While Europeans eventually discovered the impressive moai statues for which the Rapa Nui are best known, they also stumbled upon a yet-undeciphered script known as Rongorongo—a three-dimensional ...

The online model lets researchers and anyone with an internet connection explore areas that the island’s 100,000 annual ...

Geology textbooks describe the Earth's mantle beneath its plates as a well-mixed viscous rock that moves along with those plates like a conveyor belt. But that idea, first set out some 100 years ago, ...

Easter Island is named for the Sunday in 1722 when Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen landed his crew on the distant Pacific island. It’s been misunderstood by outsiders ever since. In recent decades, ...

About 30 wooden objects from the remote island of Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island, in the South Pacific Sea bear an engraved script that remains untranslated. Experts have long wondered whether ...

Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island, never experienced a ruinous population collapse, according to an analysis of ancient DNA from 15 former inhabitants of the remote island in the Pacific Ocean.

Surprising new evidence is rewriting the story of the giant stone heads of Easter Island. How were Easter Island’s giant stone heads made? New research challenges the idea that their construction led ...

There is no place in the world like Easter Island, also known as Rapa Nui. It feels like it is not even of this world. Located more than 2,000 miles from South America's mainland, it is one of the ...

Scientists have uncovered how ancient Easter Islanders moved massive moai statues. Instead of dragging them flat, the statues were rocked upright. Teams used ropes to guide them forward, a method ...

Scientists have debunked a popular myth surrounding Easter Island. An analysis of the island's famed rock gardens, undertaken by a team of researchers including faculty from Binghamton University, ...

No one knows where Easter Island is, and that’s just the start of the island’s immutable mysticism. When I told people I was traveling to the small island this spring, people would say, “The place ...

The real history behind Easter Island’s mysterious statues.