Create your Trip Journal [click here]I arrived in Santiago, Chile early in the morning on 6 Feb and had the day to walk around the city. I was very impressed at how clean and metropolitan the city was and how beautiful the women are. On 7 Feb I was off to Easter Island.
Note: You gotta love plagiarizing – To save time and to insure my spelling was right - I did copy some of the info from the internet about the history of Easter Island.
Easter Island (known in the native language as Rapa Nui or Isla de Pascua in Spanish) is an island in the South Pacific Ocean belonging to Chile. Located 2,300 west of Chile and 1,300 miles east of Pitcairn Island. Easter Island was known to be one the most isolated inhabited islands in the world but I do not agree because I can get to the island on a big plane; whereas Pitcairn Island can only be accessed by boat. It was named Easter Island because it was discovered by the Dutch on Easter Sunday, 1722. Easter Island is triangular in shape about 63 square miles and has a population of 4,000 which live in the capital of Hanga Roa. Easter is made up of three volcanoes: Poike, Rano Kau and Terevaka.
The island is famous for its numerous moai, the stone statues located along the coastlines. There has been much controversy and confusion concerning the origins of the Easter Islanders. It is thought that the people who built the statues were of Peruvian descent, due to a similarity between Rapa Nui and Incan stonework. Some have suggested that Easter Island is the remnant of a lost continent, or the result of an extra-terrestrial influence. Archaeological evidence, however, indicates discovery of Easter Island by Polynesians at about 400 AD – led, according to legend, by Hotu Matua. In addition to the statues, the islanders possessed the Rongorongo script; the only written language in Oceania.
Ancient Island legends speak of a clan chief called Hotu Matu’a, who left his original home in search of a new one. When he died, the island was divided between his six sons and later sub-divided among their descendants. The islanders may have believed that their statues would capture the chiefs’ “mana” (supernatural powers).
They may have believed that by concentrating mana on the island good things would result, e.g., rain would fall and crops would grow. As the years went on the population of Easter Island reached its peak at perhaps more than 10,000, far exceeding the capabilities of the small island's ecosystem. Resources became scarce, and the once lush palm forests were destroyed – cleared for agriculture and moving the massive stone Moai. As a result of cutting down all the trees the locals no longer had the materials to build boats big enough to leave the island so they became trapped on this island with no way to escape. Thereafter, a thriving and advanced social order began to decline into bloody civil war and, evidently, cannibalism.
Eventually, all of the Moai standing along the coast were torn down by the islanders – they even took it a step further by not just knocking down all the statues (Moai) but making sure they broke them into pieces when they fell down. When Western world first made contact with the island in the 17th century the local population of Easter Island was further reduced through slavery and disease and by the 19th century the population was down to a few 100 locals.
I had no idea what to expect during my time on Easter Island but a few pleasant surprises told me that this was going to be a good visit. The first surprise was that I got upgraded to business class for the 5-hour flight to Easter Island. The second surprise was that, unknown to me when I arranged this part of my trip to Easter Island, I would be on the island during the Tapati (a Local Festival – more on this later). After I landed at the airfield built by the U.S. military in 1950s – the U.S. had a small base on Easter Island until the 1960s – I met my group (an American lady from California and a Canadian).
But the other surprise was that when I got off the plane I was met by a very attractive lady, Josefina Mulloy, who was going to be our guide for the next four days.
Josefina is an American (married to a local) who grew up on the West Coast of America and on Easter Island and our surprise came when we found out who she was. While we were on tour a man from another tour group came up to our group and introduced himself to us and Josefina. He then thanked Josefina for all the work her family did and told us who we had as our guide. In the late 1950s an American research professor (William Mulloy) visited Easter Island, fell in love with the island then devoted his life’s work to restoring the island. Because of William Mulloy’s effort and work, all of the statues (moai) now erected around the island are the result of his doing. William Mulloy is the person responsible for bring back the life and culture to Easter Island and now as our guide was the granddaughter of William Mulloy. This made my time on Easter Island more special because of her background and the personal insight that she provided during the tour.
The Tapati (a festival and competition) is one of the most significant cultural commemorations of Polynesia. Each year (for two weeks) the entire island community revives centuries of culture and tradition by dividing into two teams in order to compete to elect a queen. During the two-week festival the competing teams will participate in a variety of traditional events and the team that wins will have their girl elected as Queen of Easter Island.
The main and night events were held at a beautifully built stage in the capital, the only town on the island.
The events consist of traditional cooking (see photo above, as I enjoy some of the traditional cooking), moai carving, fishing, dancing, singing, horse racing (see photo below), and traditional sport events. It was an unexpected surprise while touring around the island to stop in and watch the events.
Above: The singing competition. Each side sings traditional songs but can not mess up the words or repeat a song that was already sung. This will go on until one makes a mistake. Last year it lasted all night.
Another famous event that Easter Island is known for was the Birdman Event, which was an earlier version of the Tapati. Back in the day, after hundreds of years of being stranded on the island (because they destroyed all the wood needed to build boats) with no outside visitors the islanders started to think that they were the only ones in the world and that this island was the only place on the world. But what kept them from fully believing that were the birds. Because each year they would see the birds fly away then about the same time next year would see the birds fly back to the island and intuitively they knew that the birds went somewhere and as a way to celebrate the return of the birds and the island’s only contact with the outside world they would hold a festival.
As part of the Birdman Festival each group would pick their best swimmer and this swimmer had to climb down the mountain, swim through the ocean to a smaller island, find an egg laid by a returning bird, then with the egg, and swim back to the main island. The group whose swimmer brought back the first egg would become the chief group for the year.
There has been a long debate about when the moais where built and why they were built. Moai’s are statues carved from volcanic stone from the Rano Raraku and are all monolithic, (carved in one piece). The largest moai erected is “Paro,” about 33 feet high and weighing about 83 tons. One unfinished sculpture has been found that would have been 69 feet tall and would have weighed about 270 tons. Less than one-fifth of the statues were moved to ceremonial sites and then erected. You will find that some of the moais had red stone cylinders (pukau) placed on their heads. These “topknots” were carved in a single quarry known as Puna Pau.
The quarries in Rano Raraku appear to have been abandoned abruptly, with many incomplete statues still in situ. However, the pattern of work is very complex and is still being studied. Practically all of the completed moai that were moved from Rano Raraku and erected upright on ceremonial platforms were subsequently toppled by native islanders in the period after construction ceased.
Although usually identified as “heads” only, the moai are actually heads and truncated torsos. In recent years, toppled moai have been found untouched and face-down. This led to the discovery that the famous deep eye sockets of the moai were designed to hold coral eyes. Replica eyes have been constructed and placed in some statues for photographs.
The statues were carved by the Polynesian colonizers of the island beginning by about A.D. 1000–1100. In addition to representing deceased ancestors, the moai, once they were erect on ceremonial sites, may also have been regarded as the embodiment of powerful living chiefs. They were also important lineage status symbols. By the mid-1800s, all the moai outside of Rano Raraku and many within the quarry itself had been knocked over. Today, about 50 moai have been re-erected on their ceremonial sites.
When I got home my roommates were watching show TV special about Easter Island. Now what is putting me on my soap box was the left leaning dodo incorporated into this TV special. It was an amazing feat when the first people reach Easter Island and when thy got to the island it was a lush Topical Island. Over the years, instead of developing the land to sustain life and keep a way to get off the island; the islanders instead decided to eat or kill all the wildlife on the island, to eat all the fish in the area, to totally wipe out the entire forest to build a bunch of statues, and to destroy the only means available to them to leave the island. During this time the population (about 10,000 and with no way to leave the island) grew to an uncontrollable level and they broke. A once happy group of people now had to compete for the very limited recourses that were left. And how did they do that – They went to War – Total War
Those beautiful statues that they used up all their resources to build were destroyed. Not by the bad evil westerns but by the peace (now war like) loving people who built them. And while they were destroying the moais they were destroying each other and then started to eat each other.
By now you are wondering where this going and what got me on my soap box – I will tell you. According to this TV special it was not bad enough that Local Easter Island population had turned the island into an eco-disaster -that they had destroyed the statues, that they killed almost every living plant and creature on the island and in the water, that they were killing themselves, and that they turned into cannibals were eating each other. Again according to this TV special and I will quote “that was not bad because the worst was yet to come” Enters the big bad evil Westerners. Oh No the evil Westerns are here now we are doomed – I am so tied of hearing how my ancestors are the root of all today’s wrong. By the time the Westerns landed on Easter Island they themselves had all ready destroyed the land and killed off half their population. So how could a few hundred Westerns hope to survive and fend off the five or so thousand still living on the island, They could not, instead the locals saw this as an opportunity to get more for their clan and to further destroy their enemies, so they let the Westerns take thousands of locals off the island and many of them died. When the locals returned to Easter Island smallpox further reduced their numbers. By this time (early 1900s) the remaining population was moved to one area of the island and the rest of the island was turned over to sheep and cattle for grazing.
It is my opinion that Western intervention saved the island. At the rate the locals were killing each other they would have wiped themselves out and all would have been lost. When the Westerns arrived it gave the locals on Easter Island a way to reattach with the world and a better method for securing resources by giving up their enemies to the Westerns. Right or wrong the population stabilized and peace was restored. Today it is the West (In no small part to William Mulloy) that has restored Easter Island and is trying to stave off another eco-disaster.
Sorry I will get off my soap box.
I really enjoyed my time on the island and Easter Island is one of the most unique places that I have traveled with its amazing landscape (the volcanic craters, lava formations, beaches, brilliant blue water, and archaeological sites) and friendly people, I will return.
