Yet, it’s home to about 1,000 giant moai statues. Some are almost 30 feet tall and weigh up to 80 tons. This is Easter Island, also known as Rapa Nui, a land full of history and culture.

Archaeologist and Easter Island expert Jo Anne Van Tilburg believes the moai were built to honor ancestors and chieftains, or for ritual use to commune with gods, she told PBS. National Geographic ...

Easter Island is home to roughly 1,000 Moai - the large stone heads. Hancock thinks settlers first arrived there 12,000 years ago and stayed until Polynesian settlers arrived. He also argues the ...

Researching which moai statues to visit on Rapa Nui (Easter Island) in Chile can be overwhelming. I speak from experience, ...

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 ...

In a remote patch of the Pacific Ocean lies Rapa Nui, otherwise known as Easter Island. It’s a tiny, windswept place, famed for its colossal Moai – mysterious stone figures that each weigh ...

Easter Island is known for these iconic Moai statues, as well as mysteries surrounding the inhabitants of the island. Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news ...

Among the many secrets buried in Easter Island prehistory is the question of how the Rapanui people transported the multi-ton statues, or moai, from their quarries to their final ceremonial ahu ...

This story appears in the July 2012 issue of National Geographic magazine. On a winter night last June, José Antonio Tuki, a 30-year-old artist on Easter Island, did one of the things he loves ...