Every company should have a little mystery, and
ours is the Moai - those giant stone statues, whose images you've
seen sitting like sentinels on our Web site. Now, just what
are the Moai? Archaeologists and poets have been speculating
on their origin and meaning for centuries. Perhaps they were
images of gods, or deified ancestors, or even stone submissions
in a monolithic art contest. No one knows for sure.
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| The Moai were the creations of a Polynesian people who somehow
sailed thousands of miles across the South Pacific in outrigger
canoes to the island of Rapa Nui around the year 400. Dubbed
Easter Island by a Dutch sea captain who "discovered"
it on Easter Sunday 1722, Rapa Nui is one of the most isolated
places on earth. A triangle of volcanic rock, it lies midway
between Chile and Tahiti - and is 2000 miles away from each!
Although cut-off from the rest of the world, the Rapa Nui
people created a highly evolved, artistic and literate culture.
Their supreme creations, the Moai, were carved from rough,
hardened volcanic ash. On average, they stand 13 feet high
and weigh 14 tons. More than 800 of the statues were created
over a 300 year period - approximately 1300-1600 AD. They
were somehow transported across the 7x14 mile island to rest
on stone platforms placed on mountainsides and in sea caves.
Why did their creation cease abruptly, leaving the Moai statues
toppled and, by the end of the nineteenth century, only about
200 Rapa Nui? Overpopulation, tribal warfare, cannibalism
. . . those are some of the possibilities.
Today, the Rapa Nui have grown to a thriving group of 2000
and many of the fallen Moai once again stand majestically
on their bases. Yet the mystery of the Moai and the people
who created them remains.
At Moai, Inc., 6,987 miles away on Lusk Street in San Francisco,
the mystery of the Moai is alive and well. What's their significance
to our high-tech work? Well, they instill in us a deep sense
of wonder, and they remind us to think big and wild - to dare
to do the impossible.
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