Easter Island, known in the native language as Rapa Nui or Isla de Pascua in Spanish, is an island in the South Pacific Ocean belonging to Chili, populated since 400 AD. Located 3,600 km west of continental Chile, it is one of the most isolated inhabited islands in the world. It was given its common name of "Easter" because it was discovered by the Dutchman Jacob Roggeveen on Easter Sunday, 1722.

Eastern Island does not look like the other Polynesian islands. The flora and fauna are so poor that it seems impossible that a civilization once has flourished here. Nevertheless, there about 900 huge stone statues and 240 ahu’s, ceremonial platforms on which once statues stood upon, proof the opposite. Many of the statues are buried in the soil as if a massive landslide has covered them.

Thor Heyerdahl, who visited the island in 1947 using a balsa raft to prove that the inhabitants could have originated from South America (recently, genetic research mentions Asia as the homeland of the Polynesians), showed that the statues (on average 5 metres tall and weigh 15 tons ) were carved from the tuff of the Rano Raraku volcano and that hard stone tools were used  (ref. Heyerdahl)

The statues all seem to look to a far point at the horizon as if they are awaiting something or someone. A further mystery is the Ahu Vinapu platform, which is the only one that is made of precisely fitting stones, as is the case with many of the Inca buildings in South America, and pyramids in Egypt. It is hard to believe that the people of Eastern Island have invented the same extraordinary stone technology as these ancient civilizations.