How big is the biggest Easter Island head?

There are nearly 900 statues of what look to be giant heads! These big stone carvings — the tallest is almost 10 metres and weighs 82 tonnes — are made from volcanic rock. Called moai (say “moe-eye”) they made Easter Island one of the most mysterious places on Earth!

How much do the heads at Easter Island weigh?

In average, the easter island heads are 3.9 meters high and weigh 14 tons. They are human figures with a masculine shape, sculpted in volcanic hardened rough ashes.

How many giant statues are 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.

What is the largest Easter Island carving?

Besides its remoteness, Easter Island is, of course, famous for its massive stone sculptures or “Moais.” The largest of these is “ El Gigante,” located near the Rano Raraku Quarry, which stands some 72 feet tall (well, 71.93 to be exact).

What is the most famous moai?

When dawn breaks on Easter Island, it is the moai that first feel the sun. These 15 moai at a site called Tongariki are perhaps the most famous. Carved out of volcanic rock, they’re placed on a stone platform called an ahu. The tallest is nearly 30 feet.

What is the tallest moai?

The tallest moai erected, called Paro, was almost 10 metres (33 ft) high and weighed 82 tons; the heaviest erected was a shorter but squatter moai at Ahu Tongariki, weighing 86 tons; and one unfinished sculpture, if completed, would have been approximately 21 metres (69 ft) tall with a weight of about 270 tons.

Are there bodies under Easter Island heads?

As a part of the Easter Island Statue Project, the team excavated two moai and discovered that each one had a body, proving, as the team excitedly explained in a letter, “that the ‘heads’ on the slope here are, in fact, full but incomplete statues.”

Are there any Easter Islanders left?

The Rapa Nui are the indigenous Polynesian people of Easter Island. At the 2017 census there were 7,750 island inhabitants—almost all living in the village of Hanga Roa on the sheltered west coast.

Where are these giant stone heads?

Easter Island (Rapa Nui in Polynesian) is a Chilean island in the southern Pacific Ocean famous for it’s stone head statues called Moai. When you first see a Moai statue you are drawn to its disproportionately large head (compared to body length) and that is why they are commonly called “Easter Island Heads”.

Why are there no trees on Easter Island?

Easter Island was covered with palm trees for over 30,000 years, but is treeless today. There is good evidence that the trees largely disappeared between 1200 and 1650. However there is evidence the Polynesian rat (Rattus exulans) was present from 900 and it seems clear that these rats caused widespread deforestation.

How did humans get to Easter Island?

Linguists estimate Easter Island’s first inhabitants arrived around AD 400, and most agree that they came from East Polynesia. These linguistic links point to a genealogical bond that ties the people of the Pacific to one another. Indeed, in 1994, DNA from 12 Easter Island skeletons was found to be Polynesian.

Is Easter Island sinking?

Easter Island is VANISHING: Ancient site and clues to the civilisation that built its stunning stone sculptures are being slowly swallowed by rising seas. Easter Island and its mysterious history are slowly disappearing under rising seas.

Who built the Easter heads?

The island is most famous for its nearly 1,000 extant monumental statues, called moai, which were 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.

How much do the moai statues weigh?

On average, they stand 13 feet high and weigh 14 tons, human heads-on-torsos carved in the male form from rough hardened volcanic ash. The islanders call them “moai,” and they have puzzled ethnographers, archaeologists, and visitors to the island since the first European explorers arrived here in 1722.