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The Stone Heads of Rapa Nui

A1 · History & Legends · 2 min

Tap any word to see what it means. With the keyboard: arrows to move and Enter to open.

to Room 5. Please stand in front of the big stone head. This statue is a moai. In English, you say one moai and two moai, with no "s."

The real moai are on Rapa Nui, a small island in the Pacific Ocean. Its other name is Easter Island. There are more than 900 moai on the island. This moai is a copy. It is about four meters tall, like many real ones.

The people of the island made most of the moai between 1250 and 1500. They cut them from soft volcanic rock at an old volcano, Rano Raraku.

Now look at the face. The nose and the ears are long. Many moai are only a head and a body. They have no legs.

A moai is very heavy. A moai of four meters weighs about 12,500 kilos. How did people move it? Some scientists think the moai "walked." People pulled ropes from the left and from the right. The moai rocked from side to side and moved forward. Other scientists have different ideas.

One moai, Hoa Hakananai'a, is in the British Museum in London. It is made of hard basalt, not soft rock.

On the island, most moai look inland, at the villages, not at the sea. Now, a last question. Look at the moai in this room. Where is it looking?