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 ...

The imposing statues that line the coast of Easter Island have been an enigma ... The volcanic stone figures, called moai in the island’s native Polynesian language, are understood to have ...

Easter Island is home to approximately 1,000 large stone heads, known as Moai, scattered across the island. Hancock argues that the island was settled, and the statues were built about 12,000 ...

Hancock estimates that the statues on Easter Island, known as Moai heads, are likely much older than the platforms, called Ahu Vinapu, on which many of them sit because the structures exhibit ...

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 ...

Among the many secrets buried in Easter Island prehistory is the question of how the Rapanui people transported the multi-ton statues, or moai, from their quarries to their final ceremonial ahu ...

Chile officials say fire damaged some of Easter Island’s iconic moai statues A fire that ripped through part of Chile's Easter Island this week has caused permanent damage to some of its iconic ...

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 ...