Santiago de Chile (AFP)

A replica of one of the famous monumental statues (moai) on Easter Island exhibited at the British Museum in London will arrive in Chile on Tuesday so that island sculptors can make a basalt copy that could be exchanged for the original.

The population of the island wants to offer this local stone copy to the British Museum to convince him to return the original statue, taken to the United Kingdom in 1868 by Richard Powell who offered it to Queen Victoria. It was then handed over to the London museum.

"It must be (the megalith) original because in it lives the spirit of our ancestors.For some it is a simple stone or a sculpture of archaeological value, but for us, it has an important spiritual and energetic sense" , said Saturday in a statement Camilo Mapu, the president of the island community.

Representatives of the local community and the Chilean government traveled to London in November to propose an exchange between the copy and the original of the giant statue.

Both parties have agreed to explore the long-term, if not permanent, loan route of the British Museum from the statue to the Easter Island community, but no definitive agreement has the time was concluded.

The original sculpture, 2.42 meters high and weighing 4 tons, was carved in basalt stone. On the back of the statue are inscriptions that describe the cult of the bird-man and other ritual aspects of the enigmatic past of the island. It is estimated that this megalith was carved between 1,000 and 1,600 AD

The replica foam and fiber has just been made in the United States under an agreement between the community of Easter Island and the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, the Museum of Natural and Cultural History of the State of Hawaii, which also defends the restitution of the original statue.

Once in Chile, the replica will be quickly sent to Easter Island, located 3,700 km east of the Chilean coast, to be reproduced in stone.

In March, representatives of the Norwegian Museum Kon-Tiki of Oslo and the Chilean Ministry of Culture signed an agreement that ratifies the thousands of archaeological remains of the island carried by the famous explorer Thor in the middle of the 20th century. Heyerdahl.

? 2019 AFP