EASTER ISLAND, or Rapa Nui, is in the
south Pacific Ocean and lies about
2,300 miles from the west coast of
Peru. Formed by a volcanic eruption on the
ocean floor, it is separated from the other
Polynesian islands by huge expanses of sea.
The island itself only occupies 45 square
miles, and has three volcanic craters. Now
lakes, they are some of the few areas of fertile
nature, for the rest of the island is rather
desolate and barren. However, it has not
always been like this, and there remains
evidence that the land was once rich in flora
and fauna.
The first time the outside world knew
about Easter Island was when a Dutch
admiral called Jakob Roggeveen stumbled
across it on Easter Sunday, 1722. When he
landed, he found a backward race which
lived in caves and rudimentary huts, and
practised cannibalism. What truly amazed
him were the huge stone carved figures, or
‘moai’, that stood on guard around the
island. Modern investigations have revealed
there are something like a thousand of these
great statues, standing between 12 and 25
feet high, and weighing up to 20 tonnes. The
largest one is 65 feet tall and weighs 90
tonnes. However, when Roggeveen stepped
ashore, many of these figures had been torn
down by the fierce natives.
The origin of the Easter Island race is an
issue of contention. One early visitor to the
island after Roggeveen was Captain James
Cook. Cook had a Hawaiian sailor aboard his
ship who could understand the Easter Island
native tongue. This suggested that they
spoke Polynesian, and indeed the general
consensus is that they were descended from
a distant Polynesian tribe. There is also a
celebrated theory that they actually came
from South America which is supported by
the fact that bulrushes and sweet potatoes
found on the island were said to be imports
from that continent. There were also considerable
similarities between pre-Inca American cultures and the examples of
Easter Island culture, although it is believed
there may have been an early trading
industry between Easter Island, South
America and the Polynesian Islands.
The Easter Island race probably settled on
the island sometime around the middle of
the first millennium AD, and began building
their statues quite soon afterwards. The early
Easter Islanders developed a precise
technique for creating the stone men out of
the walls of the volcanic craters. Using a
system of logs and ropes, they would sit the
moai on a funerary platform, called an ‘ahu’,
under which the remains of dead elders were
buried. It is believed the stone figure acted as
a talisman, guarding and protecting the clan
of the dead islander, although some experts
suggest the islanders ended up erecting the
statues purely for the joy of making them.
Archaeologists have also discovered wooden
tablets called ‘talking boards’, which
describe ancient religious rites of the old
culture.
The Easter Island story is the archetypal
island version of paradise lost. When the
first Polynesian immigrants landed on the
island it was a land of bountiful natural
produce. There were great forests, sugar beet
crops, exotic fruit and native meat sources.
In these conditions the people flourished.
They built fine houses and enjoyed life, but
in around AD 1500 a new cult called
‘Makemake’ or ‘the cult of the birdman’
sprang up. This may have signalled the
arrival of a new tribe from across the sea, and
soon afterwards overpopulation and
wasteful island management caused the crops to fail and the natural resources to be
depleted. The different clans and tribes
began warring, even overturning each other’s
statues, and legend on the island recounts a
terrible battle between tribes of ‘long ears’
and a tribe of ‘short ears’.
Within a couple of centuries, Easter Island
was the barren waste populated by savages
discovered by Roggeveen. The life of
islanders only grew worse. The inter-tribal
conflicts continued until 1862, when ships
arrived and enslaved a thousand of the
island’s fit men to work in the Peruvian
mining industry. These islanders quickly
grew ill in the strange continent, and the few
that returned home brought back diseases.
Smallpox and leprosy reduced the native
population to 111 by 1877. European
missionary workers helped the people of
Easter Island survive, but many of the secrets
of the island’s strange stone faces were lost
forever.
