Landmark Easter Island map 'unlocks the mystery' of giant Moai heads
SOURCE:ABC Australia|BY:Luke Cooper
A study using 11,600 aerial drone photos to map a mountainous quarry in 3D reveals more about how the island's famed stone sentinels were created and moved to their final resting places.
The creation and excavation of Rapa Nui (Easter Island)'s Te Tokanga moai statue was never completed.(Supplied: Carl Philipp Lipo / Binghamton University)
It is laying abandoned, unfinished and idle on the side of a mountain.
The location is a Polynesian island thousands of kilometres from any other land.
It measures almost as long as a B-double truck and weighs about the same as a Boeing 787 Dreamliner.
Te Tokanga measures 21 metres in length and is estimated to weigh more than 200 tonnes.(Supplied: Carl Philipp Lipo / Binghamton University)
This is Te Tokanga.
Rapa Nui's largest statue.
The extent of Te Tokanga's monolithic dimensions and the social organisation of the people who created it have been revealed for the first time, researchers say.
Landmark three-dimensional mapping of an Easter Island quarry has also shed more light on how researchers believe hundreds of other similar statues came to be.
This is what the map reveals.
An island dotted by sculpted heads
Easter Island, a Chilean territory known as Isla de Pascua in Spanish and Rapa Nui by native inhabitants, is a remote volcanic piece of land in the Pacific Ocean.
It is home to almost 1,000 giant stone structures known as Moai, sculpted hundreds of years ago in tribute to local ancestors who experts say date as far back as the 13th century.
Almost 1,000 Moai statues stand on platforms, roads and peaks across Easter Island.(Reuters: Jorge Vega)
Since the arrival of English colonisers on the island in the 18th century, Moai have been found dotting the length and breadth of Rapa Nui.
Steeped in mystery, they sit mostly along the island's coastline and many stand in single file on platforms known as ahu.
How the giant stone heads came to be has long been debated by historians and archaeologists.
Recently published research sheds more light on how the Moai were created.
The study shows Te Tokanga is one of hundreds of unfinished Moai embedded in volcanic rock at a quarry on one of the island's major peaks, Rano Raraku.
The report describes Rano Raraku as "a singular resource, the island's only source of suitable volcanic tuff for statue carving".
Researchers said 3D mapping of the mountain for the first time confirmed earlier studies that found early inhabitants existed in a decentralised society comprised of clans.
Using a process known as photogrammetry, the researchers took more than 11,600 aerial drone images.
Researchers overlapped thousands of drone images to create an interactive map of Rano Raraku and areas where Moai have been found.(Supplied: Carl Philipp Lipo/Binghamton University)
The map reveals 426 unfinished Moai, 341 trenches where blocks of stone had been carved, 133 voids where statues had been created and removed, and five bollards most likely used as anchors for lowering statues down the mountain.
It also helped identify at least 30 unique "workshops" used for quarrying and creating Moai.
Researchers said the workshops were a sign that clans worked independently to excavate stone for the statues.
"The quarry is the cultural heartland of the island — the place that all these statues come from. It's an incredibly important place," one of the study's lead authors, Professor Carl Lipo from New York's Binghamton University, told the ABC.
"Statue construction was something that brought those groups together but also was something that led them to compete with each other about what they're able to achieve.
"It's the combination of cooperation and competition that makes the island remarkably resilient."
How were the Moai carved?
The study says previous efforts to document the Moai on Rano Raraku, using photography, two-dimensional mapping and drawings, limited researchers' understanding of the creation of the statues.
Those reports did not accurately detail the topography of the mountain and the depth of some Moai carvings, the study's authors say.
The latest research began after wildfires ravaged the island in 2022 and damaged some of the Moai, according to Mayor Pedro Edmunds.
The study reveals the Rapa Nui used three unique methods to carve and shape Moai.
Most Moai statues were sculpted face-first so that they formed as if they were on their backs.(Supplied: Carl Philipp Lipo/Binghamton University)
"The most common method (143 examples) involved defining facial details before outlining the head and body," the study said.
"In 120 cases, blocks were completely outlined before detailed carving began. In five instances where cliff faces were near vertical, carvers worked sideways into the cliff.
"The evidence in the quarry shows that initial carving most often began with trenches cut into the bedrock, which, as the process continued, created rectangular blocks."
Many of the unfinished Moai were uncovered alongside one another in deep voids cut into the surface of Rano Raraku.(Supplied: Carl Philipp Lipo/Binghamton University)
Most of the statues were created "in supine position", meaning the Moai took shape laying on their backs and were carved from the top down, the study said.
"What we're really seeing across the quarry is the entire history of statue carving — from the first attempts to the last attempts and all the successes and failures that happened through that," Dr Lipo said.
"These are giant stone figures that are built from several tonnes to up to 82 tonnes in weight and range from a couple of metres in height, up to 10 metres — just gigantic figures.
"The ingenuity of them to create these things that were able to be moved is just spectacular."
Clans 'competed' over Moai creation
Researchers said the natural lay of the mountain limited the amount of physical space available to the Rapa Nui people to excavate Moai at some of the 30 workshops.
That meant Moai were probably carved out of bedrock by teams of between four and six people, while up to 20 others may have helped with additional tasks such as tool and rope production, the study said.
After they were carved from bedrock, Moai were moved across Easter Island and placed on platforms known as ahu.(AP: Esteban Felix)
Dr Lipo said the small production teams were evidence the Rapa Nui consisted of decentralised clans, rather than as a single society.
That likely led to clans competing for superiority by creating the biggest, most impressive Moai possible, Dr Lipo said.
Almost 1,000 Moai statues have been discovered dotting the island landscape of Rapa Nui.(AP: Esteban Felix)
"It really does appear like this island surprisingly has lots of different groups working side by side," he told the ABC.
"[The Moai] represent ancestors, so [the Rapa Nui are] carving these ancestral figures, they're bringing them from the quarry back to their communities … They're varying how they're doing it to show off, but they're sticking within that grammar of competition."
Some Moai were decorated with "pukao" — ceremonial headdresses also carved from bedrock.(AP: Esteban Felix)
Jorge Otero, a specialist in archaeological conservation from the University of Barcelona, has worked on the island assessing damages sustained to Moai in the 2022 fires.
He said he agreed with the report's assessment of the value of the Moai to the local people.
"We went inside [a] crater to make an analysis on Moai and before going inside, the community asked us to stop because they needed to pray and ask ancestors for permission," he told the ABC.
"There is a strong connection with the spiritual path. I believe it's magic.
"[Rapa Nui] is something that you see in many pictures. It's like the Taj Mahal — one of the most iconic places in the world."
How were the Moai transported?
Dr Lipo has worked for more than 20 years to piece together the archaeology, history, ethnography and social organisation of the Rapa Nui people.
Some of that work involved investigating how the populace of Easter Island was physically able to transport gigantic stone heads around the 163-square-kilometre island.
Theories — including the use of wooden logs to roll and stand Moai vertically — have been suggested for decades. But in 2013, Dr Lipo and his colleagues came to another conclusion.
The Moai could "walk".
Dr Lipo's theory was that the Rapa Nui most likely used ropes to rock Moai back and forth and move them forward in a stepping motion.
He said physics and the tests his team conducted proved it could work.
"We started from the archaeological record, saying, 'Well, what are the features of the statues themselves?'" he said.
Their research found some of the Moai were created with convex, D-shaped bases and a slight lean forward, which meant they were unable to stand freely without support.
Dr Lipo says the Moai were "walked" into position, then their bases carved flat so they could stand upright on the ahu.
Researcher tests of the "walking Moai" theory showed small groups could move the statues relatively quickly.(Supplied: Carl Philipp Lipo/Binghamton University)
"The ones that got to the places that they were going could stand straight up, so they obviously changed them and re-carved them," Dr Lipo said.
"The physics makes sense. What we saw experimentally actually works and, as it gets bigger, it still works.
"All the attributes that we see about moving gigantic ones only get more and more consistent the bigger and bigger they get, because it becomes the only way you could move it."
Some Moai were found excavated with a slight forward lean, which aided transport but left them unable to stand without further work.(Supplied: Carl Philipp Lipo/Binghamton University)
Mr Otero said the theory supports what some Rapa Nui told him during his time working on the island.
"According to Rapa Nui philosophy and moral tradition, each Moai during the night walked and placed themselves on ahu, watching over the community," he said.
Professor Lipo's research also showed the Rapa Nui people created makeshift roads to transport the Moai.
Many fallen statues were found along roads extending from Rano Raraku, suggesting the efforts failed many times over long distances, Dr Lipo said.
Fallen Moai at various locations indicate the Rapa Nui people often failed in their efforts to move them.(Supplied: Carl Philipp Lipo/Binghamton University)
"It shows that the Rapa Nui people were incredibly smart. They figured this out,"
he said.
Who was Te Tokanga?
If it were finished, Te Tokanga would have been Rapa Nui's largest standing Moai.
The fact that it remains embedded in Rano Raraku speaks to some of the mystery surrounding the statue, Dr Lipo said.
"The name Te Tokanga means 'residue of a thing' or 'what remains', which suggests this name might not be about a person but what it represents," he said.
Te Tokanga was carved with such dimensions it may not have been able to stand upright if its excavation had been completed.(Supplied: Carl Philipp Lipo / Binghamton University)
"Te Tokanga is an interesting case, as it would have been, if finished, incredibly tall and heavy.
"One of the puzzling things about Te Tokanga is that it does not appear to have been shaped in such a way that it could have been moved — the proportions are wrong, so it would have likely toppled over.
"This might mean the carvers erred in their work or that the Moai was never meant to be moved from the quarry."
Te Tokanga, pictured centre-right, remains embedded in Rano Raraku's volcanic rock and positioned at a slight angle to oversee other nearby Moai.(AFP: Michel Gunther / Biosphoto)
Dr Lipo said Te Tokanga's size and the longevity of the Rapa Nui people in creating other Moai over hundreds of years show how significant the statues were to the island.
"This had to have made sense to these people," he said.
"If people are going to do this over 500 years, from first arrival to when Europeans get there, and then even a little beyond, it had to be something that really mattered to them.
"We're finally putting the puzzle together to really understand that these statue constructions — while they're mysterious and improbable and wild from a Western perspective — made total sense."
Scientific and conservation work to examine and understand Rapa Nui's Moai continues, academics say.(AFP: Stephane Guisard/Novapix/Bridgeman Images)
Posted 3 hours agoThu 1 Jan 2026 at 6:36pm, updated 5 minutes agoThu 1 Jan 2026 at 9:33pm