The moai are the main focus of any visit to the island. Close to nine hundred stand in various stages of completion. Some have been set upright on the ahus, the ritual platforms, and crowned with the pukao, a “topknot” of red tuff. Others still lie in the ground, their bodies sexed and hidden. The crater and slopes of the Rano Raraku volcano served as the moai quarry; the statues were carved on site, cut as a single block from the rock, before their problematic transport to their final location.
The island's major sites include: Anakena beach, Ahu Te Pito Kura where the largest moai on the island stands, measuring 10 metres high and weighing 90 tonnes; Rano Raraku, an exceptional site and the quarry that supplied nearly all the island's moai, along with two ceremonial platforms: Ahu Akahanga and, of course, Ahu Tongariki, the island's most majestic site, the largest platform in Polynesia and, symbolically, the most important archaeological site in the Pacific Ocean.
Ahu Akivi, located almost at the geographic centre of the island, holds a special place in its history. One hypothesis describes it as a commemorative site rather than one dedicated to ancestors. Legend has it that these seven superb standing moai, the only ones on the island facing the sea, represent the seven envoys sent by King Hotu Matu'a to scout the island. The Puna Pau quarry, east of Hanga Roa, was where the pukao were carved — those headdress-shaped topknots that crown the statues' heads. Several of them, giant cylinders of red stone, remain on the hillside.
The Ana Kai Tangata cave holds one of the finest surviving traces of the birdman cult, a vividly coloured rock painting made more than three centuries ago; the imposing Rano Kau volcano stands at the entrance to Orongo National Park, at the top of which, on the cliff edge, lies the former ceremonial village of Orongo. This is where the birdman competition, the tangata manu, took place.
