Roughly how many moai, the giant stone statues, have been catalogued on Easter Island (Rapa Nui)?
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Answer
About 900 statues
Nearly all were carved from a single volcanic quarry, where the largest one, about 21 metres long, still lies unfinished.
How to estimate it
This is a catalogue count by archaeologists, so only a plausibility check is possible. Carving went on for roughly 500 years, from about 1100 to 1600. The island supported a few thousand people, and if its clans together finished about 2 statues a year, that gives 500 × 2 = 1,000. Surveys have catalogued about 900 moai, many of them unfinished in the quarry.
Source: UNESCO; Easter Island Statue Project
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