All the key elements of this later ritual are present in our statue. They're carved on the back. They must have been added several hundred years after the statue was first made, and the carving style here could hardly be more different from the front...
So, a populous island, effectively organised, practising religion in a carefully structured, competitive way, and then, quite suddenly, around 1600, the monolith-making stopped. No-one has a very clear idea why. Certainly all islands like this are fr...
It was a way of human beings who were alive relating to, and exchanging with, their ancestors, who have very great influence on human life. Ancestors can affect fertility, prosperity, abundance. As you can imagine, they are colossal - this one in the...
The statues were placed on specially built platforms ranged along the coastline, a sacred geography reflecting the tribal divisions of Rapa Nui. Moving these statues would have taken days, and a large workforce. Hoa Hakananai'a would have stood on hi...
Hoa Hakananai'a is a rare combination of physical mass and evocative potency. For the sculptor Sir Anthony Caro, this is the essence of sculpture: I see sculpture, the setting up of a stone - it's a basic human activity. You're investing that stone w...
Standing below him, you're immediately conscious of the solid basalt rock that he's made out of. Although we see him only from the waist up, he's almost nine feet (2.7m) high, and he dominates whatever gallery he's in. When you're working hard stone...
This week we've glimpsed some of the variety of gods that people around the world were engaging with about seven hundred years ago, and the objects that they made to get close to them. It's a constant of human history that societies devote huge amoun...
070:EPISODE 70 - Hoa Hakananai'a Island Statue复活节岛雕像 Hoa Hakananai'a statue (made between 1000 and 1200). Stone; from Easter Island (Rapa Nui) Today we're on an island far out in the Pacific Ocean, it's about half the size of the Isle o...
This programme has turned out to be more about what we don't know than what we do. Our statue's commanding physical presence speaks to us with peremptory directness, but of all the objects in our history, she is perhaps the hardest to read confidentl...
Kim Richter may of course be right, and these statues may simply be representations of the local elite, but I find it hard to believe that these geometric naked female statues are merely aristocratic family likenesses, even of the most ritualised sor...