What is strange about Easter Island?
Easter Island is the world’s most secluded inhabited island It remains a territory of Chile, but it still takes at least five hours to get to Easter Island! The only way to get there is by plane, as it doesn’t even have any harbours.
How many of the statues are there on Easter Island?
1,000 statues
Its nearly 1,000 statues, some almost 30 feet tall and weighing as much as 80 tons, are still an enigma, but the statue builders are far from vanished. In fact, their descendants are making art and renewing their cultural traditions in an island renaissance.
What is the secret of Easter Island?
The Moai that Van Tilburg’s team excavated were discovered upright in place, one on a pedestal and the other in a deep hole, indicating they were meant to remain there. “This study radically alters the idea that all standing statues in Rano Raraku were simply awaiting transport out of the quarry,” Van Tilburg said.
Is the Easter Island Mystery solved?
A team of researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), however, may have cracked the Rapa Nui mystery. A new study published by Jo Anne Van Tilburg of the Easter Island Statue Project claims to have deciphered the meaning behind the stone heads or Moai.
What happened to all the palm trees on Easter Island?
Second, that the palm trees that once covered the island were callously cut down by the Rapa Nui population to move statues. With no trees to anchor the soil, fertile land eroded away, resulting in poor crop yields, while a lack of wood meant islanders couldn’t build canoes to access fish or move statues.
What was found on Easter Island?
The greatest evidence for the rich culture developed by the original settlers of Rapa Nui and their descendants is the existence of nearly 900 giant stone statues that have been found in diverse locations around the island.
How did humans get to Easter Island?
According to Thor Heyerdahl, people from a pre-Inca society took to the seas from Peru and voyaged east to west, sailing in the prevailing westerly trade winds. He believes they may have been aided, in an El Niño year, when the course of the winds and currents may have hit Rapa Nui directly from South America.
Did cannibalism happen on Easter Island?
In this story, made popular by geographer Jared Diamond’s bestselling book Collapse, the Indigenous people of the island, the Rapanui, so destroyed their environment that, by around 1600, their society fell into a downward spiral of warfare, cannibalism, and population decline.
Are there cannibalism on Easter Island?
Surprisingly few of the human remains from the island show actual evidence of injury, just 2.5 percent, and most of those showed evidence of healing, meaning that attacks were not fatal. Crucially, there is no evidence, beyond historical word-of-mouth, of cannibalism.
Where did the Easter Island statues come from?
It is believe that it was the Rapa Nui people, Polynesians who sailed here from other pacific islands that put the Easter Island statues there. Although other theories suggest that they could have arrived from South America.
Where can I find moai statues on Easter Island?
You can view my Easter Island map here. Rano Raraku is known as the “nursery” of the stone head Moai statues. As you approach the site from the road you will begin to see the giant heads dotted along the hillside. Look closer and you will find examples of Moai at each stage of development; much like a manufacturing line.
Do the Easter Island heads have bodies?
A stunning archaeological discovery was made in May 2012, where archaeologists excavated around the statues to discover the Easter Island heads have bodies! You can climb to the top of the crater from where you will get an almost 360-degree panorama of the island.
What is the significance of the statues on the island?
The figures are believed to be both political and religious symbols of authority and protection, though the ancient society likely saw the statues as resepticles of sacred spirit. Almost all the statues have their backs to the ocean, facing the inside of the island, as if to watch over and protect the settlers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4U5Y7MSAJc