
Pater Sebastian Englert numbered and
categorized 638 of these sculptures. In fact,
these statues are estimated to have been over
1,000 previously.
These gigantic and impressively carved heads
are just another reminder that primitive people
were not really all that primitive. Almost all
moai that attract visitors to this island were
carved from compressed, easily worked
solidified volcanic ash,tuff or rock. While many
teams worked on different statues at the same
time, a single moai took a team of five or six
men approximately a year to complete.
The longest Moai is called "Paro" and has a length of about 10 meters and a weight of 82 tons. The heaviest Moai is 86 tons and was
incomplete. It is estimated that if it were completed it would have a length of 21 meters and a weight of 270 tons. The sculptures, located
on platforms called Ahu, are placed in a way to see the settlement area.
Tukuturi, an unusual bearded kneeling moai
Ahu Akivi, one of the few inland ahu, with
the only moai facing the ocean
DISCOVER OF
THE ISLAND
The first Europeans to see the island are pirate Edward Davis and his
men. As Davis arrives from the Galapagos Islands in 1687 and sails
to Cape Horn, he sees this island by chance and thinks it is the
Southern Continent that is said to exist.
During his second southern journey, James Cook also visited the
island. James Cook was not impressed by the island and noted in the
logbook, "No nation struggles to achieve the honor of researching this
island. During this cruise, there is no island that has less to offer than
this island."
The first person to take photographs of Moai on the island in 1886 is
the ship doctor William Thomson, who came here with the US-ship
Mohican.
In 1995, UNESCO named Easter
Island a World Heritage Site, with
much of the island protected
within Rapa Nui National Park.
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