A new Maori statue rose from the muck of the recently dried-up lakebed on Easter Island, home to the iconic giant stone statues, leaving researchers to turn to one another to ask one of life’s most profound questions: “Hey, was that there before?”
The statues are called Moai. More than 1,000 moai have been cataloged across Rapa Nui, those iconic, long-faced statues carved from volcanic ash by the Rapa Nui people. Most stand solemnly on the island’s surface, staring out at nothing in particular, like the King of the Hill gang sans beers.
This latest find is completely unexpected. It didn’t turn up beside a lake; it turned up within one, all by itself, far away from its stony brethren.
Newly Discovered Easter Island Statue Found in Dried-Up Lake
It’s one of the smallest ever found. Its discovery opens the door to a more profound mystery. If one statue was hidden underwater this whole time, there could be more. Maybe dozens.
Speaking to Good Morning America, Terry Hunt, a professor of archaeology at the University of Arizona, suspects ground-penetrating tech might reveal even more beneath the now-exposed sediments.
Each moai is carved in honor of a person, typically a leader or someone of high status, and many are topped off with eye stones once they reach their final resting place. The biggest of them stretches over 30 feet and weighs up to 86 tons. But no one, not even the Rapa Nui elders or park officials, knew this lakebed statue existed.
“Even the ancestors, our grandparents, don’t know [about] that one,” said Salvador Atan Hito, vice president of Ma’u Henua, the island’s national park authority.
This all means that an island already filled with mysteries has a few more to add to the pile, with a few more statues than previously thought. The moai, it seems, are not done telling their stories.
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