Why did people build statues on Easter Island?

Moai statues were built to honor chieftain or other important people who had passed away. They were placed on rectangular stone platforms called ahu, which are tombs for the people that the statues represented.

Who created Easter Island statues?

Rapa Nui people
The island is most famous for its nearly 1,000 extant monumental statues, called moai, which were created by the early Rapa Nui people.

What do the statues on Easter Island mean?

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.

Why do some statues face towards the island?

The story goes that the people who built the Moai believed that they were the only people in the whole world. Any invaders or bad people that would be coming would have to come from within the island – not by sea! So the Moai face inwards to protect the community.

Who discovered Easter Island first?

explorer Jacob Roggeveen
The first known European visitor to Easter Island was the Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen, who arrived in 1722. The Dutch named the island Paaseiland (Easter Island) to commemorate the day they arrived.

How many statues does Easter Island have?

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 are the statues on Easter Island?

Moai are stone statues on Easter Island. Each moai is made out of one large stone but some have an extra stone on top of the head. Most were made from the volcanic rock in the Rano Raraku area of the island.

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.

Where are the stone statues on Easter Island?

Easter Island ( Rapa Nui in Polynesian ) is a Chilean island in the southern Pacific Ocean famous for it’s stone head statues called Moai .

What is the history of the Easter Island statues?

Easter Island is most famous for its nearly 1,000 extant monumental statues, called moai, 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 .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4U5Y7MSAJc