What was the purpose of the moai on Easter Island?

What was the purpose of the moai on Easter Island?

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.

What is the mystery of the moai?

Archaeologists suggest that the statues were a representation of the Polynesian people’s ancestors. The Moai statues face away from the sea and towards the villages, by way of watching over the people. So here at Ahu Tongariki these Moai look over a flat village site.

What do the Easter Island statues symbolize?

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 do the statues represent?

They represent what people in the Past chose to celebrate and memorialise, they do not represent history. Indeed, teaching history is almost never the reason why they are erected. Instead, statues in public spaces since Antiquity have most typically been used to represent power and authority.

Who built the moai?

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.

Why are the statues considered to be sacred?

Many archaeologists suggest that “[the] statues were thus symbols of authority and power, both religious and political. But they were not only symbols. To the people who erected and used them, they were actual repositories of sacred spirit.

Why do the moai statues face inland?

The story goes that the people who built the Moai believed that they were the only people in the whole world. Any invaders or bad people that would be coming would have to come from within the island – not by sea! So the Moai face inwards to protect the community.

What are the moai made of?

Most moai are made of tuff. Tuff is a soft volcanic rock native to Easter Island. (A few moai were carved from basalt and scoria, other volcanic rocks.) Because tuff erodes easily, few of the moai’s original designs remain.

Why did they build the moai statues?

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.

Where are the moai statues located at?

The Moai statues are located on Easter Island, or ‘ Rapa Nui ’ as the indigenous call it, a remote island in the Pacific Ocean , governed by Chile. The Moai statues are also known as ‘moai’, ‘Easter Island heads’ and ‘Easter Island statues’, and are believed to have been carved between 1250 to 1500 AD. The Moai statues,…

What rock are the moai statues of Easter Island made of?

The main bodies of most of the moai statues at Easter Island were sculpted out of the volcanic tuff from the Rano Raraku quarry, the remains of an extinct volcano. The Rano Raraku tuff is a sedimentary rock made from layers of air-lain, partially fused and partially cemented volcanic ash, fairly easy to carve but very heavy to transport.

How many moai statues are there on Easter Island?

Easter Island is most famous for its nearly 1,000 extant monumental statues, called moai, created by the early Rapa Nui people . 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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