help with Chilean trivia?

Question

there is a place in chile known for its large head statues. what is the name of this place? and what are the official names of the statues?

Answer 1

Easter Island and the Moai (statues)

"Easter Island (Rapa Nui in Rapa Nui language, Isla de Pascua in Spanish), is a Chilean-governed island in the south eastern Pacific Ocean, at the southeastern tip of the Polynesian triangle. The island received its name because it was discovered on Easter Sunday of 1722.[2] Easter Island is famous for its enigmatic moai statues. It is a world heritage site with much of the island protected by the Rapa Nui National Park.

Moai (Statues)
Main article: Moai


Moai with replica eyes at Ahu Ko Te Riku in Hanga Roa, with Chilean Navy ship Buque Escuela Esmeralda behind.
The large stone statues, or moai, for which Easter Island is world famous were carved during a relatively short and intense burst of creative and productive megalithic activity. 887 monolithic stone statues have been inventoried on the island and in museum collections. Although often identified as "Easter Island Heads", the statues actually are heads and complete torsos. Some upright moai, however, have become buried up to their necks by shifting soils.
The period of time when the statues were produced remains disputed, with estimates ranging from 1000/1500 CE to 1500/1700 CE. Almost all (95%) moais were carved out of distinctive, compressed, easily worked volcanic ash or tuff found at a single site called Rano Raraku. The Rapanui who carved them had no metal or powered machinery, only stone hand tools - mainly basalt toki. Only a quarter of the statues were installed on the coastal ahu platforms, with nearly half still remaining in Rano Raraku and the rest elsewhere on the island, probably on their way to final locations. Moving the huge statues seems to have been laborious and very slow.
Most currently standing statues, some 50 in total, have been re-erected in modern times, except for those on the slopes of Rano Raraku.


Tukuturi an unusual bearded kneeling moai.
While the vast majority of Moai follow a fairly standard design there are a few radically different moai on the island, in most parts badly eroded and broken. These are believed to predate the better-known moais, including a kneeling statue with hands on its knees, parts of a statue with clearly carved ribs and a headless, rectangularly shaped torso. Similarities to Indian stone statues around Lake Titicaca in South America are striking, whether this is accidental or not.[11]
[edit]Ahu


Two Ahus at Hanga Roa. In foreground Ahu Ko Te Riku (with a Pukao on its head). In the mid-ground is a side view of an Ahu with five Moai showing retaining wall, platform, ramp and pavement.
Ahus are stone platforms that some of the Moai were erected on. They vary greatly in layout and many have been significantly reworked in the islands during or after the huri mo'ai or statue-toppling era; many became ossuaries, one was dynamited open and Ahu Tongariki was swept inland by a tsunami.
The classic elements of Ahu design are:
A retaining rear wall several feet high, usually facing the sea.
A platform behind the wall.
Pads or cushions on the platform
A sloping ramp covered with evenly sized wave rounded boulders on the inland side of the platform rising most but not all the way up the side of the platform.
A pavement in front of the ramp.
Inside the Ahu was a fill of rubble.
On top of many Ahu would have been:
Moai on the pads looking out over the pavement with their backs to the rear wall.
Pukao on the Moai's heads.
And in their eye sockets, white coral eyes with black obsidian pupils.
Ahus evolved from the traditional Polynesian Marae in which the word Ahu was only used for the central stone platform, though on Easter Island Ahus and Moai evolved to a much greater size. The biggest Ahus contained 20 times as much stone as a Moai; however most of this stone was sourced very locally (apart from broken old moai, fragments of which have also been used in the fill).[12] Also individual stones are mostly far smaller than the Moai, so less work was needed to transport the raw material.


Ahu Akivi, one of the few inland Ahu with the only moai facing the ocean
Ahus are mostly on the coast where they are distributed fairly evenly except on the Western slopes of Mount Terevaka, and the Rano Kau and Poike [13] headlands. These are the three areas with the least low lying coastal land, and apart from Poike the furthest areas from Rano Raraku. One Ahu with several Moai was recorded on the cliffs at Rano Kau in the 1880s, but had fallen to the beach by the time of the Routledge expedition in 1914.
Of the 313 known ahus, only 125 carried a stone moai. Others perhaps had statues made of wood, now lost. The majority of the rest had just one moai, probably due to the shortness of the moai period and difficulties in transporting them. Ahu Tongariki, one kilometer from Rano Raraku, had the most and biggest moai, 15 in total. Other notable Ahus with moais were Ahu Akivi, Naunau at Anakena and Tahai.
[ed

Answer 2

Sorry to say you seem to be slightly mis-informed. The large head statues, to which you refer, are on Easter Island in the Eastern Pacific Ocean. Easter Island is situated some 2,237 miles (3,600 km.) off the West coast of Chile.

Easter Island is what is called a "special territory" of Chile and has been annexed to Chile since 1888. The original inhabitants of the island were Ancient Polynesians who arrived and settled on the island in prehistoric times. The islands are now governed by the Republic of Chile.

The large head statues are called Moai and were carved out of the volcanic rock of the island by the islanders perhaps as much as a thousand years ago.

Hope this helps. There is much more information available on the internet if you simply search for Easter Island.