Moai Statues:
A study warns that rising sea levels could submerge Easter Island’s iconic moai statues by 2080 and it will threaten the island’s cultural identity and tourism economy.
- Moai Statues are massive megalithic stone-carved human-shaped statues found at Easter Island.
- The Easter Island statues are monolithic human figures carved from volcanic rock by the first Polynesian settlers on the island, the Rapa Nui people.
- They were built in approximately 1400 – 1650 A.D. by the natives of this island known as Rapa Nui.
- There are around 1000 Moai statues which are made up of volcanic tuff, the tallest of them being 33 feet.
- They carved them in the likeness of their ancestors.
- They were built to honor chieftains or other important people who had passed away.
- They were placed on rectangular stone platforms called ahu, which are tombs for the people that the statues represented.
- The moais were intentionally made with different characteristics since they were intended to keep the appearance of the person they represented.
- Easter Island is located in the eastern Pacific Ocean. Together with Hawaii and New Zealand, it forms the so-called ‘Polynesian Triangle’, a spearhead-shaped area in the Pacific that is the traditional homeland of the Polynesian people.
