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What do the heads on Easter Island represent?
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.
Are Easter Island heads good luck?
The average size of a Moai statue is 13 feet tall and 14 tons. Built to honour a chieftain or important people the natives believed the spirit of the person would forever watch over the tribe and bring good fortune.
Why are the Easter Island statues a mystery?
What purpose do the statues of Easter island Have? Archaeologists suggest that the statues were a representation of the Polynesian people’s ancestors. The Moai statues face away from the sea and towards the villages, by way of watching over the people. So here at Ahu Tongariki these Moai look over a flat village site.
Whats the meaning of the Easter Island?
Easter Island. noun. an isolated volcanic island in the Pacific, 3700 km (2300 miles) west of Chile, of which it is a dependency: discovered on Easter Sunday, 1722; annexed by Chile in 1888; noted for the remains of an aboriginal culture, which includes gigantic stone figures.
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.”
Is Easter Island safe?
Is Easter Island safe? It’s hard to think of any safer place than Easter Island. Tourists that are victims to violent crimes such as robbery, rape or murder is unheard of. Unless you’re looking for a fight, you can walk by yourself at night without worrying about your safety.
What are 3 facts about Easter Island?
6 interesting Easter Island facts
- No-one knows how the statues were moved.
- The huge heads have (huger) bodies.
- A Finnish tourist once stole a moai ear.
- The statues may have been an antidote to leprosy.
- There is an ugly duckling that no-one can explain.
- The statues were toppled by angry islanders.
What does moai mean?
Moai /ˈmoʊ. aɪ/ ( listen) or moʻai (Spanish: moái, Rapa Nui: moʻai, meaning “statue” in Rapa Nui), are monolithic human figures carved by the Rapa Nui people on Easter Island in eastern Polynesia between the years 1250 and 1500.
Why are there no trees on Easter Island?
When it rains on the island, also known as Rapa Nui, the water rapidly drains through the porous volcanic soil, leaving the grass dry again. That’s one reason why the island at the end of the world has stayed almost entirely bare, with no trees or shrubs.
Why is it called Easter?
In most European languages the feast is called by the words for passover in those languages; and in the older English versions of the Bible the term Easter was the term used to translate passover.
What language is spoken on Easter Island?
Ever since Chile annexed Easter Island more than a century ago, the Spanish language has been chipping away at the Polynesian-based language called Rapa Nui. But these tourists, fuelling the island’s economy, are also diluting the culture they came to see.
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. As of 2011, Rapa Nui’s main source of income derived from tourism, which focuses on the giant sculptures called moai.
Where are the heads of Easter Island located?
The Easter Island Heads and the ceremonial sites remain along the coast and are concentrated in the southeast coast of Easter Island. Here, the moai have a “standardized” design, and researchers believe they were sculpted, transported and lifted between the years 1400 DC and 1600 DC.
What did the Rapa Nui call Easter Island?
The Easter Island heads are known as Moai by the Rapa Nui people who carved the figures in the tropical South Pacific directly west of Chile.
Why are the statues on Easter Island called moai?
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”.
Are there any statues on Easter Island with legs?
Except for one kneeling moʻai, the statues do not have clearly visible legs. All fifteen standing moʻai at Ahu Tongariki. Though moʻai are whole-body statues, they are often referred to as “Easter Island heads” in some popular literature.
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