General Information

Easter Island, also known as Rapa Nui or Isla de Pascua, is a small lonely triangular-shaped island belonging to Chile. This far-off island is located in the South Pacific Ocean, about 3780-km west of the Chilean coast with its nearest neighbouring island more than 2000 km away. This 117-sq km island was formed thousands of years ago by three extinct volcanoes.

The inhabitants of Easter Island, of mostly Polynesian descent, are survivors of a people who were once skilled workers in stone and wood and had a form of writing unique from any other known language.

History

The island was first named after Easter Day when a Dutch explorer landed there in 1722. Here, he found several thousand Polynesians inhabiting the island. However, disease and raids by slave traders reduced the number to fewer than 200 by the late 19th century. Today, some intermarriage has also taken place between the Polynesians and the Chileans and the population stands at about 2095 people.

Megalithic Monuments

Easter Island is a site of considerable archaeological importance. It is the richest site of megaliths from the Pacific island groups and the only source of evidence of a form of writing in Polynesia.

To this day, very little is known about the people who made the megaliths and carved the wooden tablets. However, one theory predicts that the settlement of Easter Island took place about 18 centuries ago. Archaeological and botanical evidence suggests that the island's original inhabitants were of South American origin. The ancestors of the present Polynesian population are believed to have traveled in canoes from the Marquesas Islands, massacred the inhabitants, and made the island their home. Many archaeologists believe that at the time of the invasion the megaliths, including about 600 statues, were standing throughout the island and that many were destroyed by the Polynesians during a period of violence on Easter Island.

Largest of the existing stone monuments are the great burial platforms, called ahus, which were used to support rows of statues known as moais. The ahus were situated on bluffs and in other positions commanding a view of the sea. Each ahu was constructed of neatly fitted stone blocks set without mortar. The burial platform usually supported 4 to 6 statues, although one ahu, known as Tongariki, carried 15 statues. Within many of the ahus, vaults house individual or group burials.

About 100 statues still stand on the island; they vary in height from 3 to 12 m. Carved from a single block of tuff, a soft volcanic rock, they consist of figures with huge heads, legless bodies and elongated ears and noses. Material for the statues was quarried from the crater called Rano Raraku, where modern explorers found an immense unfinished statue, 21 m long. Many of the statues on the burial platforms bore cylindrical, brimmed crowns of red tuff; the largest crown weighs approximately 27 metric tons.