Moai statues of Easter Island

Easter Island lies on the Pacific Ocean 3,600 km west from the coast of Chile. From the nearest inhabited land, which is the island of Pitcairn, it is divided over 2000 kilometers of ocean. It is known primarily from the 887 stone statues called moai.
The first Europeans who saw the Rapa Nui (because this is the original name of the island) were Dutch sailors from a shipcommanded by Jacob Roggevereena. It was Easter Sunday 1722 years and hence the European name of the island. On the island they discovered many stone statues - moai that were placed around the island on stone platforms or altars, called ahu.


The statues were made ​​from rocks of volcanic origin with tools from basalt. The figures are carved from one stone. Some weighover 20 tons, and their height exceeds 6 feet. The largest of the moai - Paro was about 10 feet tall and weighed 75 tons. The island is also unfinished statue 21 meters high and weighing 270 tons. Some of the figures has a huge stone on their heads hats -pukao, which are made ​​of scorii - red volcanic rock.


Most of the moai were carved from the crater of Rano Raraku, and then transported to the distant coast up to more than 10kilometers. Statues were probably turned on the balls at their destination, and then placed into the vertical by means of ropes.Another theory suggests that their movement was used for rolling the lift into the overhead in a horizontal position and then moveda statue of steps.


There are many concepts talking about who carved the moai. The most popular of them said that they did Polynesian settlersaround 1000-1100 year. Another contends that the inhabitants of Easter Island arrived from South America and from therebrought the skills of stone. Work on the statues was interrupted suddenly, testifies to the many unfinished statues. The probablereason was overpopulation of the island, famine and the outbreak of intertribal fighting. Until now, we do not know the purpose for which the statues were made​​, many theories say about the conception of statues of deities, or ancestors.


In the mid-nineteenth century, most of the moai were overturned, it is believed that this was due to fighting between the clans on the island. Currently, about 50 moai have been deposited back to their old places, and on the island was Rapa Nui National Park, which encompasses nearly half of its surface. In 1996, the moai statues were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List.