Ahu Tongariki
Fifteen restored moai on the largest ceremonial platform in Polynesia, facing the Poike slopes.
Ahu Tongariki stands on the south-east coast of Rapa Nui, below the Poike peninsula and near the Rano Raraku quarry from which its statues were cut. Its platform is about 220 metres long, the largest ceremonial structure built in Polynesia, and carries fifteen moai of varying height and style, one of them weighing some 86 tonnes. Only one figure still wears a pukao, the cylindrical red scoria topknot. The site forms part of the Rapa Nui National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage property.
The statues were pulled down during the island's internal conflicts, and in 1960 a tsunami generated by the Valdivia earthquake in Chile swept them and much of the platform inland. Between 1992 and 1996 a team led by the Chilean archaeologists Claudio Cristino and Patricia Vargas re-erected them, with a crane and technical support supplied by the Japanese company Tadano. A single moai that travelled to an exhibition in Japan in 1982 now stands apart from the platform near the entrance.
Highlights
- Fifteen moai on a platform about 220 metres long
- A single surviving pukao topknot in red scoria
- Statues re-erected after the 1960 Valdivia tsunami scattered them
- Popular vantage point for sunrise behind the row of figures
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