Jacob Roggeveen, sailing for the Dutch West India Company, set out on a voyage to find Terra Australis in August 1721. On April 5th, 1722, he made landfall on an isolated Pacific island populated by about 2,000 inhabitants of Polynesian descent. In honor of the day, Roggeveen named the island “Paasch-Eyland,” Easter Island.
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The Rapa Nui people on Isla de Pascua carved hundreds of human shaped monoliths and placed them, facing inland, along the island’s perimeter. With some exceptions, the moai were carved from tuff, a type of soft malleable rock created from compressed volcanic ash. Most of the moai were never completed and still lie unfinished on the slopes of Rano Raraku, an extinct volcano. The statues feature the complete human form, but the emphasis is directed onto the head; the ratio between head and torso is three to five.
