The Moai Statues of Easter Island lies 2,300 miles west of South America. The first settlement happened during AD 800 to 1200. The Rapa Nui carved and erected some 900 Moai Statues across the island. The stone blocks were carved into head-and-torso figures, averaging 13 ft, weighing 14 tons. The island’s ecosystem was wrecked mainly due to the cutting of millions of giant palms to clear fields or make fires. This exposed the rich volcanic soils of the island to serious erosion. When the Europeans arrived in 1722, they found the island mostly barren and its inhabitants few. No written and little oral history exists on the island.
The Moai Statues
