Facing in the direction of the rising sun, three hundred sculptures known as ‘moais’, or ‘long ears’, were discovered on Easter Island in 1722, a remote volcanic island in the Pacific Ocean.

It is most likely that the people who erected the statues arrived by sea from Peru and belonged to a tribe that was condemned to extinction due to their polygamous practices.

Carved from volcanic tufa, the mysterious statues, which range in height from ten to forty feet and some of which weigh more than 50 tons, were dedicated to ‘Virachoche’, a god that possessed the face of a jaguar and cried tears of gold.

Dating back five or six centuries, it is thought that these mysterious statues were built by the Polynesian ancestors of the island’s current inhabitants.