Latest news with #EasterIsland
Daily Mail
12-07-2025
- Science
- Daily Mail
Archaeologists make surprising discovery at Easter Island
More than 2,000 miles off the coast of Chile Easter Island is geographically one of the most isolated places on Earth but a new study has challenged what research previously understood about the island. It was first settled by humans around AD 1200, who built its famous enlarged head statues. Historically, the original inhabitants, known as the Rapa Nui, were assumed to have long been completely shut off from the wider world. However, a new study by researchers in Sweden challenges this long-held narrative. Research say the 63.2 sq mile island in the southern Pacific was not quite as isolated over the past 800 years as previously thought. In fact, the island was populated with multiple waves of new inhabitants who bravely traversed the Pacific Ocean from west to east. Study author Professor Paul Wallin at Uppsala University said: 'Easter Island was settled from central East Polynesia around AD 1200-1250. 'The Polynesians were skilled sailors so double canoes were used.' Due to its remote location, Easter Island is traditionally assumed to have remained socially and culturally isolated from the wider Pacific world. This idea is reinforced by the fact that Easter Island's famous Moai statues, estimated to have been built between AD 1250 and 1500, are completely unique to the location. The huge human figures carved from volcanic rock were placed on rectangular stone platforms called 'ahu' – essentially tombs for the people that the statues represented. For their study, the team at Uppsala University compared archaeological data and radiocarbon dates from settlements, ritual spaces and monuments across Polynesia, the collection of more than 1,000 islands in the Pacific Ocean. Their results, published in the journal Antiquity, show that similar ritual practices and monumental structures have been observed across Polynesia. The experts point out that ahu stone platforms were historically constructed at Polynesian islands further to the west. These rectangular clearings were communal ritual spaces that, in some places, remain sacred to this day. Wallin added: 'The temple grounds ahu [also known as marae] exist on all East Polynesian islands.' The team agree that an early population of people spread from the west of the Pacific to the east before encountering Easter Island and populating it around AD 1200. However, they argue that Easter Island was populated several times by new seafarers – not just once by one group who remained isolated for centuries as previously assumed. The paper reads: 'The migration process from West Polynesian core areas such as Tonga and Samoa to East Polynesia is not disputed here. 'Still, the static west-to-east colonization and dispersal suggested for East Polynesia and the idea that Rapa Nui was only colonized once in the past and developed in isolation is challenged.' Based on their evidence, they also think ahu originated on Easter Island before the trend spread east to west across other western Polynesian islands during the period of AD 1300-1600. It was only after this that Polynesian islands – including but not limited to Easter Island – might have become isolated from each other. As hierarchical social structures developed independently – at Easter Island, Tahiti and Hawai'i for example – large, monumental structures were built to display power. Overall, the study indicates there were robust 'interaction networks' between Polynesian islands, which allowed the transfer of new ideas from east to west and back again. Ultimately, THE arrival of European explorers at Easter Island in the 18th century led to a rapid decline of the population, brought on by murder, bloody conflict, and the brutal slave trade – although the population there may have already been weakening. Today, Easter Island is a UNESCO World Heritage Site with only a few thousand inhabitants. But it attracts large numbers of tourists, largely thanks to its monumental and world-famous stone statues that stare sternly out over the island. Tourism, which has grown exponentially on the island over the last 20 years, has come at a price, according to co-author Professor Helene Martinsson-Wallin. She said: 'When I was there in the 1980s, the sandy beach was white and there were almost no people around. 'When I came back in the early 00s, I thought the sand looked blue, and when I looked closer I saw that it was due to tiny, tiny pieces of plastic washed up by the sea from every corner of the Earth.'
Yahoo
10-07-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Archaeologists Make Groundbreaking Easter Island Discovery
Groundbreaking research undertaken by Uppsala University and published in the journal Antiquity (via Ancient Origins) has rewritten previously held beliefs about the remote society of Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island. Rapa Nui has long been seen as the epitome of a remote community, with historical records indicating that it developed in isolation without other Polynesian communities after it was established in 1200 A.D. However, the new research has found that Rapa Nui was influential in the development of other East Polynesian cultures and influenced the passing of some ceremonial ideals across the Pacific. Using radiocarbon dating, experts in Pacific archaeology Paul Wallin and Helene Martinsson-Wallin found that marae temple structures—intricate rectangular clearings which were used for community ceremonies—originated on Rapa Nui rather than on one of the connected islands, as was previously believed. 'The most important finding is that, based on C-14 dating, we can observe an initial west-to-east spread of ritual ideas," Wallin explained. "However, the complex, unified ritual spaces (known as marae) show earlier dates in the east."The results show that the Polynesian islands were far more interconnected and sophisticated than previously thought. It is believed that since ceremonial practices made their way from Rapa Nui to other Pacific settlements indicates a high level of maritime activity operating in the Polynesian islands, which pushes against any ideas of isolationism. "The migration process from West Polynesian core areas such as Tonga and Samoa to East Polynesia is not disputed here," the study reads. "Still, the static west-to-east colonization and dispersal suggested for East Polynesia and the idea that Rapa Nui was only colonized once in the past and developed in isolation is challenged." The study has largely reconceived how history views Rapa Nui and the Polynesian islands, and challenges commonly accepted ideas about the movement and development of ritual temple sites in East Polynesia," according to Wallen. 'The findings suggest a more complex pattern than previously thought. Initially, it has been shown that ritual ideas spread from west to east. Later, more elaborate temple structures developed on Easter Island, which then influenced other parts of East Polynesia in an east-to-west movement."Archaeologists Make Groundbreaking Easter Island Discovery first appeared on Men's Journal on Jul 9, 2025
Yahoo
08-07-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
A New Study Has Upended One of Easter Island's Greatest Myths
Here's what you'll learn when you read this story: A new study suggests that the island of Rapa Nui, otherwise known as Easter Island, didn't develop in the extreme manner of isolation that we thought. By comparing archeological data and radiocarbon dating, professors from Uppsala University were able to break down the development of ritual practices throughout Rapa Nui and the rest of East Polynesia into three distinct phases. These phases suggested a greater interconnected network between the islands than had been previously identified, and challenges the idea that the transfer of cultural developments occurred only in a west-to-east pattern, and only at a singular time. For centuries, the hundreds of mysterious monuments on the small island of Rapa Nui—including the iconic monolithic statues known as the moai—have offered a glimpse into a past we still don't fully understand. While researchers generally agree that Polynesians first settled the island by migrating from west to east, a new study suggests that what happened next may not have been as isolated as once thought. As notes, it's hard to believe these islands all developed independently after the initial wave of eastward expansion—especially given the striking similarities in their monuments and the evidence of shared ritual practices. To determine how, exactly, these similar practices came to be, Paul Wallin and Helene Martinsson-Wallin of Uppsala University analyzed and compared radiocarbon dating and archaeological data from ritual spaces and other monument sites throughout East Polynesia. Get the Issue Get the Issue Get the Issue Get the Issue Get the Issue Get the Issue Get the IssueGet the Issue Get the Issue Their findings, published by Cambridge University Press, categorize the development of ritual practices in East Polynesia into three distinct periods of activity that challenge the traditional view of a one-time, west-to-east colonization and the idea that Rapa Nui developed in complete isolation. The first phase, which the scientists say occurred between 1000–1300 A.D., stems from that initial west-to-east expansion. In this period, they summarize, 'we see that ritual space is expressed through actions, such as burials and feasting, and these spaces are marked by a stone upright.' As each new area was settled, they demonstrated similarities in 'structure and organisation of settlement, ritual space and language-use.' But, crucially, Wallin and Martinsson-Wallin found that 'during the initial settlement expansion, interaction networks were established in East Polynesia that in many cases maintained continuous contact with their homeland population.' In the second phase, dated approximately 1300–1600 A.D., 'ritual actions materialised into clearly visible and more complex ahu/marae structures.' Wallin and Martinsson-Wallin suggest this evolution in ritual practices was done with an eye toward memorializing not just various deities, but lost loved ones as well. 'Ideas surrounding the materialisation of ideology expanded through established networks in the south-eastern Pacific, from the Pitcairn Islands in the east to the Society Islands,' they note. 'Genetic studies also indicate contact between the Central Pacific area and Rapa Nui in the fourteenth century.' That means that, during these initial two phases, Rapa Nui had contact with others 'at least twice,' and that 'connections to islands west of Rapa Nui are apparent.' The third phase is where the interconnectedness of these islands apparently diminished in favor of 'internal vertical hierarchies' and the power struggles therein. The scientists note that while these internal hierarchies had already begun to manifest in some islands in the second phase (placing Rapa Nui's hierarchical expressions emerging around 1350–1450 A.D.), in this phase, hierarchies 'developed independently and rapidly in large fertile island groups such as the Society Islands, c. 1600–1767, and Hawai'i, c. AD 1580–1640.' In this phase, island ritual sites expanded into megalithic structures, as local power expanded throughout the individual islands. 'While a shared ideology spread between islands with initial settlers,' the study authors conclude, 'the development of ritual places was affected by external input in the second phase, and in the third they materialised into highly visible, monumental ritual places of stone due to social hierarchisation in local settings.' Get the Guide Get the Guide Get the Guide Get the Guide Get the Guide Get the Guide Get the Guide You Might Also Like The Do's and Don'ts of Using Painter's Tape The Best Portable BBQ Grills for Cooking Anywhere Can a Smart Watch Prolong Your Life?
Daily Mail
08-07-2025
- Science
- Daily Mail
Archaeologists make surprising discovery at Easter Island - turning everything we know on its head
There's no doubt Easter Island is geographically one of the most isolated places on Earth. More than 2,000 miles off the coast of Chile, it was first settled by humans around AD 1200, who built its famous enlarged head statues. Historically, the original inhabitants, known as the Rapa Nui, were assumed to have long been completely shut off from the wider world. However, a new study by researchers in Sweden challenges this long-held narrative. They say the 63.2 sq mile island in the southern Pacific was not quite as isolated over the past 800 years as previously thought. In fact, the island was populated with multiple waves of new inhabitants who bravely traversed the Pacific Ocean from west to east. 'Easter Island was settled from central East Polynesia around AD 1200-1250,' study author Professor Paul Wallin at Uppsala University told MailOnline. 'The Polynesians were skilled sailors so double canoes were used.' Due to its remote location, Easter Island is traditionally assumed to have remained socially and culturally isolated from the wider Pacific world. This idea is reinforced by the fact that Easter Island's famous Moai statues, estimated to have been built between AD 1250 and 1500, are unique to the location. The huge human figures carved from volcanic rock were placed on rectangular stone platforms called 'ahu' – essentially tombs for the people that the statues represented. For their study, the team at Uppsala University compared archaeological data and radiocarbon dates from settlements, ritual spaces and monuments across Polynesia, the collection of more than 1,000 islands in the Pacific Ocean. Their results, published in the journal Antiquity, show that similar ritual practices and monumental structures have been observed across Polynesia. The experts point out that ahu stone platforms were historically constructed at Polynesian islands further to the west. These rectangular clearings were communal ritual spaces that, in some places, remain sacred to this day. 'The temple grounds ahu [also known as marae] exist on all East Polynesian islands,' Professor Wallin added. EASTER ISLAND TIMELINE 13th century: Easter Island (Rapa Nui) is settled by Polynesian seafarers. Construction on some parts of the island's monuments begins. Early 14th to mid-15th centuries: Rapid increase in construction 1600: The date that was long-thought to mark the decline of Easter Island culture. Construction was ongoing. 1770: Spanish seafarers landed on the island. The island is in good working order. 1722: Dutch seafarers land on the island for the first time. Monuments were in use for rituals and showed no evidence of societal decay. 1774: British explorer James Cook arrives on Rapa Nui His crew described an island in crisis, with overturned monuments. The team agree that an early population of people spread from the west of the Pacific to the east before encountering Easter Island and populating it around AD 1200. But they argue that Easter Island was populated several times by new seafarers – not just once by one group who remains isolated for centuries as previously assumed. 'The migration process from West Polynesian core areas such as Tonga and Samoa to East Polynesia is not disputed here,' they say in their paper. 'Still, the static west-to-east colonization and dispersal suggested for East Polynesia and the idea that Rapa Nui was only colonized once in the past and developed in isolation is challenged.' Based on their evidence, they also think ahu originated on Easter Island before the trend spread east to west across other western Polynesian islands during the period of AD 1300-1600. It was only after this that Polynesian islands – including but not limited to Easter Island – might have become isolated from each other. As hierarchical social structures developed independently – at Easter Island, Tahiti and Hawai'i for example – large, monumental structures were built to display power. Overall, the study indicates there were robust 'interaction networks' between Polynesian islands, which allowed the transfer of new ideas from east to west and back again. Ultimately, arrival of European explorers at Easter Island in the 18th century led to a rapid decline of the population, brought on by murder, bloody conflict and the brutal slave trade – although the population there may have already been weakening. Today, Easter Island is a UNESCO World Heritage Site with only a few thousand inhabitants. But it attracts large numbers of tourists, largely thanks to its monumental and world-famous stone statues that stare sternly out over the island. Tourism, which has grown exponentially on the island over the last 20 years, has come at a price, according to co-author Professor Helene Martinsson-Wallin. 'When I was there in the 1980s, the sandy beach was white and there were almost no people around,' she said. 'When I came back in the early 00s, I thought the sand looked blue, and when I looked closer I saw that it was due to tiny, tiny pieces of plastic washed up by the sea from every corner of the Earth.' WHAT ARE THE STATUES ON EASTER ISLAND AND WHAT DO THEY MEAN? What are the statues? The Moai are monolithic human figures carved by the Rapa Nui people on Easter Island, between 1,250 and 1,500 AD. All the figures have overly-large heads and are thought to be living faces of deified ancestors. The 887 statues gaze inland across the island with an average height of 13ft (four metres). Nobody really knows how the colossal stone statues that guard Easter Island were moved into position. Nor why during the decades following the island's discovery by Dutch explorers in 1722, each statue was systematically toppled, or how the population of Rapa Nui islanders was decimated. Shrouded in mystery, this tiny triangular landmass, stranded in the middle of the South Pacific and 1,289 miles from its nearest neighbour, has been the subject of endless books, articles and scientific theories. All but 53 of the Moai were carved from tuff , compressed volcanic ash, and around 100 wear red pukao of scoria. What do they mean? In 1979 archaeologists said the statues were designed to hold coral eyes. The figures are believed to be symbol of authority and power. They may have embodied former chiefs and were repositories of spirits or 'mana'. They are positioned so that ancient ancestors watch over the villages, while seven look out to sea to help travellers find land. But it is a mystery as to how the vast carved stones were transported into position. In their remote location off the coast of Chile, the ancient inhabitants of Easter Island were believed to have been wiped out by bloody warfare, as they fought over the island's dwindling resources. All they left behind were the iconic giant stone heads and an island littered with sharp triangles of volcanic glass, which some archaeologists have long believed were used as weapons.
BBC News
04-07-2025
- BBC News
Is this the end for Easter Island's moai statues?
Easter Island's famous moai statues are crumbling into the sea, forcing locals to face urgent decisions about how best to protect their heritage. In an ancient quarry on top of a volcano on a remote Pacific island, half-finished figures hewn into the rock ignore Maria Tuki as she walks by. The rugged faces of these figures sport world-famous furrowed brows and sloping noses. This is the land of the moai, iconic human statues unique to Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island – an isolated island around the size of Washington DC situated 3,500km (2,170 miles) off the coast of Chile. Before my visit, I expected to see just a couple of these famous faces at designated tourist sites. But the sheer number of the moai is breathtaking; bits of them are strewn alongside roads, bordering the coast, and shouldering hills. Together, they form a real physical reminder of this land's ancient history. Centuries ago, Tuki's ancestors carved and chiselled many hundreds of monoliths like the ones here. Evidence of that activity is everywhere, both in the heavily worked quarry itself, where some still remain deeply embedded in the mountain, and in the surrounding land, where finished statues lie abandoned, forming paths to the island's edge. It is thought that teams of workers sometimes lost their grip while transporting the statues to the stone platforms dotted around the coast. At first glance, the imposing moai, with their stern expressions, seem hardy. But they are made from tuff, a volcanic rock largely composed of compressed ash. This type of stone is porous and unusually soft. The wind and rain do not treat it kindly. Up close, the aging visages of the moai are riddled with signs of erosion and staining. They are gradually wearing away to dust. Tuki, who works in Rapa Nui's tourism industry, is essentially watching these stunning figures slowly disappear. "My father told me that the moai would go back into the ocean one day," she says. Tuki's father, who died in 2020, was a famed contemporary moai sculptor. The original statues, mostly carved between 1100 and 1600AD, are increasingly the subject of conservation efforts, given that weathering – supercharged by climate change – threatens to destroy them. Community leaders in Rapa Nui are looking for ways to track and mitigate the damage, trying everything from chemical treatments to making 3D scans of the statues using drones before they are lost. All options are on the table as the community grapples with how to manage its rapidly changing heritage – from relocating them out of harm's way to allowing them to succumb to it, as some argue is part of the moai's lifecycle. There are roughly 1,000 statues on the island in various stages of completion, with about 200 perched on their final platforms, known as ahu. The majority of these platforms are positioned along the island's coast, staring silently out to sea. The moai were created by the first communities of Polynesian people living on the island to represent the likenesses of their ancestors and the family of chief Hotu Matu'a, who is thought to have first settled the island after canoeing to Rapa Nui from an island in East Polynesia. At some point in the late 18th and early 19th Century, the statues were all mysteriously toppled, likely because a new religious movement took hold on the island, or possibly because of some conflict – historians have yet to find definitive answers. Due to the formidable history etched in these huge stone statues, in 1995 the Rapa Nui National Park was listed as a Unesco World Heritage site. Still, the moai aren't perfect and pristine statues, shielded from their surroundings. In fact, they began deteriorating as soon as they were carved, according to the 1997 book Death of a Moai by historian Elena Charola. The tuff was stressed as it was chipped and pecked out of the quarry, chafed by ropes, then scratched and scraped on the long journey downhill, Charola writes. From the day they were erected, the sun, wind, rain and vagaries of temperature have also taken their toll on the moai. When moisture from sea spray evaporates, salt crystallises inside the soft volcanic tuff expands, causing the statue to flake or spall, creating hairline cracks and honeycomb-shaped cavities. I notice lichens growing on the surface of many of the statues, with the appearance of concentric rashes. Animals interfere with the moai, too. Horses and cattle scratch their itches on the monoliths while birds claw into the tuff and deposit toxic droppings, or guano, which erodes the material yet further. In 2020, a truck accidentally crashed into one of the faces. Crucially, though, weathering of the moai appears to have increased sharply during recent decades, Daniela Meza Marchant, lead conservator for the Ma'u Henua Indigenous community that runs the Rapa Nui National Park, has said. She noted that images and records from the past century show alteration has increased over the past 50 years compared to the previous 50. In fact, according to a 2016 Unesco report, the Rapa Nui's moai are among the heritage sites most affected by climate change worldwide. Over the last few decades, rainfall on Rapa Nui has decreased radically, becoming more sporadic but also more potent, pummelling the moai more aggressively than before. The island already has little tree coverage, but frequent droughts have dried up freshwater reserves and can boost the risk of wildfires. One wildfire in October 2022 charred and cracked some 80 moai in Rano Raraku, the volcanic crater that contains the famous quarry where many monoliths were carved. The resulting damage was "irreparable and with consequences beyond what you can see with your eyes", local authorities said at the time. Rising sea levels and increased extreme wave events are also eroding the island. This is one of the most imminent threats to the moai, the Unesco report states, as more than 90% of the standing monoliths are positioned along the coast. People have tried to save the moai before. Over two decades starting in the 1970s, American archaeologist William Mulloy carried out several restoration efforts on the island, re-erecting statues and reassembling fragmented platforms which had been toppled en masse in the early 1800s. In the 1990s, a site called Tongariki that had been swept away by a tsunami during the 1960s had its moai erected again by local archaeologists. More recently, in 2003 a Japanese-funded Unesco project waterproofed the Tongariki statues with a chemical agent designed to make the tuff more resistant to sea spray. However, the expensive and delicate treatment must be reapplied every five to 10 years, a burden on the few local resources available. Several other locations are pending this preventive intervention, according to local magazine moeVarua Rapa Nui. Some conservation efforts, though, have gone wrong. In 1986, researchers from the Senckenberg Natural History Museum in Germany made silicone moulds of the statues in an effort to make replicas, but inadvertently peeled off a surface layer of tuff from the monoliths, eroding the statues even more. "The colour of the stone was completely altered," notes one study about the incident. Today, moai preservation is steadily improving, aided by new technology and occasional funds from international organisations. To try to counter the impacts of sea level rise, in 2018, local archaeologists reinforced two seawall-like structures by a moai site called Runga Va'e to prevent waves encroaching onto the ahu platform. They also pieced back together parts of the platform, which had crumbled over time, and reinforced it. The team used drones to make 3D scans of the area, allowing them to plan restoration and conservation work without having to do large, invasive digging operations. US-based non-profit CyArk has also helped the Rapanui people to create accurate 3D models of all the island's ahu and moai using drones, cameras and laser scanners. "You're taking thousands of these overlapping photos and then creating a 3D model taking the points in common between different photos," says Kacey Hadick, CyArk's heritage programme manager who has worked on the island since 2017. "This can help monitor changes over time, rates of erosion, and gives a really good record of what the current state of things are." In 2023 Unesco's undersecretary of cultural heritage Carolina Pérez Dattari allocated $97,000 (£72,000) for damage assessment, repair and future risk management plans for the moai scorched by wildfires in 2022. After an initial analysis, in May 2025, the Ma'u Henua team began the physical conservation work for this project on five of the most fire-damaged moai, says Ariki Tepano Martin, the Ma'u Henua president. More like this:• How the history of humans is written into the fabric of the Earth• The archaeological mystery of Stonehenge's long-lost megaliths• How ancient Maya cities have withstood the ravages of time Their lead conservator Meza Marchant assembled canopies to shield the moai from weather conditions and reduce their moisture levels. She is now treating the fire damage with a chemical solution concocted for the moai by stonework restorers from the University of Florence, who've been working with the Rapanui since 2009. The Italian experts have already tested the solution on small rock fragments from the charred moai in their laboratories: the liquid acts like a gentle but thorough wash that cleans off the black soot from the flames. Meza Marchant will also use other similar chemical treatments developed by the Italians to strengthen the stone, rid it of lichens with an antibiotic-like treatment, and make it water-repellent, protecting it from sea spray and rain damage, similar to the glaze used on the Tongariki, says Tepano Martin. Constant monitoring is carried out to verify whether the treatment is producing the expected results, in the hopes of halting the ongoing deterioration of the moai. High import taxes on these specialist chemicals from Italy, though, have made this operation harder than predicted, Tepano Martin says. Eight years ago, Meza Marchant used some of these Italian techniques to restore the Ahu Huri a Urenga, a rare moai with four hands which is one of the few perched atop a platform on the interior part of the island. The statue, which stands along the winter solstice line and was used for astronomical observations, was re-erected by archaeologists in the 1970s after the 18th Century topplings, but became eroded over time. Once the five moai have been conserved, the Ma'u Henua group aims to use them as a blueprint for all future monolith conservation and restoration projects on the island. Until now, "every hole, every bit of maintenance, required a special permit", says Tepano Martin. "The project with these five moai will help us generate a moai conservation protocol so we no longer need to request permission moai by moai each time." Still, they only have financing for these first five moai. Cognisant of the environmental threats, Tuki and her husband, who also works in tourism, tell me some locals believe the moai would be better preserved in museums. A new museum is currently under construction on the island, and plans suggest it will likely host and protect some moai statues. As we trek up the volcanic hill of a ceremonial village called Orongo, they show me some of the island's most eroded and ruined artefacts: ceremonial hieroglyphs on large slabs of stone around the village. A special moai used to sit atop this hill: the Hoa Hakananai'a statue, which has unique hieroglyphs across its back. The statue was taken from Rapa Nui by British sailors in 1868 and is on display in the British Museum in London. Considering the frailty of these hieroglyphs in particular, Tuki and her husband say some locals believe the statue is safer in London, guarded by security cameras, a glass encasement and humidity gauges. Arguably, the couple says, the Hoa Hakananai'a also serves as an ambassador for Rapanui culture to the hundreds of thousands of people who might be able to visit the museum, but not this remotest of islands. Many locals, on the other hand, are adamant that the statue should be repatriated. For others, though, destruction of the monoliths is simply part of the moai's lifecycle. "Many believe the moai should, as they are, go into the ground and disappear. Let the moai go to their hanua, their land, and let them go back home," says Dale Simpson Jr, an archaeologist at University Illinois Urbana-Champaign in the US who studies Polynesian carving tools. He notes that many communities across the Pacific destroy artefacts and regalia purposefully. "Everything's on a lifecycle, and it begins and it ends. We may see it as destruction, but it's the life line of a statue." Some Rapa Nui locals fervently disagree, however. For them, the moai represent a cornerstone of cultural heritage and an irreplaceable masterpiece of scientific and historical human creativity. They also attract more than 100,000 visitors to Rapa Nui annually, where tourism has become the main driver of the economy. "Their preservation is not merely desirable, it is absolutely imperative," says archaeologist Claudio Cristino-Ferrando from the University of Chile, who is based in Rapa Nui. He thinks standing by and watching these monumental works deteriorate is "entirely untenable" and the idea of their "return to nothingness" misguided. "Such thinking contradicts not only our fundamental duty as custodians of human cultural heritage but also the original intent of Rapa Nui tradition itself," he says – that the moai should serve as testaments of the Polynesian ancestors' arrival on the island. Amidst this debate, the Ma'u Henua group aims to take a multi-pronged approach to ensure the best chances of keeping moai statues on the island, combining conservation with support for the ongoing creation of new artefacts. Alongside the group's conservation work, Tepano Martin hopes to develop programmes that incentivise local artisans to continue making moai and to pass on traditional tuff carving techniques to younger generations. Some of the moai sculpted by Tuki's father can already be found standing more than two metres (6.6ft) tall outside the island's airport. They were also sent to represent the Rapanui people in Santiago and Valparaíso in mainland Chile, and to Spain and Japan. "It's not just about protecting the moai, we're protecting the moai to ensure the preservation of our people on this island," says Tepano Martin. "Our culture lives on. It is still alive, and we can preserve our ancestors' tradition by creating something new." -- For essential climate news and hopeful developments to your inbox, sign up to the Future Earth newsletter, while The Essential List delivers a handpicked selection of features and insights twice a week. For more Culture stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
