Five hundred years ago, on the southern slopes of Easter Island's Rano Raraku volcano, the Rapa Nui people skillfully carved ...

The islanders call them "moai," and they have puzzled ethnographers, archaeologists, and visitors to the island since the first European explorers arrived here in 1722. In their isolation ...

From the 10th to the 16th century this society built shrines and erected enormous stone figures known as moai, which created an unrivalled cultural landscape that continues to fascinate people ...

The volcanic crater is made of tuff, a soft volcanic rock ideal for carving. From 1100 to 1500 AD, roughly one thousand moai statues were carved from the crater's eastern slope. The statues honor ...

At Anakena seven potbellied moai stand at attention on a 52-foot-long stone platform—backs to the Pacific, arms at their sides, heads capped with tall pukao of red scoria, another volcanic rock.

ROCK IT, standing up ... is the question of how the Rapanui people transported the multi-ton statues, or moai, from their quarries to their final ceremonial ahu sites around the island.