Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island, is often portrayed in popular culture as an enigma. The rationale is clear: The tiny, ...

D mapping reveals Easter Island's iconic statues were built by competing family clans, not centralized rulers.

The mystery of exactly who built Easter Island's towering stone heads may finally have been solved. Scientists have ...

Unfinished moai attached to bedrock by “keels” along their backs demonstrate how carvers worked underneath from both sides until figures were separated from the source material. This production stage, ...

Unlike other studies, which think they were crafted by a powerful tribe, it's thought that individual clans and families ...

When the Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen landed on Easter Island in 1722, he was puzzled by how the indigenous islanders could have transported the hundreds of colossal stone statues he found studding ...

Researchers say Easter Island's 4-ton moai "walked" across the island -- thanks to physics, ropes and a little ancient choreography -- no magic necessary. Binghamton University Turns out, the heads of ...

Easter Island is famous for its giant monumental statues, called moai, built some 800 years ago and typically mounted on platforms called ahu. Scholars have puzzled over the moai on Easter Island for ...

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For centuries, Easter Island’s famous moai statues have stood guard over the remote volcanic island in the South Pacific, withstanding sun, wind, rain, lichen and even fire. But in the coming decades, ...

Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story: Some of the world’s greatest breakthroughs are found in the most unlikely places, including the soil of Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island.