Connie Hoffman, age 11, of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, for her question:

Who carved the faces on Easter Island?

These huge stone statues were carved by forgotten artists, perhaps 500 years ago. They are shaped like human heads with stern faces    cut from volcanic rock and once topped with huge hair dos of red stone. There are more than 600 of them, some left unfinished in a mountain quarry. The rest were hauled to spots around the island, where they stood 30 to 40 feet tall. The inhabitants called their small island Rapa Nui. Others call it Easter Island because a Dutch ship found it on Easter Sunday in the year 1722.

By that time, the enormous statues had been toppled from their perches. The island is all alone out in the South Pacific, 1,400 miles from the mainland of Chile. Yet in the distant past it was found, raided and settled several times. In the 400s, a group of settlers built stone battlements. A later group tore down these walls and set up the famous statues    and still later arrivals tried to destroy them. Nobody can say for sure who the forgotten artists were or where they came from.