Where is moai easter island

Its megalithic statues are even more imposing than the landscape, but there is a rich tradition of island arts in forms less solid than stone—in wood and bark cloth, strings and feathers, songs and dances, and in a lost form of pictorial writing called rongorongo, which has eluded every attempt to decipher it.

A society of hereditary chiefs, priests, clans and guilds of specialized craftsmen lived in isolation for 1, years. History, as much as art, made this island unique. But attempts to unravel that history have produced many interpretations and arguments. But by no means everything. When did the first people arrive? Where did they come from? Why did they carve such enormous statues?

How did they move them and raise them up onto platforms? Why, after centuries, did they topple these idols? Such questions have been answered again and again, but the answers keep changing.

Estimates of when people first reached the island are as varied, ranging from the first to the sixth century A. And how they ever found the place, whether by design or accident, is yet another unresolved question. Some argue that the navigators of the first millennium could never have plotted a course over such immense distances without modern precision instruments.

One archaeoastronomer suggests that a new supernova in the ancient skies may have pointed the way. But did the voyagers know the island was even there? For that, science has no answer. The islanders, however, do. Benedicto Tuki was a tall year-old master wood-carver and keeper of ancient knowledge when I met him. Tuki has since died. His piercing eyes were set in a deeply creased, mahogany face.

There, he could recount the story in the right way. Platforms are called ahu, and the statues that sit on them, moai pronounced mo-eye. As our jeep negotiated a rutted dirt road, the seven moai loomed into view. Their faces were paternal, all-knowing and human—forbiddingly human. These seven, Tuki said, were not watching over the land like those statues with their backs to the sea.

These stared out beyond the island, across the ocean to the west, remembering where they came from. The Rights Holder for media is the person or group credited. Photograph by Nico Peri , My Shot. For information on user permissions, please read our Terms of Service. If you have questions about how to cite anything on our website in your project or classroom presentation, please contact your teacher. They will best know the preferred format.

When you reach out to them, you will need the page title, URL, and the date you accessed the resource. If a media asset is downloadable, a download button appears in the corner of the media viewer. If no button appears, you cannot download or save the media. Text on this page is printable and can be used according to our Terms of Service. Moai Hava translated as 'dirty, repudiated, rejected or lost' dates to between — and is made of volcanic tuff, a type of stone widely used in the making of moai and mainly sourced from the quarry of Rano Raraku.

Moai Hava has been carved to show arms, torso and head. At the bottom of the statue's torso are carved hands and a loin cloth hami. In recent years, this moai has been lent to museums across the country for exhibitions at the World Museum Liverpool, the Manchester Museum, and most recently in at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. Not currently on permanent display, Moai Hava can be accessed by appointment as part of the museum's study collection.

In , the island was annexed by Chile. Hoa Hakananai'a was kept buried up to his shoulders in a house named Taura Renga at the ceremonial village of Orongo, near Rano Kau. It is believed that this house was the second placement of this moai, and that he could have previously stood on an ahu -like structure ceremonial platform before his ritual function changed.

Inside the ceremonial house at Orongo, the statue was more strongly associated with the tangata manu , or birdman religion, which developed around , well after Hoa Hakananai'a was carved.

Orongo was the epicentre of this new ritual practice establishing a competition among Rapanui chiefly groups to obtain the first egg of the sooty tern from the nearby islet of Motu Nui.

The chiefly victor became the tangata manu birdman and represented the patron god of the royal lineage for one year. Moai Hava was buried in the ancient gathering place of clans and in proximity with burial sites, in an area now known as Mataveri. The crew was led to the location of Moai Hava at Mataveri, and collected this first moai on 2 November Soon after, Hoa Hakananai'a was discovered in the house at Orongo by two crew members searching the village.

Commodore Richard Powell decided to unearth this second moai, with the intent of bringing them both to Britain. The stone house was dismantled, and Hoa Hakananai'a transported on a sledge to shore. A Rapanui man, known as Tepano, subsequently recalled that the crew, followed by a Rapanui chief, dragged Hoa Hakananai'a down to the beach, before floating it out to the ship on a raft. Later, he had the scene tattooed on his arm. On 6 October , the arrival of the statue at the Museum was officially reported to the Trustees, marking the beginning of a new chapter in the complex history of Hoa Hakananai'a.