By the end of the century, rising sea levels could push powerful seasonal waves into Easter Island’s 15 iconic moai statues, according to a new study published in the Journal of Cultural Heritage.

Paoa, who is from Easter Island — known to its Indigenous people as Rapa Nui — and his colleagues built a high-resolution “digital twin” of the island’s eastern coastline and ran computer models to ...

Moai statues stand on Ahu Tongariki near the Rano Raraku volcano, top, Nov. 27, 2022, on Rapa Nui, or Easter Island, Chile. “Sea level rise is real,” said Noah Paoa, lead author of the study and a ...