Sharjah24 – AFP: 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.

The return of the monolith "is profoundly significant as a gesture towards our indigenous peoples," said museum curator Cristian Becker.

With delays due to the coronavirus epidemic, the statue will finally depart from the port of Valparaiso next Monday on a trip of about five days to Easter Island, said the museum, "after a complex technical and diagnostic process" to guarantee its structural integrity.

A traditional ceremony was held at the museum Monday to send the statue safely on its way.

Back on Easter Island, the Moai will be exhibited at the Father Sebastian Englert Anthropological Museum.