Easter Island – Rapa Nui (the Polynesian name) or Isla de Pascua (the Spanish name) is one of the most remote inhabited islands in the world.
History
A territory of Chile, it sits in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, at the southeasternmost point of the Polynesian Triangle in Oceania. The Polynesian Triangle is drawn by connecting the points of Hawaii, New Zealand and Easter Island. There are 3 means of getting to the island: direct flights from Santiago, Chile, via cruise ship or weekly flights from Tahiti. It measures 14 miles by 7 miles at its widest points.
Estimated dates of initial settlement of Easter Island have ranged from 300 to 1200 CE, though the current best estimate for colonization is in the 12th century CE and likely coincided with the arrival of the first settlers in Hawaii. The main harbor and capital they named Hanga Roa, which in the Rapa Nui language means “long bay”. Easter Island was thus “renamed” by the island’s first recorded European visitor, the Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen, who encountered it on Easter Sunday, April 5, 1722. Upon arrival, he found some 2,000-3,000 inhabitants living there yet he is credited as having “discovered” the island. I have a very important question: how exactly can you “discover” what already existed? Technically, you can’t so we’ll call Roggeveen what he was – a “visitor” and potential “colonizer”.
According to oral traditions recorded by missionaries in the 1860s, the island originally had a strong class system: an ariki, or high chief, wielded great power over nine other clans and their respective chiefs. The high chief was the eldest descendant through first-born lines of the island’s legendary founder, Hotu Matu’a. The most visible element in the culture was the production of massive moai statues that some believe represented deified ancestors, chiefs, or other important personages – more on these later.
Bird Man Cult
As the island became overpopulated and resources diminished, warriors known as matatoa gained more power and the Ancestor Cult ended. This paved the way for the Bird Man Cult. The Bird Man 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. The competitions for Bird Man (Tangata Manu in the Rapa Nui language) started around 1760, after the arrival of the first Europeans. Petroglyphs representing Bird Men on Easter Island are the same as some in Hawaii, indicating that this concept was probably brought by the original settlers. However, the competition itself was unique to Easter Island.
In the early 1830s fierce internal wars broke out accented by “statue-toppling”. By 1838, the only moais left standing were on the slopes of Rano Raraku and Ariki Paro. Then in the 1860s, a series of devastating events killed off most of the population. In December 1862, Peruvian slave raiders struck and for months abducted roughly half the island’s population (around 1,500 people). Among those captured were the island’s paramount chief, his heir, and those who knew how to read and write the rongorongo script. This was the only Polynesian script to have been found to date.
How epidemics shaped the population
When the slave traders were forced to repatriate the people they had kidnapped, carriers of smallpox disembarked with a few survivors on each island creating epidemics that devastated not only Easter Island but also the Marquesas islands. Easter Island’s population was reduced to the point where some of the dead were not even buried. Then tuberculosis was introduced by whalers in the mid-19th century killing off approximately a quarter of the island’s remaining population. It was literally one thing after the other for the residents of Rapa Nui.
Significance of the moias
After 1971, the island’s population began a slow recovery. Unfortunately, with over 97% of the population gone in less than a decade, much of the island’s cultural knowledge had been lost. One thing that did remain was the oral traditions regarding the significance of the moais, which are revered to this day.
It was believed that the living had a symbiotic relationship with the dead. The dead provided everything that the living needed (health, fertility of land and animals, fortunes, etc.). The living, through offerings, provided the dead with a better place in the spirit world. Most settlements were located on the coast, and most moai were erected along the coastline. This placement symbolizes the ancestors watching over their descendants in the settlements with their backs toward the spirit world in the sea.
Composition of the moai
Almost all the moais were carved from tuff or volcanic ash. Many are depicted with pukao or topknots representing the headdress of the chieftains. They were usually carved in red scoria with red being a sacred color to Polynesians. Many had eyes of white coral and obsidian is the same red coria inlaid into them. The tallest called Paro measured 33 feet high and weighed 82 tons! One Moai at Ahu Tongariki weighs 86 tons.
What is an ahu?
Many moais are seated on ahus or shrines, which vary in size and form and there are at least 360 on the island. Ahus have consistent features: a raised platform made of fitted stones and rubble, a ramp that is often paved with beach cobbles, called poro, and a leveled court in front. Not all ahus featured moais but those that did were called “image ahus” and typically housed from 1 – 15 statues.
The mystery surrounding the moais
The moai are massive in size and fascinating not only for what they represent to the native peoples but for the fact that the men who crafted, erected, and transported them to their final sites had none of the technology or heavy machinery we have today. Another point of extreme interest is the mystery of just HOW the ancients constructed these moai and transported them from the quarry where they were carved to their final locations considering their height and weight. At last count, there were 1,043 moais in existence today.
In 1995, UNESCO named Easter Island a World Heritage Site, with much of the island protected within Rapa Nui National Park.
Ahu Tongariki
Ahu Tongariki is the largest ahu on Rapa Nui and has been through a lot. Its moais were toppled during the island’s civil wars then and in the twentieth century the ahu was swept inland by a tsunami. It has since been restored and has fifteen standing moais and an additional moai is lying a few meters away.
Rano Raraku
Rano Raraku is one of the most important sites on Easter Island. The hundreds of iconic moai scattered throughout the site are remnants of an ancient culture that collapsed by the end of the seventeenth century through a succession of catastrophes. After years of archaeological studies on the island, the extraordinary monolithic statues remain an alluring enigma to visitors.
Ahu Akivi
A particular feature of Ahu Akivi is the seven moais face sunset during the spring equinox and have their backs to the sunrise during the autumn equinox. Such an astronomically precise feature is seen only at this location on the island.
Anakena
According to island oral traditions, Anakena was the landing place of Hotu Matu’a, a Polynesian chief who led a two-canoe settlement party and founded the first settlement on Rapa Nui. There are two ahus on Anakena – Ahu Nao Nao and Ahu Ature.
Tukuturi
Tukuturi was discovered in Easter Island’s Rano Raraku quarry, where most of the island’s famed moai were carved but this one was different:
First of all, it has a beard — all the other moai are, for lack of a better term “clean-shaven”.
Secondly, Tukuturi is kneeling, whereas its moai counterparts are all standing upright. The pose that Tukuturi sits in suggests it is either a moment of reverence or one of offering. Researchers have also theorized that this moai is related to the Tangata manu cult of Easter Island, which would make Tukuturi one of the last moais on the island to have been created.
Third, it has a rounded head, soft nose, and upward-gazing eyes — in other words, it looks totally different from the others.
Fourth, it is made from a different material than most moai. Most moais are composed of tuff, which is compressed volcanic ash, Tukuturi is carved from red scoria, which is a more fragile type of volcanic rock. There are hundreds of moai carved from tuff, but only 19 — including Tukutiri — made of scoria.
Motu Iti
Motu Iti (Little Island) is the summit of a large volcanic mountain. Moru Iti was important to the Rapanui people for several reasons. It was their best source of obsidian, which was used to make tools. It also served as home to an annual harvest of eggs and fledglings of seabirds. The islet was the stage for the famous Birdman contest. Participants descended the sheer cliffs of the mainland to reach the water’s edge and swim to the island. Once there, they awaited the arrival of the birds to snag an egg. With the egg in their possession, they had to swim back to the mainland and present it to their “sponsor”.
The islet is now a bird sanctuary.
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