Moai Monuments

The islanders themselves call their land Rapa Nui. It was once a flowering, forested land. Around the 15th century, nothing remained of the forests – they were destroyed by the locals, but how and why remains a mystery, as well as moai – huge stone statues up to 20 m high in the form of a head with a neck or with a torso to the waist.

Speaking about the sculptures of Easter Island, most often you have to resort to the expression “according to one of the versions...” Among the theories of the origin of moai there is even an alien. But still the prevailing opinion that the moai - tombstones to the leaders of the tribes. Statues of honorable ancestors were erected over their graves. Locals believed that stone giants protected them from outside invasion and evil forces. At present, there are about nine hundred moai on Rapa Nui: about 200 of them stand and about 700 lie in different parts of the island. In 1770, they were all downed, perhaps by the Rapa Nui themselves during the inter-tribal wars.

The Japanese began to restore the statues in the second half of the XX century. Moai stand on platforms "ahu", the most famous - Ahu Tongariki, where on the ocean coast in a row stand 15 figures. Nearby there is a quarry, where unfinished stone heads remained, and nearby tools were thrown, with the help of which the statues were carved. The Moai weigh several tons, and it is unclear how they were transported from the quarry to various parts of the island. Most likely, the builders used wooden sleds and bars, cutting down the forest, as a result of which the skeleton became almost barren.

The question is still open who the islanders themselves are, where they came from and when they settled the island. The famous explorer and traveler Thor Heyerdahl believed that people came here partly from Polynesia, partly from South America, possibly from Peru. In order to prove this theory, Heyerdahl, along with several enthusiasts, sailed from the coast of Peru to Easter Island on the homemade Kon-Tiki raft in 1947. Modern archaeologists, based on linguistic, botanical and anthropometric studies, claim that people came here from the Marquesas Islands or Pitcairn. There is a third theory, the most recent, according to which the Spanish ship San Lesmems disappeared near Tahiti in 1536. Easter Island may have been inhabited by a lost team of Basques. By the way, genetic testing has shown the presence of Basque genes in the blood of the islanders, so scientists have yet to solve this mystery.