5 facts about Easter Island

The Easter Island Lessons for Children: Facts & Figures

There is an island in the Pacific where the old folk were building odd sculptures that no one can fully account for. Find out where Easter Island is located and what these sculptures look like. So what is Easter Island? The Easter Island is a small island in the southpacific. It' only about 14 nautical miles long and 7 nautical miles broad at its broadest point.

It'?s over a thousand leagues from any other country! Although Easter Island is so small, there are many things to be learned. Actually Easter Island has another interesting name: It'?s Rape Nui. It is also the name of the original inhabitants of the island.

Nowadays there are about 5,000 inhabitants, most of them are still the originals. To be in the midst of the sea, to have volcanos and to use two different name are not the only interesting things on Easter Island. Everywhere on the small island you will find huge headworks!

The Easter Island is one of the most secluded in the world. Researchers have ID'd 887 of these huge sculptures on the top of the human brain. They also have a nice name: they are named Moai. Old Rape Nui used to carve these sculptures out of vulcanic rock. The sculptures are in a position of kneel, some are just faces that appear above the floor.

This is about the size of an older bull and twice as heavy. Now, think of some of the sculptures that were up to 150 tonnes heavy - the equivalent of at least ten of them. Researchers believe that they used handcrafted sledges to move the sculptures, and they guess that it took about 100 men to draw each one.

Almost 300 of the sculptures were placed in a perfectly circular position around the island, like a mural. The majority of the other sculptures were still at the place where they were initially cut, and some are between the woodcut area and their permanent location. The majority of the sculptures were made about 2000 years ago.