27°05S 109°20W; pop (2000e) 2800; area 166 km²/64 sq mi; maximum length 24 km/15 mi; maximum width 12 km/7 mi. Chilean island just S of the Tropic of Capricorn and 3790 km/2355 mi W of Chile; triangular, with an extinct volcano at each corner; rises to 652 m/2139 ft at Terevaka; undulating grass and tree-covered hills with numerous caves and rocky outcrops; a third covered by Rapa-Nui National Park, established in 1968; rainy season (FebAug); first European discovery by Dutch admiral Jacob Roggeveen on Easter Sunday, 1722; islanders largely of Polynesian origin; capital, Hanga Roa; airport; famous for its moai stone statues depicting the human head and trunk of local ancestors; nearly 1000 carved from the slopes of Rano Raraku, where the largest (19 m/62 ft) still lies; remains of the ceremonial city of Orongo on Rano Kau.
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motto: (" Rapa Nui" ) Also called "Te Pito O Te Henua (Ombligo del mundo) (Navel of the world)" |
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| Discovered by Europeans |
April 5, 1722 by Jakob Roggeveen |
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| Capital | Hanga Roa | ||
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Area - City Proper |
163,6 km² |
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Population - City (2005) - Density (city proper) |
3.791 Inhabitants 23,17 /km² |
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| Time zone | Central Time zone, UTC- 6 | ||
| Telephone Prefix | 32 | ||
| Postal code | 2779001 | ||
| Gentilic | Pascuense | ||
| Mayor |
Pedro Pablo Edmunds Paoa (PDC) (2004-2008) |
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| Official site | http://www.rapanui.co.cl | ||
Easter Island, known in the native language as Rapa Nui ("Big Rapa") or Isla de Pascua in Spanish, is an island in the south Pacific Ocean belonging to Chile. Located 3,600 km (2,237 statute miles) west of continental Chile and 2,075 km (1,290 statute miles) east of Pitcairn Island, it is one of the most isolated inhabited islands in the world. The island is approximately triangular in shape, with an area of 163.6 km² (63 sq. The island is famous for its numerous moai, the stone statues now located along the coastlines.
History
First settlers
Early European visitors to Easter Island recorded the local oral traditions of the original settlers. In these traditions, Easter Islanders claimed that a chief Hotu Matu'a arrived on the island in one or two large canoes with his wife and extended family. Published literature suggests the island was settled around AD 300-400, or at about the time of the arrival of the earliest settlers in Hawaii. Some scientists say that Easter Island was not inhabited until AD 700-800. On the other hand, a recent study, including radiocarbon dates from what is thought to be very early material, indicates that the island was settled as recently as AD 1200, the time of the deforestation of the island..
The Austronesian Polynesians, who arguably settled the island, are likely to have arrived from the Marquesas Islands from the west. The island at one time supported a relatively advanced and complex civilization.
Thor Heyerdahl pointed out many cultural similarities between Easter Island and South American Indian cultures which might have resulted from some settlers arriving also from the continent. However, present-day Polynesian archeology strongly denies any non-Polynesian influence on the island's prehistory, and the discussion has become very political around the subject. DNA analyses of Easter Island's inhabitants offers strong evidence as to their Polynesian origins, a tool not available in Heyerdahl's time. However, as the number of islanders that survived the 19th century deportations was very small, perhaps just 1-2% of the peak population, this mainly confirms that the remaining population was of Polynesian origin.
Some scholars have argued Polynesian sailors may have reached the central-south coast of Chile.
Moai-carving culture (10th century AD - 16th / 17th century AD)
Trees are sparse on modern Easter Island, rarely forming small groves. The island once possessed a forest of palms and it has generally been thought that native Easter Islanders deforested the island in the process of erecting their statues. However, given the island's southern latitude, the (as yet poorly documented) climatic effects of the Little Ice Age (about 1650 to 1850) may have contributed to deforestation and other changes. The disappearance of the island's trees seems to coincide with a decline of the Easter Island civilization around the 17th-18th century AD. Midden contents show a sudden drop in quantities of fish and bird bones as the islanders lost the means to construct fishing vessels and the birds lost their nesting sites. Sediment samples document that up to half of the native plants had become extinct and that the vegetation of the island was drastically altered.
The Birdman cult (16th / 17th century AD - 19th century AD)
The surviving population developed new traditions to allocate the remaining, scarce resources. The first swimmer to return with an egg would be named "Birdman of the year" and secure control over distribution of the island's resources for his clan for the year.
European contacts
The first European contact with the island began in 1722 on Easter Sunday when Dutch navigator Jacob Roggeveen found 2,000 to 3,000 inhabitants on the island, although the population may have been as high as 10,000 to 15,000 only a century or two earlier. The civilization of Easter Island was long believed to have degenerated drastically during the century before the arrival of the Dutch, as a result of overpopulation, deforestation and exploitation of an extremely isolated island with limited natural resources.
Slavery and annexation to Chile
A conclusion cannot be drawn for a catastrophic event. Then, in merely 20 years, deportation via slave traders to Peru and diseases brought by Westerners nearly exterminated the entire population - only 110 inhabitants remained on the island in 1877.
Easter Island was annexed by Chile in 1888 by Policarpo Toro, by means of the "Treaty of Annexation of the island" (Tratado de Anexión de la isla), that the government of Chile signed with the native people of the island.
Today
Until the 1960s, the surviving Rapanui descendants were forced to live in a confined settlement in squalid conditions at the outskirts of Hanga Roa because the island was rented to a foreign sheep company.
Rapa Nui is not the island's original name. It was coined by labour immigrants from Rapa in the Bass Islands, who likened it to their home island.
Recent events have shown a tremendous increase of tourism on the island, coupled with a large inflow of people from mainland Chile which threatens to alter the Polynesian identity of the island.
Mataveri International Airport serves as the island's only airport.
Ecology
Easter Island, together with its closest neighbor, the tiny island of Sala-y-Gomez 400 km further East, is recognized by ecologists as a distinct ecoregion, called the Rapa Nui subtropical broadleaf forests. The original subtropical moist broadleaf forests are now gone, but paleobotanical studies of fossil pollen and tree molds left by lava flows indicate that the island was formerly forested, with a range of trees, shrubs, ferns, and grasses. The palm is now extinct, and the toromiro is extinct in the wild, and the island is presently covered almost entirely in grassland. A group of scientists partly led jointly by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and the Göteborg Botanical Garden, are making efforts in order to reintroduce the toromiro to Easter Island. Before the arrival of humans, Easter Island had vast seabird colonies, no longer found on the main island, and several species of landbirds, which have become extinct.
Destruction of the ecosystem
"The overall picture for Easter is the most extreme example of forest destruction in the Pacific, and among the most extreme in the world: the whole forest gone, and all of its tree species extinct.".
In his article From Genocide to Ecocide: The Rape of Rapa Nui, Benny Peiser notes evidence of self-sufficiency on Easter Island when Europeans first arrived. Although stressed, the island may still have had at least some (small) trees remaining, mainly toromiro.
In his book "A Short History of Progress", Ronald Wright speculates that for a generation or so, "there was enough old lumber to haul the great stones and still keep a few canoes seaworthy for deep water". All that was left were the stone giants who symbolized the devouring of a whole island. The stone giants became monuments where the islanders could keep faith and honour them in hopes of a return. By the end, there were more than a thousand moai (stone statues), which was one for every ten islanders (Wright, 2004).
Easter Island has suffered from heavy soil erosion during recent centuries. Jakob Roggeveen reported that Easter Island was exceptionally fertile, producing large quantities of bananas, potatoes and thick sugar-cane. de La Pérouse visited Easter Island and his gardener declared that "three day's work a year" would be enough to support the population.
Rollin, a major of the French expedition to Easter Island in 1786, wrote, "Instead of meeting with men exhausted by famine... I found, on the contrary, a considerable population, with more beauty and grace than I afterwards met in any other island;
The fact that oral traditions of the islanders are obsessed with cannibalism is evidence supporting a rapid collapse.
Cultural artifacts
The Moai
The large stone statues, or moai, for which Easter Island is world famous were carved during a relatively short and intense burst of creative and productive megalithic activity. According to recent archaeological research 887 monolithic stone statues, called moai, have been inventoried on the island and in museum collections. The most widely-accepted theory is that the statues were carved by the ancestors of the modern Polynesian inhabitants (Rapanui) at a time when the island was largely planted with trees and resources were plentiful, supporting a population of at least 10,000-15,000 native Rapanui. Captain James Cook also saw many standing statues when he landed on the island in 1774.
As impressive as the statues are, the ahu platforms contained 20 times as much stone, and actually required even greater resources to build.
Stone Chicken Houses
There is archaeological evidence of intensive agriculture, including 1,233 prehistoric stone chicken houses (hare moa), which are more conspicuous than the remains of the prehistoric human houses (which only had stone foundations).
Rongorongo
Tablets found on the island and bearing a mysterious script known as Rongorongo have never been deciphered despite the work of generations of linguists. In 1932 Hungarian scholar Wilhelm or Guillaume de Hevesy called attention to apparent similarities between some of the rongorongo characters of Easter Island and the ancient Indus script of the Indus Valley civilization in India, correlating dozens (at least 40) of the former with corresponding signs on seals from Mohenjo-daro. However, such explanations have been strongly disputed, particularly since the "long-ear/short ear" designations of historical islanders have become increasingly unsupportable.
Like most indigenous tellers of Easter Island histories or legends, islanders continue to have questionable motives for their accounts and have always been creative, imaginative and quick to give answers to inquisitive archaeologists and historians.
Demography
Population at the 2002 census was 3,791 inhabitants, up from 1,936 inhabitants in 1982. Consequently, the island is losing its native Polynesian identity. At the 2002 census however, Rapanui were only 60% of the population of Easter Island. 3,304 of the 3,791 inhabitants of the island live in the town of Hanga Roa.
Rapanui have also migrated out of the island. At the 2002 census there were 2,269 Rapanui living in Easter Island, while 2,378 Rapanui lived in the mainland of Chile (half of them in the metropolitan area of Santiago).
Population density on Easter Island is only 23 inhabitants per km² (60 inh. In the 19th century, disease due to contacts with Europeans, as well as deportation of 2,000 Rapanui to work as slaves in Peru, and the forced departure of the remaining Rapanui to Chile, carried the population of Easter Island to the all time low of 111 inhabitants in 1877. Out of these 111 Rapanui, only 36 had descendants, and they are the ancestors of all the 2,269 Rapanui currently living on the island.
Local Council
The mayor of Easter Island is Mr. Pedro Pablo Edmunds Paoa (PDC)
The Councillors are:
Hipólito Juan Icka Nahoe - PH (Humanist Party) Eliana Amelia Olivares San Juan - UDI Nicolás Haoa Cardinali - Independent, center-right Marcelo Icka Paoa - PDC Alberto Hotus Chávez - PPD Marcelo Pont Hill - PPDMythology
The most important myths are:
Tangata manu Make-make Hotu Matu'a
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