The wildly mysterious Easter Island heads are called moai Statue.The moai statues, also named as ‘Easter Island statues,’ are monolithic humanoid creatures sculpted by the Rapa Nui inhabitants around 1250 and 1500 AD at Easter Island. This is about 1429.15 mi (2300 km) from the coast of South America.To the locals, Easter Island, called Rapa Nui, is a Polynesian island inside the Pacific Ocean where the moai statues may be found. In 1888, the island was designated as Chilean special territory. On Easter Sunday, 1722, Dutch admiral Jacob Roggeveen became the first European to arrive on this remote island, which he dubbed ‘Paasch-Eyland.‘Moai statues are monolithic statues that vary in height from less than 1.5 m (4.9 ft) to more than 10 m (33 ft). The longest moai erected, known as Paro, stood 9.2 m (30 ft) tall and weighed 74 t (82 tonnes); the largest which tumbled while being constructed was 9.94 m (32.6 ft.); and the largest (incomplete) moai, known as El Gigante would have stood 21.6m (71 ft) tall.Large, broad noses and strong chins, as well as rectangle-shaped ears and deep eyeholes, distinguish moai statues. Their bodies are usually in a squatting stance, with their arms resting in various places and no legs. The Rapa Nui National Park, which was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1995, contains the moai statues. The moai statues may be seen on Easter Island, or Rapa Nui as even the locals refer to it, a remote island ruled by Chile.Location Of The Moai StatueCheck out these interesting facts about the intriguing Easter Island heads.Moai statues are located at Easter Island, also called Rapa Nui. This is the easternmost outpost of the Polynesian island world.Easter Island is famous for its giant stone statues.There are about 900 moai on Easter Island. These statues are still found in various stages of construction. Hundreds of moai statues were brought from Rano Raraku, the island’s principal moai quarry, and placed on ahu around the easter island’s border.It’s still up for debate how the statues were moved. The core of the moai statues was sculpted over 900 years ago when the Rapa Nui.Archaeologists are perplexed as to how the statues were transported 24 lb (11 kg) across the island without the use of wheels, cranes, or heavy animals.According to some theories, the Rapa Nui islanders utilized wooden sleds, pulleys, and log rollers to get around. Since the heaviest weighs 84.6 t (86 tonnes), moving these statues to the Rapa Nui national park would have required a significant amount of force.Another idea claims that now the Easter Island heads were moved towards their destinations by being placed on top of logs. If that notion is right, it will take 50–150 persons to relocate the moai. While ‘moving’ the moai, they would indeed chant.Archaeologist Charles Love tried with a 9 t (10-tonne) duplicate about the same time. In his first trial, he discovered that walking the Easter Island statues by rocking them was too unstable over a distance of far more than only several hundred yards.In two attempts to tow the moai, a replica was loaded on a sled fashioned in the form of a framework that was set on rollers, and 60 people pulled on many ropes. The initial effort was unsuccessful because the rollers became stuck.Significance Of The Moai StatueThere are many best-known facts that are still unknown by everyone. Read it to learn some new facts:Moai statues were thus symbols of power and authority, either religious or political. They weren’t just symbols, though. When carved stone, as well as wooden objects, were correctly made and ritually prepared in historical Polynesian religions, they were thought to be charged by a mystical, spiritual element called mana.Declared as a UNESCO world heritage site, these moai statues are at least 500 years old.According to archaeologists on easter island, the moai statues are thought to be representations of the ancient Polynesians’ ancestors. The upright moai statues approach the villages rather than the ocean as if to keep an eye on the residents.The seven Ahu Akivi, which look out to sea, aid in the navigation of visitors to easter island.Almost all the moai statues face away from the sea. Apart from their distinguishing beauty, the moai statues are also all nearly identical since they all faced inland, away from the sea.At Inland Ahu Akivi, a single statue faces the ocean. For the locals, this is a sacred site.The Statues are shrouded in a slew of superstitions: The Rapa Nui natives had a lot of superstitions that guided their interactions only with statues.They were famous for believing whenever a moai statue fell, it was just for a purpose and that the statue should never ever be rebuilt. This is why all the moai statues were left unfinished.Similarly, there was a well-known belief that the spirit of the moai was activated when they were given eyes. After the islanders bestowed eyes of coral upon the moai statues, they were able to project their energy onto the people.It took a year to complete each moai. Thousands of people visit the moai every year on easter island, and they’re all coming to see the incredible moai statues face. They took a long time to complete, as with anything worthwhile.Each statue was created over a year by groups of five to six men utilizing basalt rock hand chisels.Mystery Of The Moai StatuesThe statues were sculpted mainly by the island’s Polynesian invaders between 1250 and 1500. Here is the detail about the history of moai statues:The moai statues might be considered as the symbol of strong living or previous chiefs and essential hereditary status symbols after they were constructed on ahu, in addition to highlighting deceased ancestors.The larger the sculpture set onto an ahu, the more the mana the ruler who built it had. The race for the largest sculpture was ingrained in the Rapa Nui culture. The proof comes from the fact that moai come in a variety of sizes.Completed sculptures were transported to ahu, typically along the seashore, and placed on their moai heads, sometimes with pukao, red stone cylinders.Moai statues had to be exceedingly costly to make and transport; not just to do the initial carving of each statue take time and effort. However, the final product had to be transported to its ultimate position and erected as well. Eye fragments were re-examined and re-categorized in the Easter Island museum.The mines at Rano Raraku seem to have been vacated abruptly. There are 15 standing moai at Ahu Tongariki, with such littering of stone axes and numerous finished moai waiting to be transported from the outside quarry. Nearly as many incomplete statues remained on site as formerly placed on ahu.This led to speculation in the 19th century that the island was the relic of a buried continent, with the majority of the Moai statues submerged.The Rapa Nui people believed in many superstitions. One such belief was that it was for a good reason when one moai fell. So, they never erected the statue again, leaving it incomplete.Similarly, there was the belief that the spirit of the moai was activated when they were given eyes. After the islanders bestowed eyes of coral upon the statues, they were able to project their energy onto the people.Some statues were rock carvings and were never meant to be finished.Some statues were incomplete because the artisans might quit partial statue when they partly buried it and began a new one.Tuff is just a soft rock with a few bits of much tougher rock thrown in for good measure.Some completed monuments in Rano Raraku were permanently installed rather than parked for later removal.When the age of statue-building came to a close, several were left unfinished.According to oral traditions, various individuals employed heavenly power to order the sculptures to walk.Early tales claim that they were moved by a monarch named Tuu Ku Ihu with both the power of the divinity Makemake, while subsequent accounts claim that they were moved by a girl who lived alone on the mountain of Rapa Nui.Features Of The Moai StatuesMoai Statues have fascinated many because of their unique features. Check out these interesting facts.Some statues wear hats. These are known as Pukao. The hats might be dressed in hair or headdresses, and both were common among native chiefs of Rapa Nui.One statue stands out among the others. The Easter Island moai face is distinguished from many other statues by their distinctive features.While most of the statues have elongated features, the moai known as Tukuturi is significantly more human-like, and it is the only kneeling moai. Tukuturi seems to be much smaller and looks to be kneeling than the other statues.A single moai surface took a team of five to six men around a year to complete. Almost every moai has a head that is three-eighths the size of the whole statue.Sergio Rapu Haoa and a group of archaeologists revealed in 1979 that the huge elliptical or hemispherical eye receptacles were built to accommodate corals eyeballs either with black basalt or red scoria lenses on Easter Island.Easter islanders were responsible for carving statues and partial statues.Chemical research has now proved that now the island was virtually completely wooded before 1200 AD. By 1650, pollen count had vanished from the database.Scholars now believe that the moai were ‘walked’ upright because placing it flat on a sled would have taken approximately 1500 persons to transport the largest moai that had been successfully erected.Pavel, Thor Heyerdahl, and the Kon-Tiki Museum tested a five-tonne and a nine-tonne moai in 1986.They ‘walked’ the moai forward by swiveling and swaying it from sideways with a rope all around the head and another around the base, utilizing eight employees for the shorter statue and 16 for the bigger. Nevertheless, the experiment was cut short due to cracking damage to the statue bases.Thor Heyerdahl calculated that this technology could move a 22 t (20-tonne) monument 320 ft (100 m) each day across Easter Island terrain despite the experiment’s early conclusion.Paro is the name of the tallest moai ever created. The height of this tallest moai is recorded to be 9.2 m (30 ft).
The wildly mysterious Easter Island heads are called moai Statue.
