The descendants of these intrepid colonists spent the next several centuries carving and moving gigantic stone statues around their island, which measures only 46 square miles. No one knows why or how they did it.
Legend has it that the mammoth heads simply walked to their sacred platforms.
By 1722, when the first Europeans visited Easter Island, the civilization had all but collapsed and the island was devoid of its trees. The five-part miniseries returns to the thrilling technology of yesteryear to recreate ancient wonders of the world using traditional methods and materials. Roughly 900 of the statues, called moai, are distributed around the island, each carved from dark volcanic stone quarried from an extinct volcano. The largest statue weighs 82 tons. Many sit on elaborate stone platforms by the sea, facing inland.