Recent genetic research has challenged long-standing theories about the collapse of the Rapa Nui civilization on Easter ...

The population of Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island, interbred with Native Americans before Europeans arrived, despite ...

Rapa Nui, the indigenous name of Easter Island, bears witness to a unique cultural phenomenon. A society of Polynesian origin that settled there c. A.D. 300 established a powerful, imaginative and ...

Ever since 1722, when Captain Jacob Roggeveen, a Dutchman and the first European known to have reached Easter Island arrived, scholars have debated the origins of the isolated population he found ...

On average, they stand 13 feet high and weigh 14 tons, human heads-on-torsos carved in the male form from rough hardened volcanic ash. The islanders call them "moai," and they have puzzled ...