While Europeans eventually discovered the impressive moai statues for which the Rapa Nui are best known, they also stumbled ...

SANTIAGO, Chile — Some of Easter Island’s megalithic statues have been damaged by a fire and will likely turn into sand, according to the mayor of the remote island. On Monday, a wildfire burned ...

The online model lets researchers and anyone with an internet connection explore areas that the island’s 100,000 annual ...

Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island, never experienced a ruinous population collapse, according to an analysis of ancient DNA from 15 former inhabitants of the remote island in the Pacific Ocean.

For years, the story of Easter Island has been told as a grim fable: a small, isolated community cut down its last tree, destroyed its own environment, and collapsed in a kind of prehistoric ...

Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island, is often portrayed in popular culture as an enigma. The rationale is clear: The tiny, remote island in the Pacific features nearly 1,000 enormous statues—the ...

The ancient Rapa Nui civilization may have created the Easter Island statues because they believed these monoliths made the soil more fertile, improving crop production, researchers have said. In a ...