The moai are monolithic stone statues found on Rapa Nui (Easter Island), a remote Polynesian island in the southeastern Pacific Ocean. Key points about the history of the moai include: - The Rapa Nui people settled the island around 1200 CE and began carving the moai soon after, mostly between 1250-1500 CE [6][7][15]. The statues represented deified ancestors and were status symbols of powerful chiefs [6][14]. - There are nearly 900 known moai, ranging from 1-10 meters tall and weighing up to 270 tons [3][5][7]. The largest erected moai was almost 10 meters tall and weighed over 80 tons [8]. The unfinished "El Gigante" would have been 21.9 meters tall [9]. - The moai were carved from volcanic tuff at the Rano Raraku quarry [1][2][12]. Completed statues were moved up to 20 km across the island and erected on stone platforms (ahu) mostly along the coast, facing inland [5][6][8][13]. - By the late 18th century, most moai had been toppled during a period of internal strife [2][7][13]. Restoration efforts began in the 1950s-60s to re-erect many of the fallen statues [4][10][13]. - Theories suggest the moai building ended in the 17th century as deforestation left the island without the logs and rope needed to transport them [11][15]. The loss of forests decimated the population until Europeans settled the island [12]. So in summary, the moai are the enduring legacy of the early Rapa Nui civilization - massive stone ancestor figures that required immense resources to construct and move into place, possibly contributing to an ecological and societal collapse on the remote island they called home.