Easter Island

Easter Island Rapa Nui Isla de Pascua
Easter Island map showing Terevaka, Poike, Rano Kau, Motu Nui, Orongo, and Mataveri; major ahus are marked with moai
Capital		Hanga Roa
Official language(s)		Spanish, Rapa Nui [1]
Ethnic groups (2002)		Rapanui 60%, European or mestizo 39%, Amerindian 1%
Demonym		Rapa Nui or Pascuense
Government		Special territory of Chile[2]
-	Provincial Governor	Pedro Pablo Edmunds Paoa
-	Mayor	Luz Zasso Paoa
Annexation		to Chile
-	Treaty signed	September 9, 1888
Area
-	Total	163.6 km2  63.1 sq mi
Population
-	2010 estimate	4,888[3]
-	2002 census	3,791
-	Density	29.88/km2  77.46/sq mi
Currency		Peso (CLP)
Time zone		UTC−06 (UTC−6)
Internet TLD		.cl
Calling code		+56 32

Easter Island, Sala y Gómez, South America and the islands in between

Orthographic projection centered on Easter Island

Easter Island (Rapa Nui: Rapa Nui, Spanish: Isla de Pascua) is a Polynesian island in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, at the southeastern most point of the Polynesian triangle. A special territory of Chile annexed in 1888, Easter Island is widely famous for its 887 extant monumental statues, called moai (pronounced /ˈmoʊ.aɪ/), created by the early Rapanui people. It is a World Heritage Site (as determined by UNESCO) with much of the island protected within the Rapa Nui National Park. In recent times the island has served as a cautionary tale about the cultural and environmental dangers of overexploitation. Ethnographers and archaeologists now argue that the introduction of diseases carried by European colonizers and the slave raiding^[4] that devastated the population in the 1860s had a much greater social than environmental impact.

Name

The name "Easter Island" was given by the island's first recorded European visitor, the Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen, who encountered it on Easter Sunday 1722, while searching for Davis or David's island and named it Paasch-Eyland (18th century Dutch for "Easter Island").^[5] The island's official Spanish name, Isla de Pascua, also means "Easter Island".

The current Polynesian name of the island, "Rapa Nui" or "Big Rapa," was coined after the slave raids of the early 1860s, because of Easter Island's geographic resemblance to the island of Rapa in the Bass Islands of the Austral Islands group.^[6] However, Thor Heyerdahl has argued that the naming would have been the opposite, Rapa being the original name of Easter Island, and Rapa Iti was named by its refugees.^[7]

There are several hypotheses about the "original" Polynesian name for Easter Island, including Te pito o te henua, meaning "The Navel of the land" or "The ends of the land". Pito means both navel and umbilical cord which was considered to be the link between the world of the living (kainga) and the spiritworld Po, lying in the depths of the ocean further East. Since Easter Island is the easternmost Polynesian island it's possible the name refers to it being the "ends" of the world of the living; however after Alphonse Pinart translated it as "the Navel of the World" in his Voyage a l'Ile de Paques published in 1877, this second meaning has been lost. According to some oral traditions, the island was first named Te pito o te kainga a Hau Maka, or the "Little piece of land of Hau Maka".^[8] Another name, Mata-ki-Te-rangi, means "Eyes looking to the sky."

Location and physical geography

Easter Island is one of the world's most isolated inhabited islands. Its closest inhabited neighbor is Pitcairn Island, with fewer than a hundred inhabitants 2,075 km (1,289.35 mi) to the West. It has a latitude close to that of Caldera, Chile; lies 3,510 km (2,180 mi) west of continental Chile at its nearest point (between Lota and Lebu). (Isla Salas y Gómez, 415 km (258 mi) to the east, is closer but uninhabited).

The island is approx 24.6 km (15.3 mi) long by 12.3 km (7.6 mi) at its widest point — its overall shape has been described as a triangle. It has an area of 163.6 km² (63 sq mi), and a maximum altitude of 507 metres. There are three Rano (freshwater crater lakes), at Rano Kau, Rano Raraku and Rano Aroi, near the summit of Terevaka, but no permanent streams or rivers.

Climate and weather

The climate of Easter Island is subtropical maritime. The lowest temperatures are registered in July and August (18 °C or 64 °F) and the highest in February (maximum temperature 28 °C or 82 °F^[9]), the summer season in the southern hemisphere. Winters are relatively mild. The rainiest month is April, though the island experiences year-round rainfall.^[10] As an isolated island Easter Island is constantly exposed to winds which help to keep the temperature fairly cool. Precipitation averages 1,118 millimetres or 44 inches per year. Occasionally, heavy rainfall and rainstorms strike the island. These occur mostly in the winter months (June-August). Since it is close to the South Pacific High and outside the range of the ITCZ, cyclones and hurricanes do not occur around Easter island.^[11]

Geology

The underlying island geology is one of extinct volcanoes. Easter Island is a volcanic high island, consisting mainly of three extinct coalesced volcanoes: Terevaka (altitude 507 metres) forms the bulk of the island. Two other volcanoes, Poike and Rano Kau, form the eastern and southern headlands and give the island its roughly triangular shape. There are numerous lesser cones and other volcanic features, including the crater Rano Raraku, the cinder cone Puna Pau and many volcanic caves including lava tubes.^[12] Poike used to be an island until volcanic material from Terevaka united it to Easter Island. The island is dominated by hawaiite and basalt flows which are rich in iron and show affinity with igneous rocks found in Galapagos Islands.^[13]

Easter Island and surrounding islets such as Motu Nui, Motu Iti are the summit of a large volcanic mountain rising over two thousand metres from the sea bed. It is part of the Sala y Gómez Ridge, a (mostly submarine) mountain range with dozens of seamounts starting with Pukao and then Moai, two seamounts to the west of Easter Island, and extending 2,700 km (1,700 mi) east to the Nazca Ridge.^[14]

Pukao, Moai and Easter Island were formed in the last 750,000 years, with the most recent eruption a little over a hundred thousand years ago. They are the youngest mountains of the Sala y Gómez Ridge, which has been formed by the Nazca Plate floating over the Easter hotspot.^[15] Alternative explanation is the activity of the Easter Fracture Zone. Only at Easter Island, its surrounding islets and Sala y Gómez does the Sala y Gómez Ridge form dry land.

The movement of Nazca and formerly Farallon Plate over the hotspot has created a long underwater ridge, the Nazca Ridge that whose eastern end is being subducted under Peru.

In the first half of the 20th century, steam purportedly came out of the Rano Kau crater wall. This was photographed by the island's manager, Mr Edmunds.[2]. According to geologists the last volcanic activity on the island occurred 10,000 years ago.

History

Rapa Nui National Park*
UNESCO World Heritage Site
State Party	Chile
Type	Cultural
Criteria	i, iii, v
Reference	715
Region**	Oceanic Continent
Inscription history
Inscription	1995  (19th Session)
* Name as inscribed on World Heritage List. ** Region as classified by UNESCO.

The history of Easter Island is rich and controversial. Its inhabitants have endured famines, epidemics, civil war, slave raids, colonialism, and near deforestation; their population has declined precipitously more than once. They have left a cultural legacy that has brought them fame disproportionate to their population.

Ahu Tongariki near Rano Raraku, a 15-moai ahu excavated and restored in the 1990s

The initial settlement of Easter Island has been dated around 300–400 CE, which would coincide approximately with the arrival of the first settlers on Hawaii. However, rectifications in radiocarbon dating have changed almost all of the early settlement dates in Polynesia, and Rapa Nui is now considered to have been settled about 700-1100 CE. An ongoing study by archaeologists Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo suggests a still later date. As they argue: “Radiocarbon dates for the earliest stratigraphic layers at Anakena, Easter Island, and analysis of previous radiocarbon dates imply that the island was colonized late, about 1200 CE. Significant ecological impacts and major cultural investments in monumental architecture and statuary thus began soon after initial settlement.”^[16]

According to oral tradition the first settlement was located in Anakena. Jared Diamond notes in Collapse that Caleta Anakena is the landing point that provides the best shelter from prevailing swells, as well as a sandy beach for canoe landings and launchings, so it seems likely to have been an early place of settlement. However, this hypothesis contradicts radiocarbon dating, according to which other sites preceded Anakena by many years, especially the Tahai, whose radiocarbon dates precede Anakena's by several centuries.

The island was most probably populated by Polynesians who navigated in canoes or catamarans from the Marquesas Islands, 3,200 km (2,000 mi) away, or the Gambier Islands (Mangareva, 2,600 km (1,600 mi) away. When Captain Cook visited the island, one of his crew members, who was a Polynesian from Bora Bora, was able to communicate with the Rapa Nui. The language most similar to Rapa Nui is Mangarevan with an 80% similarity in vocabulary. In 1999, a voyage with reconstructed Polynesian boats was carried out, reaching Easter Island from Mangareva in 19 days.^[17]

According to oral traditions recorded by the missionaries in the 1860s, the island originally had a very clear class system, with an ariki, high chief, wielding great power over nine other clans and their respective chiefs. The high chief was the eldest descendent through firstborn lines of the island's legendary founder, Hotu Matu'a. The most visible element in the culture was the production of massive statues called moai that represented deified ancestors. It was believed that the living had a symbiotic relationship with the dead where the dead provided everything the living needed (health, fertility of land and animals, fortune, etc.) and the living through offerings could provide the dead with a better place in the spirit world. Most settlements were located on the coast and moai were erected all along the coastline, watching over their descendants in the settlements before them, with their backs toward the spirit world in the sea.

As the island became increasingly overpopulated and resources diminished, warriors known as matatoa gained more power and the Ancestor Cult ended, making way for the Bird Man Cult. This cult maintained that, although the ancestors still provided for their descendants, the medium through which the living could contact the dead was no longer statues, but human beings chosen through a competition. The god responsible for creating humans, Makemake, played an important role in this process. Katherine Routhledge, who systematically collected the island's traditions in her expedition in 1919, showed that the competitions for Bird Man (Rapanui: tangata manu) started around 1760, after the arrival of the first Europeans, and ended in 1878, with the construction of the first church by Roman Catholic missionaries who formally arrived on the island in 1864. Petroglyphs representing Bird Men on Easter Island are exactly the same as some petroglyphs in Hawaii, indicating that this concept was probably brought by the original settlers, while only the competition itself was unique to Easter Island.

European accounts from 1722 and 1770 mention standing statues, but Cook's expedition, which visited the island in 1774, noted that several moai were lying face down, having been toppled in warfare.

Motu Nui islet, part of the Birdman Cult ceremony

According to Diamond and Heyerdahl's version of the island's history, the huri mo'ai – "statue-toppling" – continued into the 1830s as a part of fierce internal wars. By 1838 the only standing moai were on the slopes of Rano Raraku, in Hoa Hakananai'a in Orongo, and Ariki Paro in Ahu Te Pito Kura. However, there is very little archaeological evidence of pre-European societal collapse. In fact, bone pathology and osteometric data from islanders of that period clearly suggest few fatalities can be attributed directly to violence (Owsley et al., 1994).

The first-recorded European contact with the island was on April 5 (Easter Sunday), 1722, when Dutch navigator Jacob Roggeveen visited the island for a week and estimated there were 2,000 to 3,000 inhabitants on the island. The number may have been greater, since some may have been frightened into hiding by a misunderstanding that led Roggeveen's men to fire on the natives, killing more than a dozen men and wounding several more. The next foreign visitors (on November 15, 1770) were two Spanish ships, San Lorenzo and Santa Rosalia. They reported the island as largely uncultivated, with a seashore lined with stone statues. Four years later, in 1774, British explorer James Cook visited Easter Island, he reported the statues as being neglected with some having fallen down. In 1825, the British ship HMS Blossom visited and reported having seen no standing statues in the places they visited. Easter Island was approached many times during the 19th century, but by then the islanders had become openly hostile towards any attempt to land, and very little new information was reported before the 1860s.

A series of devastating events killed or removed almost the entire population of Easter Island in the 1860s. In December 1862, Peruvian slave raiders struck Easter Island. Violent abductions continued for several months, eventually capturing around 1500 men and women, half of the island's population.^[18] Among the great many people they captured was the island's paramount chief and his heir as well as those who knew how to read and write Easter Island's rongorongo script, the only evidence of Polynesian script to have been found to date. When the slave raiders were forced to repatriate the people they had kidnapped in several Polynesian islands, they knowingly disembarked carriers of smallpox together with a few survivors on each of the islands, creating devastating epidemics from Easter Island all the way to the Marquesas islands. Easter Island's population was reduced to the point where some of the dead were not even buried. Tuberculosis, introduced by whalers in the mid 1800s, had already killed several islanders when the first Christian missionary, Eugène Eyraud, died from this disease in 1867. About a quarter of the island's population succumbed along with him. In the following years, the managers of the sheep ranch and the missionaries started buying the newly available lands of the deceased, and this led to great confrontations between the two.

"Queen Mother" Koreto with her daughters "Queen" Caroline and Harriette in 1877

Jean-Baptiste Dutrou-Bornier bought up all of the island apart from the missionaries' area around Hanga Roa and moved a couple of hundred Rapanui to Tahiti to work for his backers. In 1871 the missionaries, having fallen out with Dutrou-Bornier, evacuated all but 171 Rapanui to the Gambier islands.^[19] Those who remained were mostly older men. Six years later, there were just 111 people living on Easter Island, and only 36 of them had any offspring.^[20] From that point on and into the present day, the island's population slowly recovered. But with over 97% of the population dead or having left in less than a decade, much of the island's cultural knowledge had been lost.

Easter Island was annexed by Chile on September 9, 1888, by Policarpo Toro, by means of the "Treaty of Annexation of the Island" (Tratado de Anexión de la isla). Toro, then representing the government of Chile signed with Atamu Tekena, designated "King" of Easter Island by the Chilean government once the paramount chief and his heir had died. The validity of this treaty is being contested by some Rapanui today.

Until the 1960s, the surviving Rapanui were confined to the settlement of Hanga Roa while the rest of the island was rented to the Williamson-Balfour Company as a sheep farm until 1953.^[21] The island was then managed by the Chilean Navy until 1966, at which point the island was reopened in its entirety. In 1966, the Rapanui were given Chilean citizenship.^[22]

On July 30, 2007, a constitutional reform gave Easter Island and the Juan Fernández Islands (a.k.a Robinson Crusoe Island) the status of special territories of Chile. Pending the enactment of a special charter, the island will continue to be governed as a province of the V Region of Valparaíso.^[23]

On July 11, 2010 at 18:15:15 a total solar eclipse occurred for the first time in Easter Island in over 1,300 years.^[24]

Ecology

View of Easter Island from space, 2001. The Poike peninsula is on the right.

Easter Island, together with its closest neighbor, the tiny island of Isla Sala y Gómez 415 kilometres (258 mi) further east, is recognized by ecologists as a distinct ecoregion, the Rapa Nui subtropical broadleaf forests. The original subtropical moist broadleaf forests are now gone, but paleobotanical studies of fossil pollen and tree moulds left by lava flows indicate that the island was formerly forested, with a range of trees, shrubs, ferns, and grasses. A large now extinct palm, Paschalococos disperta, related to the Chilean wine palm (Jubaea chilensis), was one of the dominant trees as attested by fossil evidence and like its Chilean counterpart probably took close to 100 years to reach its adult height. Work carried out by Tony Hunt and others indicates that the Polynesian rat, which the original settlers brought with them, played a very important role in the disappearance of the Rapanui palm. Rat teeth marks can be observed in 99% of the nuts found preserved in caves or excavated in different sites, indicating that the Polynesian rat impeded the palm's reproduction. That, together with the fact that palms were cleared to make the settlements, led to their extinction almost 350 years before present.^[25] The toromiro tree (Sophora toromiro) was prehistorically present on Easter Island, and is now extinct in the wild. However, the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and the Göteborg Botanical Garden are jointly leading a scientific program to reintroduce the toromiro to Easter Island. With the palm and the toromiro virtually gone, there was considerably less rainfall as a result of less condensation. After the island was used to feed thousands of sheep for almost a century, by the mid 1900's the island was mostly covered in grassland with nga'atu or bulrush (Schoenoplectus californicus tatora) in the crater lakes of Rano Raraku and Rano Kau. The presence of these reeds, which are called totora in the Andes, was used to support the argument of a South American origin of the statue builders, but pollen analysis of lake sediments shows these reeds have grown on the island for over 30,000 years. Before the arrival of humans, Easter Island had vast seabird colonies containing probably over 30 resident species, perhaps the world's richest.^[26] Such colonies are no longer found on the main island. There is fossil evidence for five species of landbirds (two rails, two parrots and a heron), all of which have become extinct.^[27]

The immunosuppressant drug sirolimus was first discovered in the bacterium Streptomyces hygroscopicus in a soil sample from Easter Island. The drug is also known as rapamycin, after Rapa Nui.^[28] and is now being tested for having shown to extend longevity in mice.^[29]

Panorama of Anakena beach, Easter Island. The moai pictured here was the first to be raised back into place upon its ahu in 1955 by islanders using the ancient method.

Trees are sparse on modern Easter Island, rarely forming natural groves and it has been argued whether or not the native Easter Islanders deforested the island in the process of erecting their statues,^[30] and in providing sustenance for an overpopulated island. Experimental archaeology has demonstrated that some statues certainly could have been placed on "Y" shaped wooden frames called miro manga erua and then pulled to their final destinations on ceremonial sites.^[30] Other theories involve the use of "ladders" (parallel wooden rails) over which the statues could have been dragged.^[31] Rapanui traditions metaphorically refer to spiritual power (mana) as the means by which the moai were "walked" from the quarry.

Given the island's southern latitude, the climatic effects of the Little Ice Age (about 1650 to 1850) may have exacerbated deforestation, though this remains speculative.^[30] Many researchers [Finney (1994), Hunter Anderson (1998); P.D. Nunn (1999, 2003); Orliac and Orliac (1998)] point to the climatic downtrend caused by the Little Ice Age as one of the contributing factors to the problem of resource stress and to the disappearance of the palm tree from the Island. Experts, however, do not agree on when exactly the island’s palms became extinct.

Jared Diamond dismisses past climate change as a dominant factor on the island's deforestation in his book Collapse which offers his perspective into the collapse of the ancient Easter Islanders. Influenced by the romantic interpretation of Easter's history by Thor Heyerdahl's (as he acknowledges in chapter 2 of Collapse), Diamond insists that the disappearance of the island's trees seems to coincide with a decline of its civilization around the 17th and 18th century. This is linked to the fact that they stopped making statues at that time and started destroying the ahu. But the link is weakened because the Bird Man cult continued thriving and survived the great impact caused by the arrival of explorers, whalers, sandalwood traders, and slave raiders.

Midden contents show a sudden drop in quantities of fish and bird bones as the islanders lost the means to construct fishing vessels and the birds lost their nesting sites. Soil erosion because of lack of trees is apparent in some places. Sediment samples document that up to half of the native plants had become extinct and that the vegetation of the island was drastically altered. However, Polynesians were primarily farmers, not fishermen, and their diet consisted mainly of cultivated staples such as taro root, sweet potato, yams, cassava, and bananas, while chickens were more important sources of protein than fish. Cannibalism occurred on all Polynesian islands in both times of plenty and of famine so the fact that it occurred on Easter Island (based on human remains associated with cooking sites, especially in caves) is not really good evidence for the collapse of civilization.

View toward the interior of the island

In his article "From Genocide to Ecocide: The Rape of Rapa Nui", Benny Peiser notes evidence of self-sufficiency on Easter Island when Europeans first arrived. The island still had smaller trees, mainly toromiro, which became extinct in the 20th century probably because of its extremely slow growth and changes in the island's ecosystem. Cornelis Bouman, Jakob Roggeveen's captain, stated in his log book, "... of yams, bananas and small coconut palms we saw little and no other trees or crops." According to Carl Friedrich Behrens, Roggeveen's officer, "The natives presented palm branches as peace offerings. According to ethnographer Alfred Mètraux, the most common type of house was called "hare paenga" known today as "boat house" because the roof resembled an overturned boat. The foundation of the houses were made of buried basalt slabs with holes for wooden beams to connect with each other throughout the width of the house. These were then covered with a layer of totora reed, followed by a layer of woven sugarcane leaves, and lastly a layer of woven grass. There were reports by European visitors who said they had seen "boles of large palm trees". Peiser considers these reports to indicate that considerable numbers of large trees still existed at that time, which is perhaps contradicted by the Bouman quote above. It should be considered that the plantations were often located further inland, by foothills, inside open-ceiling lava tubes, and other places protected from the strong salt winds and salt spray affecting areas closer to the coast. It's possible many of the Europeans didn't venture too far inland, especially if one considers that the statue quarry which is only one kilometer from the coast and has an impressive cliff 100 m (328.08 ft) high was not explored by Europeans until well into the 1800s.

Easter Island has suffered from heavy soil erosion in recent centuries, perhaps aggravated by agriculture and massive deforestation. This process seems to have been gradual and may have been aggravated by extensive sheep farming of the Williamson-Balfour Company throughout most of the 20th century. Jakob Roggeveen reported that Easter Island was exceptionally fertile. "Fowls are the only animals they keep. They cultivate bananas, sugar cane, and above all sweet potatoes." In 1786 Jean-François de La Pérouse visited Easter Island and his gardener declared that "three days' work a year" would be enough to support the population.

Rollin, a major in the Pérouse expedition of 1786, wrote, "Instead of meeting with men exhausted by famine... I found, on the contrary, a considerable population, with more beauty and grace than I afterwards met in any other island; and a soil, which, with very little labour, furnished excellent provisions, and in an abundance more than sufficient for the consumption of the inhabitants."^[32]

According to Diamond, oral traditions (the veracity of which has been questioned by Routhledge, Lavachery, Mètraux, Peiser and others) of the current islanders seem obsessed with cannibalism, which he readily suggests as evidence supporting a rapid collapse. For example, he states (Diamond, 1995), to severely insult an enemy one would say, "The flesh of your mother sticks between my teeth." This, Diamond asserts, means the food supply of the people ultimately ran out;^[33]. Cannibalism, however, was widespread across Polynesian cultures, rendering his conclusion rather speculative.^[34]. Human bones have not been found in earth ovens other than the ones behind the religious platforms indicating that cannibalism in Easter Island was a ritualistic practice. Contemporary ethnographic research has proven there is scarcely any significant or tangible evidence for the practice of cannibalism (at the very least, as a widespread phenomenon) anywhere and at any point in time in the Island (Flenley and Bahn, 2003). Not surprisingly, the first scientific exploration of the Easter Island (1914), recorded that the indigenous population strongly rejected allegations that they or their ancestors had ever been cannibals (Routledge, 1919).

Culture

Birdmen (Tangata manu) paintings in the so-called "Cave of the Men Eatresses"

Mythology

The most important myths are:

• Tangata manu, the Birdman cult which was practiced until the 1860s.
• Makemake, an important god.
• Aku-aku, the guardians of the sacred family caves.
• Moai-kava-kava a ghost man of the Hanau epe (long-ears.)
• Hekai ite umu pare haonga takapu Hanau epe kai noruego, the sacred chant to appease the aku-aku before entering a family cave.

Stone work

The Rapa Nui people had a Stone Age civilization and made extensive use of several different types of local stone:

• Basalt, a hard, dense stone used for toki and at least one of the moai.
• Obsidian, a volcanic glass with sharp edges used for sharp-edged implements such as Mataa and also for the black iris of the eyes of the moai.
• Red scoria from Puna Pau, a very light red stone used for the pukao and a few moai.
• Tuff from Rano Raraku, a much more easily worked rock than basalt, and was used for most of the moai.

Moai (statues)

Moai with replica eyes at Ahu Ko Te Riku in Hanga Roa, with Chilean Navy ship Buque Escuela Esmeralda behind

The large stone statues, or moai, for which Easter Island is world-famous, were carved from 1100-1680 CE (rectified radio-carbon dates). A total of 887 monolithic stone statues have been inventoried on the island and in museum collections so far.^[35] Although often identified as "Easter Island heads", the statues are actually complete torsos, the figures kneeling on bent knees with their hands over their stomachs. Some upright moai have become buried up to their necks by shifting soils.

Almost all (95%) moai were carved out of distinctive, compressed, easily worked solidified volcanic ash or tuff found at a single site inside the extinct volcano Rano Raraku. The native islanders who carved them used only stone hand chisels, mainly basalt toki, which still lie in place all over the quarry. The stone chisels were re-sharpened by chipping off a new edge when dulled. The volcanic stone the moai were carved from was first wetted to soften it before sculpting began, then again periodically during the process. While many teams worked on different statues at the same time, a single moai would take a team of five or six men approximately one year to complete. Each statue represented the deceased head of a lineage.

Tukuturi, an unusual bearded kneeling moai

Two ahu at Hanga Roa. In foreground Ahu Ko Te Riku (with a pukao on its head). In the mid-ground is a side view of an ahu with five moai showing retaining wall, platform, ramp and pavement.

Ahu Akivi, one of the few inland ahu, with the only moai facing the ocean

Only a quarter of the statues were installed, while nearly half still remain in the quarry at Rano Raraku and the rest elsewhere on the island, probably on their way to final locations. The largest moai ever raised on a platform is known as "Paro" weighing 82 tons and 9.8 m (32.15 ft) long.^[36] There are several other statues of similar weight that were transported to several ahu on both the North and South coasts. It is not yet known how they transported the statues, but some have suggested that they required a miro manga erua, a Y-shaped sledge with cross pieces, pulled with ropes made from the tough bark of the hau-hau tree,^[37] and tied fast around the statue's neck. Anywhere from 180 to 250 men were required for pulling, depending on the size of the moai. Some 50 of the now standing statues have been re-erected in modern times. One of the first moai to be re-erected was on Ahu Ature Huke in Anakena beach in 1958. It was raised using traditional methods during an expedition to the island by Thor Heyerdahl.

Ahu

Six of the fifteen moai at Ahu Tongariki

Ahu are stone platforms which vary greatly in layout. Many have been significantly reworked during or after the huri mo'ai or statue-toppling era; many became ossuaries; one was dynamited open; and Ahu Tongariki was swept inland by a tsunami. Of the 313 known ahu, 125 carried stone moai—usually just one, probably because of the shortness of the moai period and difficulties in transporting them. Ahu Tongariki, one kilometer from Rano Raraku, had the most and tallest moai, 15 in total. Other notable ahu with moai are Ahu Akivi, restored in 1960 by William Mulloy, Nau Nau at Anakena and Tahai. Some statues may have been made from wood, now lost.

The classic elements of ahu design are:

• A retaining rear wall several feet high, usually facing the sea.
• A front wall made of rectangular basalt slabs called paenga.
• A facia made of red scoria that went over the front wall (platforms built after 1300).
• A sloping ramp in the inland part of the platform, extending outward like wings.
• A pavement of even-sized, round water-worn stones called poro.
• An alignment of stones before the ramp.
• A paved plaza before the ahu. This was called marae.
• Inside the ahu was a fill of rubble.

On top of many ahu would have been:

• Moai on squareish "pedestals" looking inland, the ramp with the poro before them.
• Pukao or Hau Hiti Rau on the moai heads (platforms built after 1300).
• When a ceremony took place, "eyes" were placed on the Statues. The whites of the eyes were made of coral, the iris was made of obsidian or red scoria.

Ahu evolved from the traditional Polynesian marae in which the word ahu was a small structure sometimes covered with a thatched roof where sacred objects, including statues, were stored. The ahu were usually adjacent to the marae or main central court where all the ceremonies took place, though on Easter Island ahu and moai evolved to a much greater size, and the marae is the unpaved plaza before the ahu. The biggest ahu is 220 meters long from one end of the platform to the other and holds 15 statues some of which are 9 meters high. The filling of an ahu was sourced locally (apart from broken, old moai, fragments of which have also been used in the fill).^[38] Also individual stones are mostly far smaller than the moai, so less work was needed to transport the raw material, but artificially leveling the terrain for the plaza and filling the ahu was a tremendous amount of work.

Ahu are found mostly on the coast, where they are distributed fairly evenly except on the western slopes of Mount Terevaka and the Rano Kau and Poike^[39] headlands. These are the three areas with the least low-lying coastal land, and apart from Poike the furthest areas from Rano Raraku. One ahu with several moai was recorded on the cliffs at Rano Kau in the 1880s, but had fallen to the beach by the time of the Routledge expedition in 1914.

Navel of the world

The "Navel of the World" image cut from a laser scan

There is an unusual "Navel of the World" lithic site bordering Ahu Te Pito Kura, near Anakena, with a round water worn beach boulder similar to those found in New Zealand. Rapanui today say the central round stone was brought by Hotu Matu'a from his native land, though Geologists consider the rock to be locally sourced, which coincides with earlier oral traditions that tells the story of how it was found by the clan that occupied Vinapu and used as a boundary marker before the clan lost it to the Miru clan from the Northern alliance of clans who took it to Te Pito Kura as a war prize. The fact that the stone is large and was naturally round indicated that it was charged with "mana" and could be used as a kind of large talisman. Like many of the stones found in the coast of Vinapu it has iron and its magnetic polarity differs in certain parts.

Stone walls

One of the highest-quality examples of Easter Island stone masonry is the rear wall of the ahu at Vinapu. Made without mortar by shaping hard basalt rocks of up to seven tons to match each other exactly, it has a superficial similarity to some Inca stone walls in South America.^[40]

Stone houses

A Hare Moa, a Chicken House, image cut from a laser scan

Two types of houses are known from the past: hare paenga, a house with an elliptical foundation, made with basalt slabs and covered with a thatched roof that resembled an overturned boat, and hare oka, a round stone structure. There are also stone structures called Tupa that look very similar to the hare oka, except that the Tupa were inhabited by astronomer-priests and located near the coast, where the movements of the stars can be easily observed. Settlements also contain hare moa ("chicken house"), oblong stone structures that were used to store chickens at night. The houses at the ceremonial village of Orongo are unique in that they are shaped like hare paenga but are made entirely of flat basalt slabs found inside Rano Kao crater. The entrances to all the houses are very low, and entry requires crawling.

In early times the people of Rapa Nui reportedly set the dead out to sea in small funerary canoes, the same as their Polynesian counterparts in other islands. They later started burying people in secret caves in order to save the bones from desecration by enemies. During the turmoils of the late 18th century, the islanders seem to have started to bury their dead in the space between the belly of a fallen moai and the front wall of the structure. During the time of the epidemics they made mass graves that were semi-pyramidal stone structures.

Petroglyphs

Petroglyphs are pictures carved into rock, and Easter Island has one of the richest collections in all Polynesia. Around 1,000 sites with more than 4,000 petroglyphs are catalogued. Designs and images were carved out of rock for a variety of reasons: to create totems, to mark territory or to memorialize a person or event. There are distinct variations around the island in terms of the frequency of particular themes among petroglyphs, with a concentration of Birdmen at Orongo. Other subjects include sea turtles, Komari (vulvas) and Makemake, the chief god of the Tangata manu or Birdman cult. (Lee 1992)

Petroglyphs are also common in the Marquesas islands.

Makemake with two birdmen, carved from red scoria

Fish petroglyph found near Ahu Tongariki

Petroglyphs on Basalt rocks at Orongo. A Makemake at the base and two birdmen higher up

Caves

The island and neighbouring Motu Nui are riddled with caves, many of which show signs of past human use for planting and as fortifications, including narrowed entrances and crawl spaces with ambush points. Many caves feature in the myths and legends of the Rapa Nui.

Sample of rongorongo

Rongorongo

It is not clear whether the undeciphered Easter island script rongorongo was created without outside influence ex nihilo or after contact with Europeans. Alternatively, the islanders' brief exposure to Western writing during the Spanish visit in 1770 may have inspired the ruling class to establish rongorongo as a religious tool.^[41] Rongorongo has few similarities to the petroglyph corpus;^[42] and there is not a single line of rongorongo carved in stone despite thousands of petroglyphs and other stonework.

Rongorongo was first reported by a French missionary, Eugène Eyraud, in 1864. At that time, several islanders said they could understand the writing, but all attempts to read them were unsuccessful. According to tradition, only a small part of the population was ever literate, rongorongo being a privilege of the ruling families and priests. This contributed to the total loss of knowledge of how to read rongorongo in the 1860s, when the island's elite was annihilated by slave raids and disease.

Of the hundreds of objects (mainly wooden tablets, but also stones, staffs, breastplates, and sculptures) reportedly having rongorongo writing carved on them, only 28 survive, scattered in museums around the world with very few remaining on Easter Island. Numerous attempts to decipher them have proved fruitless, and the academic community does not agree on anyone having deciphered it. What they do agree upon is that it seems to be pictographic and that its meant to read in reverse boustrophedon style.

Wood carving

Skeletal statuette

Atypical tubby statuette

Wood was scarce on Easter Island during the 18th and 19th centuries, but a number of highly detailed and distinctive carvings have found their way to the world's museums. Particular forms include:^[43]

• Reimiro, a gorget or breast ornament of crescent shape with a head at one or both tips.^[44] The same design appears on the flag of Rapa Nui. Two Rei Miru at the British Museum are inscribed with Rongorongo.
• Moko Miro, a man with a lizard head.
• Moai kavakava, grotesque and highly detailed human figures carved from Toromiro pine and represent deceased ancestors. The earlier figures are rare and generally depict a male figure with an emaciated body and a goatee. The figures' ribs and vertebrae are exposed and many examples show carved glyphs on various parts of the body but more generally, on the top of the head. The female figures, which are far rarer then the males are, depict the body as flat and often the female's hand lying across the body. The figures, although some quite large, were worn as ornamental pieces around a tribesman's neck, the more figures worn, the more important the man. The figures have a shiny surface, this patina developed from constant handling and contact with human skin.
• Ao, a large dancing paddle.

Contemporary culture

Polynesian dancing with feather costumes is on the tourist itinerary

The Rapanui sponsor an annual festival, the Tapati, held since 1975 around the beginning of February to celebrate Rapanui culture. The islanders also maintain a national football team and three discos in the town of Hanga Roa. Other cultural activities include a musical tradition that combines South American and Polynesian influences and a vibrant carving tradition.

Demography

2002 census

Population at the 2002 census was 3,791.^[45] 60% were Rapanui, Chileans of European or castizo descent were 39% of the population, and the remaining 1% were Native Americans from mainland Chile. Castizos may include people of European and Rapanui or European, Native American, and Rapanui descent. Rapanui have also migrated out of the island. Population density on Easter Island is only 23 inhabitants per km² (60 per sq mi).The Rapanui today are trying to restrict immigration of mainland Chileans to the island which requires a change in the Chilean constitution.

Fishing boats on Easter Island

Demographic history

The population was 1,936 inhabitants in 1982 Census. This increase in population in the last census is partly caused by the arrival of people of European or castizo descent from the mainland of Chile. However, most of these immigrants are married to a Rapanui partner. In the 1982 Census around 70% of the population were Rapanui (the native Polynesian inhabitants). It is almost impossible to calculate the height of Easter Island's population in ancient times. Some sources say as few as 7,000, others as many as 17,000. As mentioned earlier, Easter Island's all-time low of 111 inhabitants were reported in 1877. Out of these 111 Rapanui, only 36 had descendants, but all of today's Rapanui claim descent from those 36.

Administration and legal status

Hanga Roa town hall

Easter Island shares with Juan Fernández Islands the sui generis constitutional status of "special territory" of Chile, granted in 2007. A special charter for the island is currently being discussed: therefore it continues to be considered a province of the Valparaíso Region, containing a single commune. Both the province and the commune are called Isla de Pascua and encompass the whole island and its surrounding islets and rocks, plus Isla Salas y Gómez, some 380 km (236 mi) to the east.

Authorities

Within the electoral divisions of Chile, Isla de Pascua belongs to the 13th electoral district and 6th senatorial constituency. Together with the commune of Juan Fernandez, the people are represented in the Chamber of Deputies by Joaquín Godoy (RN) and Aldo Cornejo (PDC). Constituents are also represented by two senators, Francisco Chahuán Chahuán (RN) and Ricardo Lagos Weber (PPD).

• Provincial governor: Pedro Pablo Edmunds Paoa (2010-). Appointed by the President of the Republic.
• Alcalde: Luz Zasso Paoa (PDC), directly elected for four years (2008–2012). Municipality located in Hanga Roa.
• Municipal council, directly elected for four years (2008–2012):
  • Marta Raquel Hotus Tuki (PDC)
  • Ximena Trengove Vallejos (PDC)
  • Julio Araki Tepano (UDI)
  • Eliana Amelia Olivares San Juan (UDI)
  • Alberto Hotus Chávez (PPD)
  • Marcelo Pont Hill (PPD)

Notable figures

• Hotu Matua - Island founder
• Paramount Chief Nga'ara - One of the last great ‘ariki
• Fr Sebastian Englert, OFM Cap. - Missionary and ethnologist
• William Mulloy - Archaeologist
• Sergio Rapu Haoa - Former Governor
• Pedro Pablo Edmunds Paoa - Current Governor
• Melania Carolina Hotu Hey - Former Governor
• Juan Edmunds Rapahango - Former Mayor

See also

• Rapa Nui language
• Rapa Nui mythology
• Omphalos
• Mataveri International Airport
• List of megalithic sites
• Podesta (island)

References

• http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/columnist/vergano/2009-11-13-easter-island_N.htm

Selected bibliography

• Altman, Ann M. (2004). Early Visitors to Easter Island 1864-1877 (translations of the accounts of Eugène Eyraud, Hippolyte Roussel, Pierre Loti and Alphonse Pinart; with an Introduction by Georgia Lee). Los Osos: Easter Island Foundation. 
• Barthel, Thomas (1958). Grundlagen zur Entzifferung der Osterinselschrift. Hamburg: Cram, de Gruyter. 
• Butinov, Nikolai A.; Yuri V. Knorozov (1957). "Preliminary Report on the Study of the Written Language of Easter Island". Journal of the Polynesian Society 66 (1). 
• Diamond, Jared (2005). Collapse. How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.. New York: Viking. ISBN 0-14-303655-6. 
• Englert, Sebastian F. (1970). Island at the Center of the World. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 
• Fedorova, Irina K. (1965). "Versions of Myths and Legends in Manuscripts from Easter Island". In Heyerdahl et al.. Miscellaneous Papers: Reports of the Norwegian Archaeological Expedition to Easter Island and East Pacific 2. Stockholm: Forum. pp. 395–401. 
• Fischer, Steven Roger (1995). "Preliminary Evidence for Cosmogonic Texts in Rapanui’s Rongorongo Inscriptions". Journal of the Polynesian Society (104): pp. 303–21. 
• Fischer, Steven Roger (1997). Glyph-breaker: A Decipherer's Story. New York: Copernicus/Springer-Verlag. 
• Fischer, Steven Roger (1997). RongoRongo, the Easter Island Script: History, Traditions, Texts. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. 
• Guy, Jacques B.M. (1985). "On a fragment of the “Tahua” Tablet". Journal of the Polynesian Society 94: pp. 367–87. 
• Guy, Jacques B.M. (1988). "Rjabchikov’s Decipherments Examined". Journal of the Polynesian Society 97: pp. 321–3. 
• Guy, Jacques B.M. (1990). "On the Lunar Calendar of Tablet Mamari". Journal de la Société des Océanistes 91:2: pp. 135–49. 
• Heyerdal, Thor (1961-65). Thor Heyerdahl & Edwin N. Ferdon Jr.. ed. The Concept of Rongorongo Among the Historic Population of Easter Island. Stockholm: Forum. 
• Heyerdal, Thor Aku-Aku; The 1958 Expedition to Easter Island.
• Hunt, Terry L. (September-October 2006). "Rethinking the Fall of Easter Island". American Scientist (94): p. 412. 
• Hunter-Anderson, R. (1998). "Human vs climatic impacts at Rapa Nui: did the people really cut down all those trees?". In Stevenson, C.M.; Lee, G. & Morin, F.J.. Easter Island in Pacific Context. South Seas Symposium: Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Easter Island and East Polynesia. Easter Island Foundation. pp. 85–99. 
• Lee, Georgia (1992). The Rock Art of Easter Island. Symbols of Power, Prayers to the Gods. Los Angeles: The Institute of Archaeology Publications. 
• Mellén Blanco, Francisco (1986). Manuscritos y documentos españoles para la historia de la isla de Pascua. Madrid: CEHOPU. 
• Metraux, Alfred (1940). "Ethnology of Easter Island". Bernice P. Bishop Museum Bulletin (Honolulu: Bernice P. Bishop Museum Press) (160). 
• Pazdniakov, Konstantin (1996). "Les Bases du Déchiffrement de l'Écriture de l'Ile de Pâques". Journal de la Societé des Océanistes 103:2: pp. 289–303. 
• Routledge, Katherine (1919). The Mystery of Easter Island. The story of an expedition. London. 
• Shepardson, B. (2006). "On the Shoulders of Giants". British Archaeology January/February: pp. 14–17. 
• Steadman, David (2006). Extinction and Biogeography in Tropical Pacific Birds. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-77142-7. 
• Thomson, William J. (1891). "Te Pito te Henua, or Easter Island. Report of the United States National Museum for the Year Ending June 30, 1889". Annual Reports of the Smithsonian Institution for 1889 (Washington: Smithsonian Institution): pp. 447–552. in Google Books
• van Tilburg, Jo Anne (1994). Easter Island: Archaeology, Ecology and Culture. Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press. 
• Vargas, Patricia; Claudio Cristino and Roberto Izaurieta (2006). "1000 años en Rapa Nui". Arqueologia del Asentamiento (Santiago: Editorial Universitaria). 956-11-1879-3. 

External links

• Easter Island travel guide from Wikitravel
• Easter Island at the Open Directory Project
• Rapa Nui Digital Media Archive (creative commons-licensed photos, laser scans, panoramas), focused in the area around Rano Raraku and Ahu Te Pito Kura with data from a Autodesk/CyArk research partnership

Easter Island Culture Language · History · Music · Mythology · Rongorongo glyphs · Tangata manu Stone work Ahu Tongariki · Ahu Vinapu · Moai · Orongo · Pukao Geography and Geology Anakena  · Easter Fracture Zone · Easter hotspot · Easter Plate · Moai Seamount · Pukao Seamount Category: Easter Island

< Communes and municipalities in Valparaíso Region > Petorca Province Cabildo · La Ligua · Papudo · Petorca · Zapallar Los Andes Province Calle Larga · Los Andes · Rinconada · San Esteban San Felipe de Aconcagua Province Catemu · Llay-Llay · Panquehue · Putaendo · San Felipe · Santa María Quillota Province Hijuelas · La Calera · La Cruz · Nogales · Quillota Valparaíso Province Casablanca · Concón · Juan Fernández · Puchuncaví · Quintero · Valparaíso · Viña del Mar San Antonio Province Algarrobo · Cartagena · El Quisco · El Tabo · San Antonio · Santo Domingo Isla de Pascua Province Isla de Pascua Marga Marga Province Limache · Olmué · Quilpué · Villa Alemana