The monumental stone statues on Easter Island are commonly called moai.
The moai were created by the Rapa Nui people on Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island, a remote Polynesian island in the southeastern Pacific Ocean. Most were carved between about 1250 and 1500 from volcanic tuff quarried at Rano Raraku. The statues represent deified ancestors and were placed on ceremonial platforms called ahu.
Many moai have oversized heads because their bodies are partly buried or because the head was culturally associated with authority and spiritual power. Some statues once wore red scoria topknots called pukao, quarried separately at Puna Pau. The island has nearly 1,000 known moai, though not all were completed or erected. The statues are often incorrectly described as only “heads”; excavations have documented full bodies beneath the ground. Rapa Nui National Park became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1995.