Talk:Relocation of moai

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Latest comment: 3 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion

This page does not address the figure at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Do we know if that figure is authentic? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.194.179.207 (talk) 13:09, 14 September 2008 (UTC)Reply

What about Titahanga o te Henua: the 3 feet statue that was originally in a cave on Motu Nui that the Routledge expedition took to the Pitt Rivers Museum? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 186.40.46.6 (talk) 16:50, 10 March 2010 (UTC)Reply

That appears to be a moai maea a separate but closely related class of object. pitt rivers has one. British museum has one maybe [https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/E_Oc1920-0506-2 two. not sure if they should be included here.©Geni (talk) 10:00, 13 March 2023 (UTC)Reply

Moai ma'ea

Latest comment: 1 month ago1 comment1 person in discussion

I'm removing the basalt statue with the ID numbers "35-001 (EISP# MF-VDM-002)", which is supposedly located at Museo Fonck. The article speculates that "35-001" might have been the moai that the World Monuments Fund took to New York City in 1968 (this was added on 13 September 2007, mere days after the page's creation, and is not backed by the given citations). To me, this information was immediately suspect considering that the NYC moai appears to be made out of tuff in photographs, while the table describes it as being made from basalt.

Verifying the existence of the NYC moai is trivial. But as for "35-001" (separate from claims of it being the same as the NYC moai), I could not find any evidence of its existence, and all other sources that mention this object only emerged after this article was created on 8 September 2007. The original author didn't seem to provide any sources for this claim. I could not find any object catalogued with the ID "MF-VDM-002" on the EISP website (which it should be noted, is unfortunately far from comprehensive). This led me to e-mail EISP and ask for clarification on whether this object truly existed. EISP clarified that the object in question is still stored at Museo Fonck, is now known as "CL-MAHF-002", it originates from the archaeological site "35-0001" (Anakena), and is made of basalt.

However, "CL-MAHF-002" is not a monolithic moai statue, but rather a smaller moai ma'ea statue. Museo Fonck's website contains its own description of moai ma'ea which explains (translated from Spanish) "Moai ma'ea, a smaller moai with facial features distinct from the moai usually associated with Easter Island".

I would prefer to update the article to clear up the misconception, but e-mails aren't valid sources, so removal is the next-best course of action. In any case, it seems obvious that this article is dedicated only to monolithic moai and thus, this entry should be removed. --LiquidSevens (talk) 16:06, 7 April 2026 (UTC)Reply

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