On Easter Island there was a large-scale fire that damaged the famous stone idols, moai. According to the Air Force, some of them are so charred that they cannot be restored..

On Easter Island, there are about 1000 similar monoliths, whose height is four to 10 meters.. Moai were created by a Polynesian tribe 500 years ago..

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According to Carolina Cultural Heritage official Perez Dattari, the fire, which broke out on Monday, covered almost 60 hectares.. It was the result of arson, and the center of the fire was the Rano Raku volcano, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site..

The mayor of the island, Pedro Edmunds, told local media that "

Easter Island is located 3500 kilometers off the coast of Chile, it depends on tourism and reopened to tourists just three months ago after a shutdown associated with the COVID-19 pandemic..

However, now the island is again closed to the public in order to assess the consequences of the fire and the damage caused by it..

The park's social pages note that "

Previously, scientists from Binghamton University of New York, Cambridge and the International Institute for Archaeological Research in Honolulu said that the main theory of the decline of the civilization of Easter Island may be a myth.. The researchers built four models, none of which supported the idea that the island's population experienced a demographic crisis prior to the arrival of Europeans..