Moai Statues of Easter Island

Rapa Nui was populated by people of Polynesian origins. It is not known whether these people intentionally went to Rapa Nui to form a colony, or if they were blown off course and marooned there. Based on ethnographic studies and DNA analysis, it is known that this group consisted of no more than 100 people and they arrived sometime around the year 318 of the common era.

The period in which most of the Moai statues were carved and erected fell between the years 1000 and 1650 of the common era. The earliest known Moai was made nearly 500 years earlier.

The first European to visit Rapa Nui was the Dutch admiral Jacob Roggeveen, who anchored off of the island on Easter Sunday in 1722. This is why the European name for Rapa Nui is Easter Island.

Roggeveen had been searching for the Southern Continent (Antarctica), but had to turn north again because of ice. His exploration force consisted of three ships named the African Galley, the Eagles, and the Thienhoven.

Read more about the first contact between Europeans and the people of Rapa Nui, and about how European explorers stole several of the Moai statues.

According to the information at geocaching.com, the world's most remote cache is found on Rapa Nui. While I have not been there yet, the geocaching site indicates that the cache is fairly easy to find, but that the terrain it is located in is challenging.

Located somewhere on the rim of a volcanic crater, the cache is also near a significant archaeological site.

The cache was placed by geocacher HaukiDog some time in 2002, making it one of the world's older caches. Geocaching is a very young sport!

He didn't come out quite as I expected, but he's still pretty cool. I started with the Papercraft Moai pattern and enlarged it several times. To have the largest piece still be printable on 8.5 x 11 paper, the end result is that my statue is only just about one foot tall. I transferred the pieces to my slabs of clay by tracing.

The clay was too heavy and moist to support the top-knot, so I had to take that part off. Also things got way out of hand by the time I got to the belly, which resulted in yet another cut and change of plans.

I might try to do it again someday, next time with thinner slabs which I'll allow to dry a bit more (truly 'leather-hard').

Here he is!

Canon 3d Papercraft has several different famous architectural sites available, including the Moai statues of Easter Island, Chile.

Download the free .pdf files, print them out on your home printer, and then cut, fold, glue and assemble this set of three Moai statues.

I'm not sure where the folks at Gaia's Oasis got their hands on this garden Moai, but if I had to guess, I'd say some lawn and garden place in central California.