A new moai, a kind of statue for which Chile’s Easter Island is famous, was found in the bed of a dry laguna in a volcano crater, the indigenous community that administers the site has said.
“This moai has great potential for scientific and natural studies, it’s a really unique discovery as it’s the first time that that a moai has been discovered inside a laguna in a Rano Raraku crater,” the Ma’u Henua community said in a statement on Tuesday.
The statue was found on Tuesday last week by a team of scientific volunteers from three Chilean universities collaborating on a project to restore the marshland in the crater of the Rano Raraku volcano.
Photo: AFP / MA’U HENUA INDIGENOUS COMMUNITY
Several moai in that area in October last year suffered charring in a forest fire on the island about 3,500km off the west coast of Chile, which is also known as Rapa Nui.
“This moai is in the center of a laguna that began drying up in 2018,” community head Ninoska Avareipua Huki Cuadros said.
“The interesting thing is that, for at least the last 200 or 300 years, the laguna was 3m deep, meaning no human being could have left the moai there in that time,” said Huki, who is also the provincial head of the local branch of Chile’s national forestry corporation, which is collaborating on the restoration of the marshland.
Photo: REUTERS
Moai are distinctive monolithic carved stone figures with elongated faces and no legs that were mostly quarried from tuff, a kind of volcanic ash, at the Rano Raraku volcano.
The moai found last month is 1.6m tall and was found lying down on its side looking at the sky.
It is “full-bodied with recognizable features but no clear definition,” the community said, adding that it is looking for funding to carry out a more profound study on the discovery.
However, Huki said there are “no plans to remove the moai from where it is.”
“You have to ask the whole Rapa Nui community what they want to do with the moai, and the oldest people want it to remain there,” she added.
The Rano Raraku volcano and its moai are a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Easter Island was long inhabited by Polynesian people, before Chile annexed it in 1888.
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