The 'Easter Island heads' are full-bodied statues.

1250

Many moai on the slopes of Rano Raraku had their torsos buried by centuries of sediment, and excavations have revealed them down to the waist and below.

◍ Show on the globe

The event

• The moai of Easter Islandc. 1250 · Rano Raraku, Rapa Nui. By various estimates, between the 13th and 16th centuries the people of Rapa Nui carved nearly a thousand moai statues from volcanic tuff at the Rano Raraku quarry. They were set on stone ahu platforms with their backs to the sea, facing the villages their deified ancestors protected. The largest erected statue, Paro, is about 10 m tall; the unfinished "El Gigante" in the quarry is about 21 m.

13th century

More amazing facts

• 1250 · 1260 · 1517 The Mongols were stopped at Ain Jalut by former slaves.
• 1250 · 1905 Colonial Rhodesia refused for decades to admit that Great Zimbabwe was built by Africans.
• 1250 · 2012 The moai of Easter Island may have "walked". Island tradition says the statues walked on their own, and in 2012 researchers showed how: 18 people with ropes rocked an upright 5-tonne replica forward.
• 1256 The word "assassin" comes from a nickname for the Nizari Ismailis of Alamut.
• 1257 For decades scientists saw traces of one of the biggest eruptions in thousands of years in Greenland and Antarctic ice without knowing where the volcano was. Only in 2013 was it found: Samalas on Lombok, 1257.
• 1258 Chroniclers say that when the Mongols took Baghdad in 1258, the Tigris ran black with ink. So many books from the city's libraries, including the House of Wisdom, were thrown into it.

All amazing facts (1058) →