Moai on Easter Island all face inwards. Naturally, we wondered why they all faced the island instead of the ocean. The story goes that the people who built the Moai believed that they were the only people in the whole world. Any invaders or bad people that would be coming would have to come from within the island - not by sea! So the Moai face inwards to protect the community.
In the quarry where they carve the Moai, there are many left there - either fallen over, waiting for transport or partially carved. How did these monolithic statues get transported from the quarry to their final resting place? Some say they were put on logs and rolled; some say they were brought by sea (the quarry is near the ocean but not that close); some say they were told when to leave and that they waddled to their resting place; and my personal favorite is that they danced across the island to their permanent home. Imagine it for a minute!
Oh, and the eyes do not get added until they got to their final resting spot so many broken down and fallen Moai are blind. There's also a superstition that the fallen Moai have fallen for a reason, so do not attempt to bring them back on their feet. This seemed quite reasonable until we moved on to another part of the island where, we were told, the Japanese donated a lot of money to rebuild an ahu (platform) and place the Moai upright again so the stories definitely can vary.
