Holiday Ayo - Moai is a row of statues carved from a rock located on Easter Island, in Chile. This monolithic face-shaped stone is perfectly carved and stands upright as if watching the island landscape.

The presence of the Moai is a testament to the wonder and intelligence of mankind, although its meaning remains a mystery.

Well, the existence of the statues there has indeed been a question of researchers for a long time and several research results have revealed the answer.

Easter Island is famous for its massive stone statue of Moai which was discovered in 1722.

A total of 877 giant statues are scattered around this area. Hundreds of megalithic statues, which are massive and standing tall, have become icons of Easter Island. Locals call Easter Island Rapa Nui, a volcanic archipelago in the southeastern Pacific Ocean.

This area is the cultural center of Polynesia. Many tourists come to this place because of the unique charm that Easter Island has, namely the presence of hundreds of face-shaped monolith stones (face stones) that have stood watching the Easter Island landscape for hundreds of years.

These face statues vary in size and are on average very high, about 4 meters and some even reaching 10 meters with a weight of about 14 tons and even up to 82 tons. Uniquely, all the statues have very large heads. That is about 2/3 of the size of the statue.

By having very distinctive facial characteristics such as the shape of a wide and elongated nose, rectangular ears, strong chin, and deep eye slits, these statues on average have no legs but only one statue is found in a kneeling position.

When looked at in more detail, the Moai statues contain several different types of stone, of the 887 Moai statues found, a total of 834 of which were carved from compressed volcanic ash known as 'tuff'.

The natives of Easter Island did not have metal to carve the tuff, but used tools made of stone called a toki. The 13 Moai statues were carved from basalt, while 17 were made from scoria, a type of brittle red stone, while the remaining 22 were carved from trachyte.

Most of the position of these statues back to the ocean. So, the faces of these Moai are facing directly to the hinterland and countryside where the inhabitants live. Except for one statue overlooking the sea which is located at Ahu Akivi, a sacred place for the Rapa Nui people.

That said, experts say that the existence of Moai statues symbolizes the power and authority of political and religious society. In fact, some archaeologists also explain that these statues are the dwelling houses of holy spirits.

This is one of the natural wonders that occurred on Easter Island, which features hundreds of statues that have the meaning as the ancestors of the first inhabitants of Rapa Nui.