Others stand upright with their head and shoulders above ground ... the largest ahu complex on Easter Island with 15 moai statues. We first saw it from above while walking through Rano Raraku.

According to archaeologist Jo Anne Van Tilburg—who is the founder of UCLA's Easter Island Statue Project and has studied the artifacts for nearly 30 years—about 95 percent of the statues were ...

By Cook’s time, the islanders had toppled many of their statues and were neglecting those left standing. But the art of Easter Island still ... is dwarfed by a stone head as he stops to lean ...

and the statues remain sacred vessels. Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen landed here on Easter Sunday in 1722, the first European known to visit the island, but only stayed for one day. By the time ...

With one rope around the head of the statue and another ... rough terrain is 320 feet per day for a 20-ton statue. Moai: Two original Easter Island moais: nine feet, five tons and 13 feet, nine ...

On average, they stand 13 feet high and weigh 14 tons, human heads-on-torsos carved in the male form from rough hardened volcanic ash. The islanders call them "moai," and they have puzzled ...

Archaeologists believe they have solved one ancient mystery surrounding the famous Easter Island statues. At 2,500 miles off the coast of Chile, the island is one of the world's most remote places ...

Today we're on an island far out in the Pacific ... their beaks touching at the back of the statue's neck. On the back of the statue's head are two stylised canoe paddles, each with what looks ...

He shakes his head. “How did they do it ... by UCLA archaeologist Jo Anne Van Tilburg, director of the Easter Island Statue Project—but that required both a lot of wood and a lot of ...

Stone; from Easter Island (Rapa Nui) Today we're on an island ... On the back of the statue's head are two stylised canoe paddles, each with what looks like a miniature version of our statue's ...