The moai, locally called mo’ai, are the monumental statues of Easter Island. Most of these monoliths are carved from tuff, mainly sourced from the Rano Raraku quarry.
Rapa Nui, or Easter Island
Some, however, were sculpted from other volcanic rocks found on the island (basalt, trachyte, or volcanic tuff). Their size ranges from 2.5 to 9 meters, with an average weight of 14 tons, up to 80 tons for the largest ones. All of them are monoliths facing mainly inland, except for the Ahu Akivi, whose moai face the ocean.
The moai, as they were meant to appear in their final state after erection, had white eyes made of coral and red irises in volcanic tuff or black obsidian. Some of them wear a type of headdress, the pukao, made of red tuff from the Puna Pau quarry, which itself weighs several tons.
Until recently, only the heads, necks, and sometimes the top of the torsos of the Moai statues were visible. In 2010 and 2011, a team of archaeologists and volunteers co-directed by Jo Anne Van Tilburg and Cristián Arévalo Pakarati, both inspired by research conducted in 1916 by Katherine Routledge, began excavating 90 statues to study their buried parts.
The findings from these excavations are surprising. More than half of the Moai’s height is buried underground and reveals the existence of a body, arms, and hands. In the statues representing women, often with swollen bellies, the hands are brought forward on each side of the navel, which is interpreted as a symbol of fertility. More astonishingly, the backs of the statues display inscriptions (petroglyphs) that could be an ancient form of writing, along with various carved patterns and shapes.
— Source: Wikipedia
For more details on the Moai excavation and preservation project and to see more photos, visit: www.eisp.org
Samael Aun Weor on Easter Island
“We know well, thanks to ancient traditions, that the human race was made up of GIANTS: giants of Atlantis, giants of Lemuria, giants of the Hyperborean Epoch, giants of the Polar Epoch.”
“Easter Island, which is a remnant of ancient Lemuria, still holds impressive monoliths carved by Titans. Australia is also another remnant of Lemuria: many traditions from the old continent are found there.”
“In Lemuria, any human being could live approximately 12 to 15 centuries, that is, just over a thousand years. It was a strong, vigorous race; one could easily grab a huge stone and throw it far with great force. Today, to move such a stone, we would need a powerful crane, and perhaps even with the crane we wouldn’t succeed. So, the Lemurians were a vigorous, very strong race…”
“Lemuria was inhabited; it is clear that when the giant planet HERCOLUBUS arrived — which, by the way, is also now approaching our Aryan Race — it then caused catastrophic events on the old continent of Mu: volcanic fire burst to the surface, liquid fire burned the Earth’s surface from all sides, horrible earthquakes and gigantic tidal waves destroyed the great cities of the Lemurian continent, and finally, it gradually sank into the raging waves of the Pacific.”
