What are the stone figures 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.

What happened to the figures from Easter Island?

What happened to the figures from Easter Island in 1978? They were restored to their original condition. Why was tattooing such an important part of the culture in Oceania? It indicated personal rank.

What stone is Easter Island made of?

Easter Island was formed by successive Pliocene and Holocene volcanic flows consisting of basalt and andesite. In addition, volcanic tuffs were deposited in the volcanic crater, which is the primary stone used for carving the monolithic Moai statues.

How many stone statues are on Easter Island?

Its nearly 1,000 statues, some almost 30 feet tall and weighing as much as 80 tons, are still an enigma, but the statue builders are far from vanished. In fact, their descendants are making art and renewing their cultural traditions in an island renaissance.

Do the Easter Island heads really have bodies?

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.”

Does the Easter Island heads have bodies?

Why were the moai built on Easter Island?

In the Rapa Nui language, the Easter Island statues are called Moai Aringa Ora, which means “the living face of our ancestors”. The most common interpretation is that these statues were created in order to preserve the energy of the natives after death.

Who built the moai statues on Easter Island?

Rapa Nui people
The island is most famous for its nearly 1,000 extant monumental statues, called moai, which were created by the early Rapa Nui people.

Do the Easter Island heads actually have bodies?

How big are the statues on Easter Island?

13 feet
Rapa Nui’s mysterious moai statues stand in silence but speak volumes about the achievements of their creators. The stone blocks, carved into head-and-torso figures, average 13 feet (4 meters) tall and 14 tons.

What are the names of the statues on Easter Island?

Prev Article Next Article. The Moai statues are also known as ‘moai’, ‘Easter Island heads’ and ‘Easter Island statues’, are monolithic human figures carved by the Rapa Nui people between the years 1250 and 1500 CE. The Moai statues are located on Easter Island, or ‘Rapa Nui’ as the indigenous call it, a Polynesian island in the Pacific Ocean .

What are the Easter Island sculptures?

Located in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, Easter Island, also known as Rapa Nui, is famous for immense, carved stone statues called moai . A completed moai is made of three parts: a large yellow body, a red hat or topknot (called pukao ), and white inset eyes with a coral iris.

How were Easter Island statues made?

The statues are made from volcanic tuff, which is partially fused and cemented volcanic ash, which means it’s fairly easy to shape, but also extremely heavy. Moai statues on Easter Island. It was quarried up the slope of the extinct volcano on the island.

Where are the Easter Island heads?

Rapa Nui’s majestic rock statues (also known as Stone Heads of Easter Island) have been a mystery since Europeans first arrived in the 1700s on the island, located in the Pacific Ocean off the west coast of Chile.