Easter Island
Easter Island is an island and special territory of Chile in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, at the southeasternmost point of the Polynesian Triangle in Oceania. The island is renowned for its nearly 1,000 extant monumental statues, called moai, which were created by the early Rapa Nui people. In 1995, UNESCO named Easter Island a World Heritage Site, with much of the island protected within Rapa Nui National Park. Easter Island is also the only territory in Polynesia where Spanish is an official language.
Experts differ on when the island's Polynesian inhabitants first reached the island. While many researchers cited evidence that they arrived around the year 800, a 2007 study provided compelling evidence suggesting their arrival was closer to 1200. The inhabitants created a thriving and industrious culture, as evidenced by the island's numerous enormous stone moai and other artifacts. Land clearing for cultivation and the introduction of the Polynesian rat led to gradual deforestation. By the time of European arrival in 1722, the island's population was estimated to be 2,000 to 3,000. European diseases, Peruvian slave raiding expeditions in the 1860s, and emigration to other islands such as Tahiti further depleted the population, reducing it to a low of 111 native inhabitants in 1877.
Chile annexed Easter Island in 1888. In 1966, the Rapa Nui were granted Chilean citizenship. In 2007, the island gained the constitutional status of "special territory". Administratively, it belongs to the Valparaíso Region, constituting a single commune of the Province of Isla de Pascua. The 2017 Chilean census registered 7,750 people on the island, of which 3,512 identified as Rapa Nui.
Easter Island is one of the world's most remote inhabited islands. The nearest inhabited land is Pitcairn Island, away; the nearest town with a population over 500 is Rikitea, on the island of Mangareva, away; the nearest continental point lies in central Chile, away.
Etymology
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 in 1722, while searching for "Davis Land". Roggeveen named it Paasch-Eyland. The island's official Spanish name, Isla de Pascua, also means "Easter Island".The current Polynesian name of the island, Rapa Nui, was coined after the slave raids of the early 1860s, and refers to the island's topographic resemblance to the island of Rapa in the Bass Islands of the Austral Islands group. Norwegian ethnographer Thor Heyerdahl argued that Rapa was Easter Island's original name and that the Bass Islands' Rapa was named by refugees from it.
The phrase "Te pito o te henua" has been said to be the island's original name since French ethnologist Alphonse Pinart gave it the romantic translation "The Navel of the World" in his Voyage à l'Île de Pâques, published in 1877. William Churchill inquired about the phrase and was told that there were three "te pito o te henua", these being the three capes of the island. The phrase appears to have been used in the same sense as the designation "Land's End" at the tip of Cornwall. He was unable to elicit a Polynesian name for the island and concluded that there may not have been one.
According to Barthel, oral tradition has it that the island was first named "Te pito o te kainga a Hau Maka", meaning "The little piece of land of Hau Maka". However, there are two words pronounced pito in Rapa Nui, one meaning "end" and one "navel", and the phrase can thus also mean "The Navel of the World". Another name, "Mata ki te rangi", means "Eyes looking to the sky".
Islanders are referred to in Spanish as pascuense, but members of the indigenous community are commonly called Rapa Nui.
Felipe González de Ahedo named it Isla de San Carlos or Isla de David in 1770.
History
Introduction
Oral tradition states the island was first settled by a two-canoe expedition originating from Marae Renga, and led by the chief Hotu Matu'a and his captain Tu'u ko Iho. The island was first scouted after Haumaka dreamed of such a far-off country; Hotu deemed it a worthwhile place to flee from a neighboring chief, one to whom he had already lost three battles. At their time of arrival, the island had one lone settler, Nga Tavake 'a Te Rona. After a brief stay at Anakena, the colonists settled in different parts of the island. Hotu's heir, Tu'u ma Heke, was born on the island. Tu'u ko Iho is viewed as the leader who brought the statues and caused them to walk.The Easter Islanders are considered Southeast Polynesians. Similar sacred zones with statuary in East Polynesia demonstrate homology with most of Eastern Polynesia. At contact, populations were about 3,000–4,000.
By the 15th century, two confederations, hanau, of social groupings, mata, existed, based on lineage. The western and northern portion of the island belonged to the Tu'u, which included the royal Miru, with the royal center at Anakena, though Tahai and Te Peu served as earlier capitals. The eastern part of the island belonged to the 'Otu 'Itu. Shortly after the Dutch visit, from 1724 until 1750, the 'Otu 'Itu fought the Tu'u for control of the island. This continued until the 1860s. Famine followed the burning of huts and the destruction of fields. Social control vanished as the ordered way of life gave way to lawlessness and predatory bands as the warrior class took over. Homelessness prevailed, with many living underground. After the Spanish visit, from 1770 onward, a period of statue toppling, huri mo'ai, commenced. This was an attempt by competing groups to destroy the socio-spiritual power, or mana, represented by statues, making sure to break them in the fall to ensure they were dead and without power. None were left standing by the time of the arrival of the French missionaries in the 1860s.
Between 1862 and 1888, about 94% of the population perished or emigrated. The island was victimized by blackbirding from 1862 to 1863, resulting in the abduction or killing of about 1,500, with 1,408 working as indentured servants in Peru. Only about a dozen eventually returned to Easter Island, but they brought smallpox, which decimated the remaining population of 1,500. Those who perished included the island's tumu ivi 'atua, bearers of the island's culture, history, and genealogy besides the rongorongo experts.
Rapa Nui settlement
Estimated dates of initial settlement of Easter Island have ranged from 400 to 1300 CE, though the current best estimate for colonization is in the. Easter Island colonization likely coincided with the arrival of the first settlers in Hawaii. Rectifications in radiocarbon dating have changed almost all of the previously posited early settlement dates in Polynesia. Ongoing archaeological studies provide this late date: "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. Significant ecological impacts and major cultural investments in monumental architecture and statuary thus began soon after initial settlement."According to oral tradition, the first settlement was at Anakena. Researchers have noted that the Caleta Anakena landing point provides the island's best shelter from prevailing swells as well as a sandy beach for canoe landings and launchings, so it is a likely early place of settlement. However, radiocarbon dating concludes that other sites preceded Anakena by many years, especially the Tahai by several centuries.
The island was populated by Polynesians who most likely navigated in canoes or catamarans from the Gambier Islands or the Marquesas Islands, away. According to some theories, such as the Polynesian Diaspora Theory, there is a possibility that early Polynesian settlers arrived from South America due to their remarkable sea-navigation abilities. Theorists have supported this through the agricultural evidence of the sweet potato. The sweet potato was a favoured crop in Polynesian society for generations but it originated in South America, suggesting interaction between these two geographic areas. Recent research has suggested that sweet potatoes may have spread to Polynesia by long-distance dispersal long before the Polynesians arrived. However, other researchers pointed out methodological flaws in this study and point to lingusitic evidence of contact between Pacific and South American peoples. Specifically the strong similarities between the words for sweet potato from Polynesian languages Rapa Nui kumara, Hawaiian ʻuala and Māori kūmara with South American Quechua and Aymara cumar, k'umar or k'umara. In support of contact between human populations, recent human genetic evidence shows contact and interbreeding between Pacific and Native American populations occurred 800 years ago, predating human settlement of Easter Island.
When James Cook visited the island, one of his crew members, a Polynesian from Bora Bora, Hitihiti, was able to communicate with the Rapa Nui. It has been noted that the early jumping-off points for the early Polynesian colonization of Easter Island are more likely to have been from Mangareva, Pitcairn and Henderson, which lie about halfway between the Marquesas and Easter. It has been observed that there is great similarity with the Rapa Nui language and Early Mangarevan, similarities between a statue found in Pitcairn and some statues found in Easter Island, the resemblance of tool styles in Easter Island to those in Mangareva and Pitcairn, and correspondences of skulls found in Easter Island to two skulls found in Henderson, all suggesting Henderson and Pitcairn Islands to have been early stepping stones from Mangareva to Easter Island. In 1999, a voyage with reconstructed Polynesian boats was able to reach Easter Island from Mangareva after a seventeen-and-a-half-day voyage.
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. According to National Geographic, "Most scholars suspect that the moai were created to honor ancestors, chiefs, or other important personages, However, no written and little oral history exists on the island, so it's impossible to be certain."
It was believed that the living had a symbiotic relationship with the dead in which the dead provided everything that the living needed and 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, watching over their descendants in the settlements before them, with their backs toward the spirit world in the sea.