Unfinished Moai statues at the Rano Raraku quarry

Rano Raraku, moai statues quarry invokes a sense of mystery in an almost surreal way, stronger than any other place at Easter Island. This is the heart of ancient Rapa Nui civilization with hundreds of abandoned moais scattered around. Almost all moai statues were carved here, before being transported to all other corners of the island.
There are approximately 400 statues left at Rano Raraku. Of these, around half are finished and the rest never reached a completed state.
According to Katherine Routledge, one of the first European explorers that investigated Easter Island in her 1914 visit, the statue builders that inhabitated Rano Raraku were like mercenaries. They had left their tribes to become statue builders.
The tradition of building statues lasted four centuries. The moais were small at first, but as skills were constantly refined, the statues grew in size over the generations. In the end, monstrous megaliths of up to 10 meters tall and 80 tons heavy were successfully carved and transported kilometers over hilly terrain. This took a big toll at the forest population. Due to the island's small size and fragile ecosystem, total deforestation was the result, from being a jungle with millions of palm trees when people had first arrived less than thousand years earlier. Since big amounts of lumber was needed only to transport the statues and not for carving them, the production could go on for a while, but the moais could not be taken out of the quarry. This is may be why there are so many large, refined statues in perfect condition, ready to be delivered, but simply were left behind instead.
Many statues at Rano Raraku are buried halfway or more into the ground. This is where the misconception of calling the moai statues Easter Island heads comes from. Truth is that they all have bodies, even though sometimes only a head is sticking out of the ground.
The reason the moai statues are buried into the ground is because of the way the ancient quarry workers handled the incredibly heavy weight of the statues. Once they were detached from the rock in the upper portions of the volcano, the statues were slid down to the hilly, lower areas of Rano Raraku where there is soil. Here, a great pit had been dug. Once a statue reached its pit, gravity tilted it until it was fully erected. Using this clever technique, the quarry workers saved themselves the great labour of raising every statue by hand.
When a moai was ready to be taken away from Rano Raraku, the soil in front of the statue was removed to create a path. This was possible as the buried statues were always at high ground.
The tuff of the Rano Raraku moai statues have a yellow tone of varying intensity.
Rano Raraku was chosen as a factory not for its location, but for the rock it consists of. The material is called tuff (or sometimes tufa, which is simply volcanic ash. This particular volcano spewed out huge amounts of ash during its eruption, and when this ash landed on the ground, it melted together, forming the tuff material. Prevailing southward winds during the eruption was what gave the volcano its peculiar shape of a long slope.
The volcanic rock of Rano Raraku, tuff, was found to be the far superior material when making statues. In the ancient Rapa Nui society there was no metal, and the tools used were nothing but simple rocks, it was essential for the material to be soft, to be carved more easily. As tuff is essentially volcanic ash, it is softer than any other rock at Easter Island.
Since tuff is soft, it is also fragile. With only wind, rain and temperature changes, the rock withers quite quickly. This means that the Rano Raraku moai statues are slowly disappearing. We see the effects now of the tooth of time over the last centuries, but the ancient statue carvers didn't worry about this, and probably didn't even know that the tuff would have this characteristic over time. Rano Raraku is located in the east side of Easter Island.
Rano Raraku moai statue quarry - Great hole in Rano Raraku volcano where many statues have been made.
Many unfinished statues still attached to the mountain can be spotted.
Giant moai Te Tokonga in Rano Raraku.
Te Tokonga is the largest statue ever started upon with an impressive length of 21.75 m.
Just after the big quarry in the volcano lays the largest statue ever built - The Giant. This monster made by an optimistic group of carvers has a height of 21.75 meters (71 feet) and an estimated weight of 200 tons. It was never finished.