Easter Island

27.1127°S, 109.3497°W.

Volcanic island in the southeastern Pacific, the most remote inhabited landmass on Earth: 3,512 km from the South American coast, 2,075 km from Pitcairn. Polynesian settlers arrived between 800 and 1200 CE. Approximately 887 monolithic statues (moai) were carved from compressed volcanic ash at the Rano Raraku quarry between 1100 and 1680 CE and transported across the island to be erected on stone platforms (ahu) facing inland over their villages. The largest finished moai weighs 82 tonnes; the largest unfinished moai, El Gigante, would have weighed 270 tonnes had it been moved. The Rongorongo script preserved on 26 wooden tablets has never been deciphered and is found nowhere else on Earth. Population collapse from an estimated peak of 12,000 to fewer than 3,000 by the 18th century is conventionally attributed to deforestation, though recent research disputes the timeline.

A civilization arrived on a treeless rock in the middle of the Pacific, carved nine hundred giants, and taught no one alive how to read what they wrote.