The monumental stone statues created by the Rapa Nui people on Easter Island are called moai.
Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island, is a remote Polynesian island in the southeastern Pacific Ocean. Its inhabitants carved most moai from volcanic tuff at the Rano Raraku quarry and transported them to ceremonial platforms called ahu around the island’s coast.
The statues generally represent important ancestors or chiefly figures. Many have oversized heads, reflecting the cultural importance of the head in Polynesian societies. Some statues once had red scoria cylinders called pukao placed on their heads. Although often described as “Easter Island heads,” many moai have bodies that are partly buried by accumulated soil.
The Rapa Nui built hundreds of moai between roughly the 13th and 16th centuries. Their construction and movement remain major subjects of archaeological research. The statues are not Olmec heads, which were created much earlier in Mesoamerica and belong to a different culture.