Historical Geography |
My island's character was unmistakable. She sat like a single purple cloud against the bursting, brilliant gold of a new dawn. As a 45 square-mile rock in the center of a vast sea, her nearest neighboring island was roughly 1,249 miles away and South America was a total of 2,485 miles (4,000 Kilometers) away. Pale emerald waves rolled in from nowhere and splashed against her small and infrequent beaches.
Easter Island was born when three separate volcanic cones became joined by their lava. Volcanic activity was very violent during this time and can be confirmed by simply observing the terrain. These three volcanoes were Rano Aroi, Rano Raraku, and Rano Kao. The vertical cliffs, ragged lava fields, sunken caves, and piles of black and red tuff ( a rock consisting of compacted volcanic ash and other small fragments) are all evidence of the volcanic activity.
During my time, the bowl-shaped center of Rano Kau was used as the main water supply. Water was very hard to find anywhere else on the island. We lived off aquatic animals, such as fish. There was a total of approximately thirty native plant species. We forested them for most of our history. We used our natural resources, specifically tree bark, to manufacture incredibly strong ropes for lowering our moai from the cliff face. Our trees also became the essential tool in transporting our statues. They became rollers.
This tranquil jagged island is dotted with 600 moai, ranging from 10 to 40 feet tall. At Orongo, the south-western tip of the island, there are mysterious stone shelters. They are so small, you have to crawl into them. If one were to sit upon the steep cliffs that are found all around the island, as I often did, you would see the majestic bend in the horizon that reached as far as the eye could see. When the Antarctic winds swept like the turbulent hands of God across the Pacific, a mad sea would rush towards the cliffs and pitch a crystal mist overhead.
