The Easter Island Moai is a series of monumental ancient statues that are iconic symbols of the island. They are typically carved from volcanic rock and are typically between 3 and 20 meters tall. The Moai have been the subject of much speculation and mystery.

Wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_Island

Here is more info about the statues:
https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/arqueologia/eastern_island/easter02.htm

The official legend says that "Easter Island's Polynesian inhabitants arrived on Easter Island sometime near 1200 AD. They created a thriving and industrious culture, as evidenced by the island's numerous enormous stone moai and other artifacts. However, land clearing for cultivation and the introduction of the Polynesian rat led to gradual deforestation. By the time of European arrival in 1722, the island's population was estimated to be 2,000–3,000. European diseases, Peruvian slave raiding expeditions in the 1860s, and emigration to other islands, e.g. Tahiti, further depleted the population, reducing it to a low of 111 native inhabitants in 1877."

The official story is just too fantastic to be true.

• Question #1. How did people arrive on the island sometime near the 1200s? There is no forest, not a single tree which means no wood for tools, buildings, etc.

⛵The official explanation: The ancient Polynesian people were known for their seafaring ways, and Easter Island skeletons' DNA links their heritage. And when they came, there were palm trees.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/pioneers-of-easter-island/

Debunk #1. While it is known that the ancient Polynesian moved between the islands in the Pacific, they traveled within the area of many islands near each other and it is known that they went as far as a few hundred miles from place to place. But Easter Island is 2,000 miles from the nearest land. It is too far to travel by canoe and the island is too small to get there statistically by accident or miracle.

• Question #2. How did rodents (rats) get into the island? Did Polynesian people have rats unnoticed in their canoes during their 2,000 miles travel to nowhere?

🐀 The official version says that trees were eliminated entirely by rodents by the 14-15 century. "Exactly how rats got on to the island is not known, although one theory is that they arrived as stowaways in the first canoes of Polynesian colonists. Once they arrived, the rats found palm nuts offered an almost unlimited high-quality food supply." And there were no predators…

Debunk #2: Regarding the theory about rats in Polynesian canoes... Taking what we know about rats => highly unlikely. Rats in the European ships in cargo holds => highly likely, there is much proof for that in literature. Additionally it is now proven that rodents coexist well with palm trees in South America and other areas.

"In spite of this significant rodent predation which is obviously much more extensive at La Campana than ever was the case on Rapa Nui (illustrated there by a high percentage of ungnawed nuts), the Jubaea palms at La Campana are able to regenerate, grow and form a dense palm woodland."

http://www.marklynas.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Mieth-Bork_JAS_Rats-Humans.pdf

The article is relatively recent and it proves persuasively that rats are not related to tree elimination. Maybe the whole theory of rats on the island before the discovery by Europeans is wrong.

There are traces of burned soil - it may be due to natural causes (i.g. volcanoes). Millions of trees were cut by Europeans deliberately using iron tools more likely during late 1700s early 1800s and moved them away.

• Question #3: Drinking water: The island "has no permanent streams, and its three lakes are hard to reach and far from archaeological evidence of settlement." There is no evidence for ancient agriculture.

Before the aviation era and before the Panama Canal was built the Easter island was of great importance strategically during the late 1700s and 1800s due to its location. This can explain why there are so many myths around it.

🇳🇱 🇬🇧 Great powers were in competition to try to take over the island. The 1722 discovery by expedition of captain Roggeveen is most likely fake. The Roggeveen's expedition was in the Pacific at the time but unlikely the island was discovered by Roggeveen. The Roggeveen expedition main report was published in Britain only in 1838 to try and retroactively claim priority over the discovery.

🇪🇸 The island was first discovered by Europeans in 1770 by either French or Spanish expedition. On 15 November 1770 two Spanish ships, San Lorenzo and Santa Rosalia, under the command of Captain Don Felipe Gonzalez de Ahedo visited the island and then immediately it was captured and populated by Spanish in 3-4 consecutive expeditions. Most likely "native" people were brought to the island by these Spanish expeditions.

🇨🇱 Easter Island was annexed by Chile on 9 September 1888 by Policarpo Toro. Then the island was used as a remote prison and then managed by the Chilean Navy until 1966.

During this time, the island was closed to visitors.

🇨🇳 When we talked about the Terracotta army I speculated that the thousands of clay soldiers of the Terracotta army could be created relatively quickly by a Chinese labor camp. First as a copy project to keep prisoners busy, disciplined (and tired) and then the copy project was converted into a mega historic artifact project.

https://debunked.locals.com/post/4066892/hh2-the-terracotta-army-qa

Since Easter Island was used as a remote prison by Chile and it was closed to visitors we can imagine that the project was very similar to the Terracotta army project.

To keep prisoners busy – they were assigned with the task to create (copy statues). It’s possible there were 1-2 authentic statues to begin with and used as a template and everything else were copies which were created by prisoners. I estimate the project to create hundreds of statues with iron tools by hundreds of prisoners could take maybe 10-15 years. Possibly most of the statues were carved during the late 1800s or early 1900s by prisoners.