Rano Raraku

The Mo'ai Quarry and Workshop

The mo'ai were carved between about 1250 and 1500 CE. Rano Raraku was the site of the main quarry and workshop.

Rapa Nui is a volcanic island, it's the summit of a large volcanic mountain rising over 2,000 meters from the sea floor. What protrudes above the ocean are the coalesced peaks of three extinct volcanos. Smaller volcanic cones include Rano Raraku.

The quarry site is a relatively small cone on this volcanic island. Rano refers to a crater lake. There are three rano or freshwater lakes in volcano calderas on the island, but no permanent streams.

Just a Little Vulcanology

Magma or molten rock down within a volcano can explode when it flows toward the surface, the pressure decreases, and the gas dissolved in it suddenly comes out of solution.

Tephra is the collection of particles of varying size blown through the air in such an explosion. Tephra particles smaller than 2 mm in diameter, fine powder through coarse sand, are called volcanic ash.

Tuff is the result of a layer of volcanic ash being ejected from a volcano, and that ash being compressed and lithified into a form of solid rock.

Tuff is relatively soft, light, and porous, as rocks go. Chisels and hammers of harder rock can cut tuff. So, tuff has been used for construction since ancient times.

Just in case this has not yet become geological enough, there's the issue of just what sort of molten rock was blown into that ash. Rano Raraku and thus most of the mo'ai, about 95%, are carved from tholeiite basalt tuff. Tholeiitic magma is richer in iron and less rich in aluminium than calc-alkaline magma. Tholeiitic basalt on Earth is formed at mid-ocean ridges and makes up much of the oceanic crust. On the Moon, almost all of the basalt, the smooth darker areas fancifully called mare or the "seas", are tholeiitic basalt.

Here's the view as we approached Rano Raraku. The small dark objects on the grassy slope below the volcanic cone are mo'ai.

Carving the Mo'ai

At the time of my visit they were still discovering new mo'ai from time to time. There were almost one thousand known mo'ai and all but 53 of them were carved from tuff from Rano Raraku.

The average mo'ai is about four meters tall, about 1.6 meters wide at the base, and weighs about 12.5 tonnes.

Almost four hundred mo'ai, almost half, are still at Rano Raraku. About a quarter of the total had been transported and erected on ahu, ceremonial platforms, mostly along the coast. The remaining quarter remain scattered around the island, apparently abandoned part-way to their destinations when the local ceremonial practice abruptly changed from the mo'ai on ahu to the Bird-Man cult.

Many of the mo'ai around the quarry are partially buried to their shoulders in the eroded spoil from the quarry. They have supplied the best-known images of the island. So, people think of the "heads" of Rapa Nui because what we have usually seen are the partially buried mo'ai, their torsos hidden beneath the soil.

Completed mo'ai had their eye sockets hollowed out to hold white coral eyes with pupils of black obsidian glass or red scoria stone. That step had not been completed for most of those left in the Rano Raraku quarry and workshop.

What Makes a Mo'ai

The heads of the mo'ai are large, with a 3:5 ratio between the head and the torso. That's consistent with the Polynesian belief in the sanctity of the priestly head. Each has a heavy brow, elongated nose and ears, fish-hook-shaped nostrils, lips in a thin pout, and a heavy jaw. The arms aren't separated from the torso, but are shown in bas relief against the body.

Each mo'ai is unique. They depict specific powerful figures from clan history. They typically appear to be male, but some seem to represent females.

The overall mo'ai style evolved over time, becoming taller with more elongated facial features. Each statue depicts one historical figure within the current artistic mo'ai style. Think of how various Mad magazine artists — Al Jaffee, Don Martin, Mort Drucker, and others — maintained distinctive personal styles while creating recognizable depictions of public figures.

Let's walk part-way around this one to see its shape.

Mana

The mo'ai were symbols of religious and political authority and power. Properly created and ritually prepared carved stone and wooden objects were believed to have mana.

Mana has been understood across Polynesian and Melanesian cultures as a supernatural force that permeates the universe. A person or an object can have mana. The Iroquois native American people have a similar concept of orenda. Some scholars studying the origin of religions have theorized that mana, orenda, and related concepts are universal across humanity.

To have mana is to have influence, authority, and the ability to perform in a given situation. Mana protects its possessor.

A larger mo'ai possessed more mana, as did the individual it represented.

George Lucas did not create the concept of "The Force" from his own imagination.

The Dutch and Spanish reports from 1722 and 1770 reported seeing only standing statues, which the local people still venerated. However, the Europeans couldn't communicate with the local people, and they may have simply assumed that these "obviously savage people" must worship the large statues.

The English visit in 1774 reported that many mo'ai had been toppled. None of the 18th century European visitors ventured inland at all, they did not see Rano Kau. Instead, they saw mo'ai on ahu along the coastline.

Mo'ai had not been created for 250 years or more, we don't know why they were suddenly toppled. It's possible that a severe earthquake between 1770 and 1774 toppled many.

Rapa Nui mythology describes a symbiotic relationship between the living and the dead. The living performed rituals which provided the dead with a better existence in the spirit world. In return, the dead provided good health, good fortune, and the fertility of the land, animals, and fish.

Most of the settlements were near the coastline. The mo'ai stood on ahu along the coastline with their backs to the spirit world in the sea, looking inland to watch over their descendants' settlements.

By 1838, the only standing mo'ai were those here on the slopes of Rano Raraku plus one on the rim of Rano Kau, above the town of Haŋa Roa at the western end of the island.

Quarrying the Mo'ai

Here's a site where a series of steps leads up to an area where multiple mo'ai were being carved out of the rock face when the mo'ai creation abruptly stopped. Our guide pointed ahead, to the right, and said that a gigantic unfinished mo'ai laid ahead of us. I didn't distinguish it initially.

First, though, here's another look at mo'ai of more common size being carved out of the rock face.

Turning to the right, here's the gigantic unfinished mo'ai.

Here is a view up the behemoth from the bottom of its torso. It would have been about 21 meters tall and weighed 145–165 tonnes.

The largest mo'ai that was transported into place and erected was just under ten meters tall, less than half the height of what this would have been and about half of its weight.

We continued downhill for a close look at a pair of unfinished mo'ai.

Here are two unfinished mo'ai — a larger one still back within the rock face with its head to the left, and a smaller one out in front of it with its head to the right.

The larger one to the rear has a large lithic inclusion on its upper torso, just below its chin. That is, a large chunk of stone that was thrown out with the ash and became embedded within the tuff.

The larger statue was abandoned due to the unfortunate inclusion. The smaller one was simply left unfinished.

The nearly white splotches are lichen. The light brown splotch below the lips, at the right margin of the picture, is a smaller lithic inclusion.

There two mo'ai have petroglyphs on their torsos.

The one above is depicted as wearing a crescent-shaped gorget like the current Rapa Nui flag.

Only about 7,750 people live on Rapa Nui today, almost all of them living within Haŋa Roa town, and about half of them are native Rapa Nui.

Tourism didn't really get going until Pinochet was removed from power and the island emerged from martial law. Now it's a powerful influence on the island.

However, it's still a small group of people on the island at any one time. The guy in the black shirt to the left in the below picture was in another group touring the southern coast sites on the same day. He also turns up in one of my pictures of the eclipse. I had been running into him and another guy in that group since the day before the eclipse. Later, after my full week on the island, I flew to Santiago and stayed overnight in a hotel near the airport before flying south to the Magallanes and Tierra del Fuego area. There were the two of them, in the hotel lobby in Santiago!

Once the artists had finished the initial carving, they would rub the mo'ai with pumice. This mo'ai was rubbed with red pumice, remnants of which remain on the neck below the large jaw.

Red was a sacred color, which is a broad human trend. A culture and language starts by distinguishing light from dark, roughly white versus black. Red is usually the first non-monochrome color that a culture and language distinguishes. Being distinguished so early, red tends to take on a sacred nature.

We continued along a path that curved around the south side of Rano Raraku. In the distance ahead we could see Ahu Toŋariki with its large ahu holding fifteen mo'ai, which we would visit next.

The path led along the steep slope to a very unusual mo'ai. It's made from red scoria, not the grey tuff typically found here.

Tuku Turi is the only mo'ai with a beard and clearly visible legs. It has the peculiar posture used by the men and women who formed the chorus in the riu festival connected to the Tangata Manu or Bird-Man cult.

This probably represents a riu singer, meaning that this statue was created well after the production of classic mo'ai had ceased.

Next❯ Ahu Toŋariki — The Largest Ahu with the Most and Largest Mo'ai