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Chile's National Museum of Natural History said Monday it will return to Easter Island an enormous stone statue taken from the Rapa Nui people and brought to the mainland 150 years ago.
The monolith is one of hundreds, called Moai, carved by the Rapa Nui in honor of their ancestors and sometimes referred to as the Easter Island heads.
The statues are today the island's greatest tourist attraction, sculpted from basalt more than 1,000 years ago.
The one being returned, dubbed Moai Tau, is a 715-kilogram (1,500-pound) giant brought by the Chilean navy some 3,700 kilometers (2,300 miles) across the Pacific in 1870.
Eight years later, it was moved to the natural history museum to be displayed.
The Rapa Nui, for whom the Moai represent the spirits of their ancestors, have been asking for the statue's return for years—as well as other cultural treasures taken from their island.
