Moai Statues of the Easter Island

Easter Island is famous with Moai. Moai are carved of human figures on the rock, which are located in Polynesian island of Easter Island, Chile. Moai are like a statue, which were carved mostly between circa 1250 CE and 1500 CE. There are about 887 moai, and 53 of the Moai known to date were carved from compressed volcanic ash.

The statues' production and transportation is considered a remarkable intellectual, creative, and physical feat. The tallest moai erected, called Paro, was almost 10 metres (33 ft) high and weighed 75 tonnes, 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 meters (69 ft) tall with a weight of about 270 tons.

Nearly half are still at Rano Raraku, the main moai quarry, but hundreds were transported from there and set on stone platforms called ahu around the island's perimeter. Almost all moai have overly large heads three-fifths the size of their bodies. The moai are chiefly the living faces (aringa ora) of deified ancestors (aringa ora ata tepuna). The statues still gazed inland across their clan lands when Europeans first visited the island, but most would be cast down during later conflicts between clans.

The moai are included on the 1994 list of UNESCO World Heritage sites and consequently the 1972 UN convention concerning the protection of the world's cultural and natural heritage.

The EISP (Easter Island Statue Project) is the latest research and documentation project of the moai on Rapa Nui and the artifacts held in museums overseas. The purpose of the project is to understand the figures' original use, context, and meaning, with the results being provided to the Rapa Nui families and the island's public agencies that are responsible for conservation and preservation of the moai.
In 2008, a Finnish tourist chipped a piece off the ear of one moai. The tourist was fined $17,000 in damages and was banned from the island for three years.