Moai with pukao (the hats or topknots placed on top of some moai statues) and replica eyes on Ahu Ko Te Riku in Hanga Roa, with Chilean Navy training ship Esmeralda, off Easter Island, in the background (September 2004).
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Sunday, June 6, 2010
Moai with pukao and replica eyes
Moai at the hillside in Rano Raraku, Easter Island
Moai are huge monolithic human figures carved from rock on the Polynesian island of Easter Island, Chile. These sculptures are believed to be carved between 1250 AD and 1500 AD. Nearly moai half are still at Rano Raraku, the main moai quarry, but hundreds of such rock sculptures were transported and set on stone platforms around the island's perimeter. Moai have very large heads measuring three-fifths of their bodies. The moai are the faces of deified ancestors. The statues still gazed inland across their clan lands when Europeans first reached the island, but most moai were cast down during later conflicts between clans.
The statues' production and transportation is considered a remarkable creative, intellectual and physical feat. The tallest moai Paro was about 10 meters high and weighed 75 tons, and the heaviest erected moai was a shorter, squatter moai at Ahu Tongariki weighing 86 tons.
Rano Raraku, located on the lower slopes of Terevaka in the Rapa Nui National Park on Easter Island, is a volcanic crater. It was a quarry for about 500 years until the early eighteenth century, and supplied the stone from which about 95 per cent of the island's rock sculptures (moai) were carved. Rano Raraku, where 397 moai still remain, is a visual record of moai design vocabulary and technological innovation. Rano Raraku is in the World Heritage Site of Rapa Nui National Park and gives its name to one of the seven sections of the park.
Friday, March 12, 2010
Chilean Air Force’s F-16 Fighter Aircraft
Chilean Air Force is about 12,500 strong, and the air assets of Chile are distributed among five air brigades headquartered in Iquique, Antofagasta, Santiago, Puerto Montt, Punta Arenas, and an airbase on King George Island, Antarctica. The Air Force took delivery of the final 2 of 10 F-16s, all purchased from the U.S. in March 2007, and in the same year Chile also took delivery of reconditioned Block 15 F-16s from the Netherlands, bringing to 18 the total of F-16s purchased from the Dutch. F-16 stands for the Lockheed Martin F-16 Fighting Falcon, a multi-role jet fighter aircraft originally developed by General Dynamics for the United States Air Force. F-16, a success on the export market, serves in the air forces of 25 nations, though no longer being purchased by the U.S. Air Force.
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Combate Naval de Iquique: oil painting by Thomas Somerscales
Combate Naval de Iquique, oil on canvas painting by Thomas Somerscales (XIX century) shows the Naval Battle of Iquique confrontation that occurred on May 21, 1879, during the naval stage of the War of the Pacific, a conflict between Chile and the alliance between Peru and Bolivia.