Easter Island

Easter Island (Rapa Nui in the indigenous language), is a
Chilean-governed island in the south eastern Pacific Ocean . Rapa Nui
is a small, hilly, now treeless island of volcanic origin. It's been
called the most isolated inhabited territory on Earth, but there is
another aspect that sets it apart from any other place on Earth -its
hundreds of megalithic human-like statues that face inland from the
shore. These enigmatic statues are called moai .
Almost all moais were carved out of distinctive, compressed, easily
worked volcanic ash. The largest one weights up to165 tons, and its
height isalmost 22 meters. Some upright moai have become buried up to
their necks by shifting soils.
This massive production of megalithic works on an island that is
absolutely barren, with just grass, immediately captures our
imagination . How did it all happen? Who built these statues? And why
did they build them?
Some scientists suggest that Easter Island inhabitants, the Rapanui ,
came from Polynesia. But similarities to Indian stone statues around
Lake Titicaca in South America are striking. Is this accidental or
not? Scholars are unable to definitively explain the function and use
of the moai statues . Some of them suggest that the statues were
symbols of authority and power, both religious and political.
One of the biggest riddlesabout Easter Island is how the statues
'traveled' from the quarryto their platforms or ahus, sometimes as far
as 20 or 25 kilometres away? Rapa Nui legend has it that the
moai"walked from the quarry". But less than one third of all carved
moai actually made it to a final ceremonial ahus site. Was this due to
the inherent difficulties in transporting them? Were the ones that
remain in the quarry deemed culturally unworthy of transport? Or had
the islanders run out of the resources necessary to complete the
Herculean task of carving and moving the moai?
Easter Island is more well known as Te-Pito-O-Te-Henua, meaning ' The
Navel of the World ' and as Mata-Ki-Te-Rani, meaning ' Eyes Looking
atHeaven '. These ancient names and a host of mythological details
point to the possibility that the remote island may once have been
both a geodetic marker and the site of an astronomical observatoryof a
long forgotten civilization .