The "walking moai hypothesis" could end a long-time debate over how ancient engineers moved these iconic statues around Easter Island. Reading time 3 minutes The moai statues of Easter Island have ...

The new research “challenges commonly accepted ideas about the development” of ancient cultures. Groundbreaking research undertaken by Uppsala University and published in the journal Antiquity (via ...

Dr. Terry Hunt from the University of Arizona and Dr. Carl Lipo from the University of Birmingham have published a study in ...

Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story: A new study suggests that the island of Rapa Nui, otherwise known as Easter Island, didn’t develop in the extreme manner of isolation that we thought ...

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 ...

Rapa Nui, or Easter Island, is one of the most isolated places in the world, located around 3,600 miles off the coast of Chile, which annexed the territory in 1888. The eponymous island is named for ...

Scientists believe the statues may have "walked" Toria Sheffield joined the PEOPLE editorial staff in 2024. Her work as a writer/editor has previously appeared in places like Bustle, LAMag, and ...

For years, researchers have puzzled over how the ancient people of Rapa Nui did the seemingly impossible and moved their iconic moai statues. Using a combination of physics, 3D modeling and ...

A newly identified drought on the Pacific island of Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island, could have spurred islanders to invest fewer resources in building their legendary stone monuments. But some ...

The ancient Polynesians who settled the island of Rapa Nui – formerly known as Easter Island – may have worked out an ingenious way to make their iconic moai statues 'walk'. It's not just local legend ...

Easter Island statues, traditionally known as moai on the remote island of Rapa Nui in the South Pacific, are some of the most impressive artifacts of ancient Polynesian civilization. How the statues ...