Rapa Nui’s mysterious moai statues stand in silence but speak volumes about the achievements of their creators. The stone blocks, carved into head-and-torso figures, average 13 feet (4 meters) tall ...

It was 2023 when Friar Francisco Nahoe received a panicked phone call from his agent at an airport in Santiago, Chile. The agent said officials were seizing three "ivi tupuna", or "bones of the ...

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 ...

New ancient DNA research reveals Rapa Nui ancestry lacks Native American genetics, challenging past theories of Polynesian-Native American contact. Thanks to its geography, the southeastern Pacific ...

The new research “challenges commonly accepted ideas about the development” of ancient cultures. Groundbreaking research undertaken by Uppsala University and published in the journal Antiquity (via ...