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Map of Easter Island using moai to show locations of various ahu The statues were carved by the aboriginal Polynesians of the island, mostly between 1250 and 1500. [ 1 ] In addition to representing deceased ancestors , the moai, once they were erected on ahu, may also have been regarded as the embodiment of powerful living or former chiefs and ...
The Disk of Mictlāntēcutli (Nahuatl: [mik.t͡ɬaːn.ˈteːkʷ.t͡ɬi] ⓘ), otherwise known as the Disk of Death, is a pre-Hispanic sculpture depicting Mictlāntēcutli, the Aztec god of death and ruler of Mictlān, the underworld of Aztec mythology. [1] Archaeologists found the artwork in Teotihuacan's Pyramid of the Sun in 1963.
They are monolithic human figures carved by the Rapa Nui people on Rapa Nui (Easter Island) in eastern Polynesia between the years 1250 and 1500. Nearly half are still at Rano Raraku, the main moai quarry, but hundreds were transported from there and set on stone platforms called ahu around the island's perimeter.
Moai kavakava are male carvings and the Moai Paepae are female carvings. [147] These grotesque and highly detailed human figures, carved from Toromiro pine, represent ancestors. Sometimes these statues were used for fertility rites. Usually, they are used for harvest celebrations; "the first picking of fruits was heaped around them as offerings".
Makemake with two birdmen, carved from red scoria. Makemake (also written as Make-make; pronounced [ˈmakeˈmake] in Rapa Nui [1]) in the Rapa Nui mythology of Easter Island is the creator of humanity, the god of fertility and the chief god of the "Tangata manu" or bird-man sect (this sect succeeded the island's more famous Moai era).
Pukao were not made until the 15th–16th centuries and are later additions to the moai. [2] The reason that pukao were made is not known, though various theories exist. One is that the placing of a pukao on top of the moai was a recognition of the power of the individual represented.
The most visible element in the culture was the production of massive statues called moai that represented deified ancestors. It was believed that the living had a symbiotic relationship with the dead where the dead provided everything that the living needed (health, fertility of land and animals, fortune, etc.), and the living through offerings provided the dead with a better place in the ...
Tlaltecuhtli is typically depicted as a squatting toad-like creature with massive claws, a gaping mouth, and crocodile skin, which represented the surface of the earth. In carvings, her mouth is often shown with a river of blood flowing from it or a flint knife between her teeth, a reference to the human blood she thirsted for.