What artifacts were found on Easter Island?

In 1955, the Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl voyaged to Rapa Nui, the ancestral name of Easter Island, and collected many things: tiny carved sculptures, a stone axe, even human skulls.

What is found on Rapa Nui What is it also known as?

Easter Island, Spanish Isla de Pascua, also called Rapa Nui, Chilean dependency in the eastern Pacific Ocean. It is the easternmost outpost of the Polynesian island world. It is famous for its giant stone statues.

What is found on the island of Rapa Nui?

The island is most famous for its nearly 1,000 extant monumental statues, called moai, which were 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.

What human creations have made the island of Rapa Nui famous?

Easter Island’s most dramatic claim to fame is an array of almost 900 giant stone figures that date back many centuries. The statues reveal their creators to be master craftsmen and engineers, and are distinctive among other stone sculptures found in Polynesian cultures.

What is the significance of the Easter Island statues?

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 are the statues on Easter Island?

What are the sculptures on Easter Island?

Why are the moai statues so important?

What is the purpose of 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.

What are the moai statues made of?

volcanic ash
The moai are monolithic statues, and their minimalist style reflects forms found throughout Polynesia. Moai are carved from volcanic ash. The human figures would be outlined in the rock wall first, then chipped away until only the image was left.

Who carved Easter Island statues?

the Rapa Nui people
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.

Why is Easter Island so mysterious?

The Easter Island mystery is mainly due to its isolation. This made the Rapa Nui culture and history have not been completely unraveled and made the Easter Island myths and legends very relevant. They been transmitted orally by the natives and collected by ancient visitants.