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 ...

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 ...

How did the first inhabitants of Easter Island arrive? It is the most remote ... by the stars. They had no maps, no sextants, no compasses, and navigated by observing the ocean and sky, reading ...

Rapa Nui, the indigenous name of Easter Island, bears witness to a unique cultural phenomenon ... this society built shrines and erected enormous stone figures known as moai, which created an ...

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 ...

There is no place in the world like Easter Island ... by the hundreds of massive moai, monolithic statues carved from volcanic rocks that are found across the island. These monoliths are just ...