The Polynesian inhabitants of Easter Island were first encountered by European explorers in the 18th century. Disease and ...

The mystery of exactly who built Easter Island's towering stone heads may finally have been solved. Scientists have discovered that the famous statues, or Moai, were not erected by a massive organised ...

More than 1,289 miles from the nearest human settlement, Easter Island—or Rapa Nui, as its own people call it—is arguably the world’s most remote inhabited place. To the mystique of its isolation amid ...

Scholars have long debated how the massive stone figures of Rapa Nui got to where they stand today. A new study offers one possible explanation. The Rapa Nui moai, the monolithic stone figures of ...

For centuries, Easter Island’s famous moai statues have stood guard over the remote volcanic island in the South Pacific, withstanding sun, wind, rain, lichen and even fire. But in the coming decades, ...

Finding out what actually happened in the deep past can be a slog, so when ancient history is packaged as mystery—spine-tingling but solvable—it’s hard to resist. Who doesn’t want to know how a lost ...