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60 free Easter Island trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Easter Island is one of the most remote inhabited places on Earth, and this quiz covers the whole story of it, not just the statues. It starts with the Polynesians who reached Rapa Nui around 1200 and the chief Hotu Matu'a of oral tradition, then works through the moai themselves: where 95% of them were carved, how much they weigh, what their eyes were made of, why they face inland, what the red topknots are, and who toppled them. From there it moves to the Birdman cult and its egg-hunt swim to Motu Nui, the undeciphered rongorongo script, the Dutch Easter Sunday visit of 1722, Captain Cook, the Peruvian slave raids and smallpox that left 111 people alive in 1877, Chile's annexation, the sheep-ranch decades, citizenship in 1966, and the modern island of Hanga Roa, tourist caps and a runway lengthened for the Space Shuttle. Along the way you meet Thor Heyerdahl, Katherine Routledge and Jared Diamond and the argument over whether the islanders really committed ecocide. Easy questions suit anyone who recognises a moai; the expert tier asks about a French ethnologist and a Tahiti-based land-grabber. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the island, the moai, the Birdman cult and the people involved, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question.
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Q 01Easter Island is a special territory of which country?
Chile
It sits about 3,500 km west of the mainland and belongs to the Valparaíso Region.
Q 02What are the giant stone statues of Easter Island called?
Moai
Nearly 1,000 survive; they were carved by the Rapa Nui roughly between 1250 and 1500.
Q 03What is the island's own name in the local language?
Rapa Nui
It means 'Big Rapa' and was only coined after the slave raids of the 1860s, after a smaller island in the Australs.
Q 04Which Dutch explorer gave Easter Island its name after sighting it on Easter Sunday 1722?
Jacob Roggeveen
He was searching for the phantom 'Davis Land' and called it Paasch-Eyland; his visit left about a dozen islanders dead.
Q 05What is the island's official name in the language of Chile?
Isla de Pascua
It simply means 'Easter Island'; a 1770 expedition briefly named it Isla de San Carlos.
Q 06The romantic name 'Te pito o te henua' is often translated as what?
The Navel of the World
A 1912 inquiry found the phrase probably just meant 'land's end' and referred to the island's three capes.
Q 07According to a 2007 study, when did the first settlers most likely reach Easter Island?
Around 1200
Earlier estimates said 800; radiocarbon dates from Anakena pushed the arrival much later.
Q 08Which legendary chief led the two-canoe expedition that oral tradition says first settled the island?
Hotu Matu'a
His captain Tu'u ko Iho is credited with bringing the statues and making them 'walk'.
Q 09Which introduced animal is blamed for helping strip the island of its trees by eating palm seeds?
The Polynesian rat
Recovered seed shells show gnaw marks; the island once had giant palms, possibly the largest in the world.
Q 10The island's population fell to a low of how many native inhabitants in 1877?
111
Only 36 of them had children; over 97% of the population had died or gone in under a decade.
Q 11Slave raiders from which country abducted about 1,500 islanders, half the population, in 1862-63?
Peru
The few who returned brought smallpox, and the island's rongorongo readers were among those lost.
Q 12In which year was Easter Island annexed?
1888
A naval captain signed the Agreement of Wills with the island's chiefs on 9 September.
Q 13Which Chilean naval officer negotiated the annexation, buying island land partly himself?
Policarpo Toro
The chiefs ceded sovereignty without giving up their titles, lands or traditions.
The Rapa Nui were only granted Chilean citizenship in which year?
Q 21Roughly what fraction of a moai's height is taken up by its head?
Three eighths
The oversized head reflects the Polynesian belief in the sanctity of the chief's head; the statues have no legs.
Q 22What are the stone platforms on which the moai were set called?
Ahu
Most line the coast and face inland, so the statues watch over the settlements with their backs to the sea.
Q 23The red 'topknots' placed on some moai heads are called what?
Pukao
They were carved from red scoria quarried at a single site, Puna Pau, and were a later addition in the 15th-16th centuries.
1966
Until then the islanders were confined to the one town and the rest of the island was leased as a sheep ranch.
Q 15What was Easter Island outside the main village used for in the early 20th century?
A sheep farm run by a Scottish company
Williamson-Balfour's lease was cancelled in 1953 and the navy then ran the island for over a decade.
Q 16Easter Island's nearest inhabited neighbour, about 2,000 km away, is where?
Pitcairn
Pitcairn had about 50 residents in 2013; the nearest town of over 500 people is Rikitea on Mangareva.
Q 17What is the rough shape of Easter Island?
Triangular
Three coalesced extinct volcanoes form its corners.
Q 18Which volcano forms the bulk of the island and is its highest point at 507 m?
Terevaka
Poike was once a separate island until Terevaka's lava joined the two.
Q 19Where were about 95% of the moai carved?
Rano Raraku
The volcanic crater's tuff was quarried for some 500 years, and 394 statues remain there in every state of completion.
Q 20What is the tallest moai ever erected, at almost 10 metres, called?
Paro
It weighed 82 tonnes; one unfinished statue in the quarry would have stood 21 m and weighed up to 165 tonnes.
Q 24What were the moai's eye sockets designed to hold, as discovered in 1979?
Coral eyes with obsidian or scoria pupils
Sergio Rapu Haoa's team pieced together fragments of white coral found at various sites.
Q 25On average, how much does a moai weigh?
About 12.5 tonnes
The average statue stands about 4 m tall with a base 1.6 m wide.
Q 26Which restored ahu has fifteen moai, including the heaviest ever erected at 86 tonnes?
Ahu Tongariki
A 1960 tsunami swept the platform inland; a Japanese crane maker helped restore it over five years.
Q 27What natural disaster swept the fifteen-statue platform on the south coast inland in 1960?
A tsunami from a Chilean earthquake
Its statues had already been toppled during the island's civil wars.
Q 28What is unusual about the seven moai of Ahu Akivi?
They stand inland and face the sea
They face exactly where the sun sets at the spring equinox and are all the same size and shape.
Q 29What was the period when rival groups toppled moai statues to destroy their power called?
Huri mo'ai
Not one moai was left standing when French missionaries arrived in the 1860s.
Q 30The moai are described in Rapa Nui as 'aringa ora', meaning what?
Living faces
They are believed to embody deified ancestors charged with mana, spiritual power.