Famous for its colossal stone heads – or moai – Easter Island is the scene of one of the great archaeological mysteries, as a unique monolithic ritual culture emerged and then vanished here – all for ...

Easter Island’s monumental stone figures have long seemed like a closed case, their story pinned to a familiar narrative of isolation, ingenuity, and collapse. A newly reported statue find, however, ...

Easter Island is named for the Sunday in 1722 when Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen landed his crew on the distant Pacific island. It’s been misunderstood by outsiders ever since. In recent decades, ...

Geology textbooks describe the Earth's mantle beneath its plates as a well-mixed viscous rock that moves along with those plates like a conveyor belt. But that idea, first set out some 100 years ago, ...

A mysterious find on Easter Island, investigated by a team of geologists, suggests that the Earth's mantle seems to behave differently than once thought. Geography textbooks describe the Earth's ...

Finding out what actually happened in the deep past can be a slog, so when ancient history is packaged as mystery—spine-tingling but solvable—it’s hard to resist. Who doesn’t want to know how a lost ...

Two recent studies have cast doubt on a popular theory that the ancient residents of Easter Island suffered a societal collapse because they overexploited their natural resources, an event often ...

In his “Island at the Edge of the World,” the British archaeologist Mike Pitts delves into the misconceptions and legends surrounding a complex ancient culture. By Joshua Hammer Joshua Hammer is the ...