Easter Island
Easter Island map showing Terevaka, Poike, Rano Kau, Motu Nui, Orongo, and Mataveri, major Ahus are marked with Moai
Capital Hanga Roa
27°9′S, 109°25.5′W
Official languages Spanish, Rapa Nui
Ethnic groups (2002) Rapanui 60%, Chilean 39%, Amerindian 1%
Demonym Rapa Nui or Pascuense
Government Special territory of Chile[1]
- Provincial governor Melania Carolina Hotu Hey (2006-)
- Mayor of Hanga Roa Pedro Pablo Edmunds Paoa
Annexation to Chile
Treaty signed September 9, 1888
Easter Island (Rapa Nui in the Rapa Nui language, Isla de Pascua in Spanish), is a Polynesian island in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, at the southeasternmost point of the Polynesian triangle. The island is an overseas territory of Chile. Rapa Nui was first visited by Europeans on Easter Sunday of 1722.[2] Easter Island is famous for its monumental statues, called moai pronounced (Mow-eye), created by the Rapanui people. It is a world heritage site with much of the island protected within the Rapa Nui National Park.
European contact
On Easter Sunday, 1722, Easter Island was named by its first recorded European visitor, the Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen, who was searching for Davis or David’s island.[2] The island’s official Spanish name, Isla de Pascua, is Spanish for “Easter Island”.
The current Polynesian name of the island, Rapa Nui or “Big Rapa”, was coined by labor immigrants from Rapa in the Bass Islands, who likened it to their home island in the aftermath of the Peruvian slave deportations in the 1870s.[3] However, Thor Heyerdahl has claimed that the naming would have been the opposite, Rapa being the original name of Easter Island, and Rapa Iti was named by its refugees.[4] There are several options for the “original” Polynesian name for Easter Island, including Te pito o te henua, or “The Navel of the World” due to its isolation. Legends claim that the island was first named as Te pito o te kainga a Hau Maka, or the “Little piece of land of Hau Maka”.[5]
Location and physical geography
Orthographic projection centered on Easter Island.
Easter Island, Sala y Gómez, South America and the islands in betweenEaster Island is one of the world’s most isolated inhabited islands. It is 3,600 km (2,237 mi) west of continental Chile and 2,075 km (1,290 mi) east of Pitcairn (Sala y Gómez, 415 kilometres to the east, is closer but uninhabited).It has a latitude close to that of Caldera, Chile, 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.
Geology
Easter Island is a volcanic high island, consisting of three extinct 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 approximately 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.
Easter Island and surrounding islets such as Motu Nui, Motu Iti are the summit of a large volcanic mountain which rises 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 Seamount.[2]
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.[3][6] Only at Easter Island, its surrounding islets and Sala y Gómez does the Sala y Gómez Ridge form dry land.
History
Main article: History of Easter Island
The history of Easter Island is incredibly rich and highly controversial. Its inhabitants have endured famines, epidemics, civil war, slave raids and colonialism, and the crash of their ecosystem; their population has declined precipitously more than once. They have left a cultural legacy that has brought them fame out of all proportion to their numbers.
There are many theories about the cultural composition and history of Easter Island. No two seem to agree. Most scholars consider the island’s culture Polynesian. However, local traditions say the islands original culture consisted of two different races, the Hanau eepe, or long-ears, the original settlers of the island with red hair and fair skin, and the Hanau momoko, or short ears, the Polynesian peoples generally associated with the Pacific.
“There were handsome people among our ancestors.” Pedro Atan, an eleventh generation desendent of Ororoina told Thor Heyerdahl in 1955. “There were two kinds of people on this island: some were dark (Polynesian) and some were quite fair skinned like you from the mainland, and with light hair. Real white people. But they were genuine Easter Islanderes, quite genuine. In our family there were many of the fair type, who were called oho-tea, or the light-haired. My own mother and aunt had [red] hair.”
“There were many of that type in our family, all the way back. We brothers are not like that. But my daughter who was drowned had milk-white skin and completely red hair, and so has my grown up son, Juan. he makes the twelfth generation after Ororoina.”
The fact that the island’s population cosisted of two distinct races was also noted by the first European to visit the island, Jacob Roggeveen, on Easter Sunday, 1722.
“Among the first who came aboard,” Roggeveen noted, “was a white man. He was ornamented with a crown of feathers on his head, which was close shaven.” The islander was then presented with several gifts including “two strings of blue pearls, a small mirror, and a pair of scissors.” What was particulaly striking was the man’s artifically lengthened ears which contained “round white pegs as large as his fist.” The lobes actually hung down to the man’s shoulders. Roggeveen later noted that “masses of the islanders had their ears lengthened in this [same] manner.” And that if their long ears got in the way when working, they simply removed the pegs and lifted the long flap up and over the upper edge of the ear.
“They are a tall, well built people,” he continues, “who, so far as can be judged, are fair skinned [Polynesains] such as we know them in Tahiti, Hawaii and other eastern islands of the south seas. But the population is mixed, some are conspicuous by their darker skins, while others are quite white, like Europeans. A few are also of a reddish tint as if somewhat severely tanned by the sun. Many had beards.”
“Many islanders went about stark naked, but with their entire body artistically tattooed in one continuous pattern of birds and strange figures. Others ware cloaks of bark cloth colored red and yellow. Some have waving crowns of feathers on their heads, and others [ware] queer reed hats. All are friendly, and we saw no weapons of any kind. Curiously there were hardly women to be seen, although the place was swarming with men. But the few women who showed themselves are more than cordial to us, without the men showing the slightest sign of jealousy.”
According to tradition, the first oho-tea, (light-skinned) Hotu Matua, landed on the island’s North-Eastern shore at Anakena Bay sometime around 300 AD. (The remnants of his stone house and fireplace are still in eveidence there with carbon 14 dating of the ashes providing the date.) The two vessels in Hotu Matua’s party were so large they carried several hundred men, and Oroi, Matua’s worst enemy made passage as a stowaway.
A single moai or statue (representig Hotu Matua?) stands on the platform, or ahu, at the beach and was the first of the ancient stone sculptures to be re-erected under the urging of Thor Heyerdahl during his 1955 expedition to the island.