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The part of the island (Paro)
Paro is the island's largest transported moai.
Lying face down, toppled from its ahu,
Paro weighs 82 tons and is 32.45 feet (9.89 meters) long.
Some theorists estimate it could have taken
400-500 hundred people
to move Paro. -
History
The island was occupied by Polynesians, probably from the islands of Mangareva or Pitcairn. With the reconstruction of genealogies of oral tradition shows that it was in the fifth century came the first king Hotu Matúa. Based on these oral traditions, there are two opposing ethnic groups: the long ears and short ears. The island was developed, in their isolation and scarce resources, a relatively advanced and complex civilization. It remains a mystery to the technique used to transport and lift -
Agriculture
In addition to marine resources as the Polynesians introduced domestic poultry chicken (moa), a species that had an important economic and ritual. Even today you can see the chicken houses (hare moa), stone structures built for their protection.
Agriculture was an important economic activity and was developed from plant resources introduced by the settlers, with a technology that allowed face the terrain and weather conditions. -
Characteristic of the Moais
Some of the Moai have red topknots on (photo below),
not hats any people suppose.These topknots supposedly represent the fashionable hairstyle of the time. Some of these topknots are more than two meters tall themselves, weighing several tons on their own. -
Jacob Roggeveen
Was a Dutch explorer who was sent to find Terra Australis, but he instead came across Easter Island by chance. -
Population of the Easter Island
The population of Easter Island peaked at around 10,000 in 1600, while the quality of life continued to decline.
Then the population crashed.When the island was " discovered" in the 1722, it population was below 2,000. -
Craftsmen
The moai were either carved by a distinguished class of professional carvers who were comparable in status to high-ranking members of other Polynesian craft guilds, or, alternatively, by members of each clan. The oral histories show that the Rano Raraku quarry was subdivided into different territories for each clan. -
Markings (post stone working)
When first carved, the surface of the moai was polished smooth by rubbing with pumice. Unfortunately, the easily worked tuff from which most moai were carved is also easily eroded, and, today, the best place to see the surface detail is on the few moai carved from basalt or in photographs and other archaeological records of moai surfaces protected by burial. -
Eyes of Moai
n 1979, Sergio Rapu Haoa and a team of archaeologists discovered that the hemispherical or deep elliptical eye sockets were designed to hold coral eyes with either black obsidian or red scoria pupils.[citation needed] The discovery was made by collecting and reassembling broken fragments of white coral that were found at the various sites. Subsequently, previously uncategorized finds in the Easter Island museum were re-examined and recategorized as eye fragments. -
Moai
Are statues carved from volcanic ash with Easter Island, west of Chile. All the statues are monolithic, that is carved in one piece. More than 600 moai known are distributed throughout the island. Most were carved in the rock quarry at Rano Raraku, where there are nearly 400 moai more in various stages of construction. -
Geography Physics
Easter Island is of volcanic origin. It occupies an area of 163 km2. The triangular shape is explained by the conjunction of three volcanoes: Poike, Rano Kao and Terevaka Maunga.
The climate is subtropical. -
Go to the island.
The geographic coordinates of the island are 27 ° 7 '10 "S, 109 ° 21' 17" Or (and) 27 ° 7 '10 "N, 109 ° 21' 17" O (map). You can find about the same latitude of the Chilean city of Caldera. The fact that 3600 km far from the Chilean coast to the east and 2075 km west of Pitcairn Island makes it the farthest point from Earth to another, which in the past contributed to its isolation from the rest of the world, turning it over in the western region of Chile.
