Easter Island: The Moai and Their Legends

Rapa Nui oral tradition says this is where it began. Anakena was the landing place of Hotu Matu'a, a Polynesian chief who led a two-canoe party here and founded the first settlement on the island. Later it became a ceremonial centre where islanders read from Rongorongo boards. Archaeologists have found traces of settlement at Anakena as early as 1200 CE, though estimates for first settlement range widely. Both of its ahus have since been restored.

Most moai face their village. The seven of Ahu Akivi face the sea. One oral tradition explains why: Hotu Matu'a's priest dreamed that the king's soul flew across the ocean and saw the island. The king sent scouts to find it, and seven of them stayed behind to wait for him. The seven statues of equal size stand in their honour. They were found toppled and later restored.

Here the statues were born. The moai were carved mostly between 1250 and 1500, and the quarry still holds the unfinished giant: 21.6 metres tall, about 270 tonnes. Oral histories say the statues were commanded to walk, and the earliest accounts credit a king, Tuu Ku Ihu, with the help of the god Makemake. Outside the crater, moai stand buried to their shoulders in spoil, and kneeling, bearded Tukuturi looks like no other statue on the island.

Ahu Tongariki is the largest ahu on Easter Island, and it was the capital of the Hotu-iti clan. Its moai were toppled during the island's civil wars, and in 1960 a tsunami caused by an earthquake off Chile swept the platform inland. Archaeologists restored it in the 1990s. It now has fifteen moai, one of them weighing eighty-six tonnes, the heaviest ever erected on the island. All face sunset at the winter solstice.

Orongo was the centre of the birdman cult. Each year a race brought the first sooty tern egg back undamaged from the islet of Motu Nui, and hunters often fell from the cliff or were killed by sharks. The cult's chief god was Makemake, and the winner's patron became the new tangata-manu. Carved birdmen cover the site's rocks. In 1868 the crew of HMS Topaze removed the basalt moai Hoa Hakananai'a from Orongo; it is now in the British Museum.