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Where did the Easter Island heads come from?
Easter Island – The Statues and Rock Art of Rapa Nui. Using basalt stone picks, the Easter Island Moai were carved from the solidified volcanic ash of Rano Raraku volcano. They are all monolithic the carvings are created in one piece and an average weight of 20 tons and measuring 20 feet tall or more.
Why did they make the Easter Island statues?
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.
Do the Easter Island heads 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.”
When were the bodies of the Easter Island heads discovered?
Photographs of the statues undergoing excavation began circulating in May of 2012, and Live Science asserts that archaeologists have actually known about the bodies since archaeological research on the island, located 2,000 miles west of Chile, began over a century ago, in 1914.
How old are the heads on Easter Island?
When were they built? This is a question of much debate among scholars in the field, although there is a consensus they were built sometime between 400 and 1500 AD. That means all the statues are least 500 years old, if not much more.
Do the Easter Island heads actually have bodies?
How did Easter Island heads get buried?
The heads had been covered by successive mass transport deposits on the island that buried the statues lower half. These events enveloped the statues and gradually buried them to their heads as the islands naturally weathered and eroded through the centuries.
Do Easter Island heads have bodies?
The World-Famous Easter Island Heads Have Bodies Buried Underground. If you’re familiar with Easter Island, you’ve undoubtedly heard of the famous Easter Island heads. While these massive monoliths are among the world’s most famous sculptures, their household name is actually a misnomer, as each figure, or moai, also has a hidden body.
Who built Easter Island heads?
The Mystery of the Easter Island Heads May Finally be Solved. Easter Island is home to 887 monolithic carvings, called moai statues. The moai were built by the Rapa Nui, who were native to the island, somewhere between the years 1400-1650.
What are the statues on Easter Island?
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,…
What happened to Easter Island?
A series of devastating events killed almost the entire population of Easter Island in the 1860s. In December 1862, Peruvian slave raiders struck Easter Island. Violent abductions continued for several months, eventually capturing or killing around 1500 men and women, about half of the island’s population.
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