Easter Island Head Statue to Be Returned

Despite the mystery surrounding the Island, the last 80 years are fairly well documented, and the Head Statue will finally return to Easter Island. This statue is one of a dozen known to have been taken or exported from the Island, six of which are in museums. The Maois, as the statues are called, can be worth thousands of dollars.

FOXNews Source

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — The huge stone head is framed by a wooden crate that casts shadows across its vacant eyes and elongated nose. After an odyssey of more than 80 years, the sculpture is set for what should be its final journey — home to Easter Island.

The 7-foot Moai, carved from compressed volcanic ash and decked in a red-rock headdress called a Pukau, is one of almost 900 ancestral statues crafted centuries ago on the remote Pacific island, annexed by Chile in 1888.

It was taken from the island in 1929 and spent some 40 years in the Chilean capital of Santiago before traveling to Argentina and making a quick round-trip visit to the Netherlands.

Recent ATS Thread About the Civilization that Created These Statues

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Originally posted by cohiba
The Maois, as the statues are called, can be worth thousands of dollars.

thousands of dollars?? it's priceless statues.. some contemporary sculptures are sold for more than that

They may be culturally priceless, but in the real world, when buying/selling/trading stuff like this, it has to be given a price. In this case, I'm just quoting the article, but if I were a collector, I would find it hard to pay more than 'thousands' (as I believe that would put us in the 'millions', as 'thousands', to me, includes ten and hundreds of thousands of dollars). After all, minus the history and cultural significance, they are just rocks.

As far as the value of the individual Moais, no one here was willing to place a price on the statues, other than to say that collectors would probably pay thousands of dollars for one