EASTER ISLAND

A tuff-carved moai (bust) near the shoreline of Easter Island. The first European to land on Easter Island was the Dutch admiral Jacob Roggeveen, who paid it a single day's visit in 1722. He and his crew found a population that they described as being of mixed physical types who worshiped huge standing statues with fires while they prostrated themselves to the rising sun. Some of them, said to be white men, had their earlobes slit and hanging to their shoulders, a distinctly non-Polynesian custom. An expedition dispatched by the Spanish viceroy of Peru rediscovered the island in 1770. The Spanish spent four days ashore and were the first to report that the aborigines had their own local form of script. They estimated a population of some 3,000 persons. A civil war seems to have raged on the island before the arrival of the British navigator Captain James Cook in 1774; a decimated, poverty-stricken Polynesian population of only about 600 or 700 men and fewer than 30 women was found by the Englishmen, who also observed that the large statues were no longer venerated, most of them having been deliberately overthrown. In 1786 the French navigator Jean-Franois de Galaup, comte de La Prouse, arrived and found some 2,000 people on the island; he tried in vain to introduce domestic animals. A number of sailing vessels, including whalers, visited the island from 1792 onward. By 1860 the population was about 3,000, but a major slave raid launched from Peru in 1862, followed by smallpox epidemics, reduced the population to 111 in 1877. At the end of the 19th century it began to increase once more. In 1864 Brother Eugne Eyraud, a French Catholic missionary, became the first foreigner to settle on the island; as a result, the population became converted to Christianity by 1868. Settlers from Tahiti began to raise sheep in 1870. In 1888 the island was annexed by Chile, which leased nearly all its territory for sheep raising; in 1954 the Chilean navy administration took over the sheep range. In 1965 a civilian governor was appointed by the Chilean government, and the islanders became full Chilean citizens. Within a single generation the Easter Islanders successfully responded to a complete acculturation to continental standards without losing their pride in their own ancestors and their skills and customs. Annually in February old and young of both sexes meet in contests to revive the arts and practices of the island's past, including carving, tattooing, reed-boat building, and traditional singing and dancing. Archaeology The tallest standing Easter Island stone statue (about 37 feet [12 metres] high) after being The island is famous for its gigantic stone statues, of which there are more than 600, and for the ruins of giant stone platforms (ahus) with open courtyards on their landward sides, some of which show masterly construction. Archaeological surveys were carried out in 1886, 1914, and 1934; archaeological excavations were initiated in 1955. The excavations revealed that three distinct cultural periods are identifiable on the island. The early period is characterized by ahus at Tahai, Vinapu, and Anakena, carbon dated to c. AD 700850. The first two were admired and described by Captain Cook; the wall in Anakena remained hidden below ground until it was excavated archaeologically in 1987. The excavations in Anakena have revealed that a variety of statues were carved in the early period, among them a smaller prototype of the middle-period busts, which mainly differ from the latter by their rounded heads and stubby bodies. Another type was a realistic sculpture in full figure of a kneeling man with his buttocks resting on his heels and his hands on his knees, in one case with his ribs exposed, all features characteristic of pre-Inca monuments at Tiahuanaco in South America. In the middle period, c. 10501680, statues were deliberately destroyed and discarded, and all ahus were rebuilt with no regard for solar orientation or masonry fitting. The sole desire seems to have been to obtain strong platforms capable of supporting ever taller and heavier busts, the classical moai of the middle period. Burial chambers also were constructed within the ahus in the middle period. The sizes of the statues made were increased until they reached stupendous dimensions; the slim and lofty busts also had huge cylindrical pukao (topknots) of red tuff placed on top of their slender heads. Most middle-period statues range from about 10 to 20 feet in height, but the biggest among those formerly standing on top of an ahu was about 32 feet tall, consisted of a single block weighing about 82 tons (74,500 kilograms), and had a pukao of about 11 tons balanced on its apex. The largest statue still standing partly buried in the deep silt below the quarries is about 37 feet tall, and the largest unfinished one with its back attached to the rock is about 68 feet tall. Traditions, supported by archaeology, suggest that the images represented important personalities who were deified after death. The ahu (stone platform) of Te Pito Kura, Easter Island. Statues of the middle period were all quarried from the special yellow-gray tuff found in the crater walls of Rano Raraku. Inside and outside the crater bowl numerous unfinished statues and thousands of crude stone picks are scattered about, bearing witness to a sudden interruption of the sculptors' work. The unfinished images show that each statue had its front and sides completed to a polish before the back was detached from the bedrock. The image was then slid away to be raised at random in the rubble below the quarries to have the back finished before being moved to some distant ahu. Eye cavities and topknots were added only after the monument was erected; recent discoveries have revealed that these concavities had inlaid eyes of white coral with a dark stone disk as pupil. From one to a dozen completed statues would stand in a row on a single ahu, always facing inland. Experiments based on island traditions in 195556 showed that the numerous basalt picks left in the quarries were perfectly suitable for carving the hard tuff. Reenactments showed that 12 islanders were able to lift a 25-ton statue about 10 feet off the ground and to tilt it on end on top of an ahu; this work took 18 days with no tools other than two wooden logs that were used as levers. Stones of all sizes were wedged under the statue one by one to form a slowly rising cairn in order to lift the giant monoliths upright. Tradition claimed that the statues had walked across the terrain to their distant destinations, but in the experiment 180 islanders were able to pull a medium statue over the ground. A renewed experiment in 1986 revived the tradition and discovered that 15 men sufficed to move a medium-sized statue over the ground in upright position by jerking it ahead with a system of ropes. Petroglyphs with representations of a birdman and of the creator god Makemake, Easter Island. The middle-period busts clearly evolved from a local prototype and have no counterpart elsewhere. Also peculiar to the middle period was a bird cult with attendant birdman rites that survived into the third, or late, period. Its ceremonial centre was the village of Orongo, on top of Rano Kao, which consisted of stone houses with roof vaults built as false arches. These houses and contiguous circular masonry dwellings with roof entrances are characteristic of the early and middle periods on the island; while unknown elsewhere in Polynesia they are common in the adjacent area of South America. The ahu (stone platform) known as Akivi, which supports seven restored moais (busts), Spanish Isla de Pascua, also called Rapa Nui, Chilean dependency in the eastern Pacific Ocean, the easternmost outpost of the Polynesian island world. It is famous for its giant stone statues. The island stands in isolation 1,200 miles (1,900 kilometres) east of Pitcairn Island and 2,200 miles west of Chile. Forming a triangle 14 miles long by seven miles wide, it has an area of 63 square miles (163 square kilometres); its highest point, Mount Terevaka, is 1,969 feet (600 metres) above sea level. To its original inhabitants the island is known as Rapa Nui (Great Rapa) or Te Pito te Henua (Navel of the World). The first European visitors, the Dutch, named it Paaseiland (Easter Island) in memory of their own day of arrival. Its mixed population is predominantly of Polynesian descent; almost all live in the village of Hanga Roa on the sheltered west coast. The island is a province that is administratively part of the region of Valparaso, Chile. Spanish Isla De Pascua, also called Rapa Nui island in the eastern Pacific Ocean, 2,200 miles (3,600 km) west of Chile. It is a province that is administratively part of Chile's Valparaiso region. Easter Island is small and hilly, formed by a series of separate underwater volcanic eruptions, and has an area of 63 square miles (163 square km). The island is mostly covered with grassland. The climate is subtropical, and farming is the traditional occupation. Its mixed population is predominantly of Polynesian ancestry; almost all live in the village of Hanga Roa on the sheltered western coast. Cattle are raised, and some sweet potatoes, sugarcane, figs, bananas, gourds, taro, corn (maize), and potatoes are grown. Tourism, however, has become the mainstay of the economy. There is no natural harbour, but anchorages are found off the coasts of neighbouring islands. There are a commercial airport, with flights from Santiago, Chile, and several small hotels on the island, but horses and four-wheel-drive vehicles are needed for local transport because of a lack of paved roads. Sculptures cut from volcanic rock, Easter Island. Initially inhabited about AD 400 by Polynesians from the Marquesas, Easter Island has long been famous for the rongorongo hieroglyphs and remarkable monolithic stone statues in human form. They have evoked various legends and theories as to their origin. The statues, carved from tuff, a soft volcanic stone, range in height from 10 to 40 feet (3 to 12 m), some weighing more than 50 tons. The non-Polynesian vestiges on Easter Island have given rise to much speculation, but the most recent archaeological work indicates that most of the statues were erected in the Middle Period (AD 10001600) and that environmental degradation and fighting among the islanders (culminating in the Peruvian slave raids of 186263, in which about one-third of the population was carried off) brought precipitous decline to the island's fortunes. When a few of the abducted islanders were returned, they brought smallpox and tuberculosis, and the island suffered further severe depopulation and cultural decline. With the introduction of Christianity in the later 1860s, the surviving Polynesian traditions were forgotten. The first European to see Easter Island was the Dutch admiral Jakob Roggeveen, in 1722. In 1888 the island was annexed by Chile, which leased nearly all its territory for sheep raising. Sheep ranching came to an end in the mid-1980s, and the island is now administered by a civilian governor. Chile has declared the entire island a historic monument. Pop. (1989 est.) 2,095. Additional reading A comprehensive introduction is provided in Norwegian Archaeological Expedition to Easter Island and the East Pacific, 19551956, Reports, 2 vol. (196165). History and culture are outlined in Grant McCall, Rapanui: Tradition and Survival on Easter Island (1981). See also Thor Heyerdahl, Aku-Aku: The Secret of Easter Island, trans. from Norwegian (1958, reprinted 1988), Sea Routes to Polynesia (1968), Art of Easter Island (1975), a survey of art in collections throughout the world, with more than 300 plates of photographs, and Easter Islanda Mystery Solved (1989).