Where to build a monument: mapping megaliths on Easter Island

Easter Island, called Rapa Nui by its inhabitants, represents one of the most remarkable cases of ancient monument construction known in the world. Around the 13th century AD, Polynesian voyagers crossed thousands of kilometres of open ocean to colonise Rapa Nui, one of Earth’s most remote islands. Shortly after colonisation, people began constructing megalithic platforms, called ahu, on which they placed the island’s famous stone statues, known as moai. By the time Dutch captain Jacob Roggeveen arrived in 1722, the island’s inhabitants (called Rapanui) had constructed over 200 ahu and carved nearly 1,000 moai, hundreds of which were transported several kilometres over volcanic terrain