We were in our hostel in Valparaíso late at night when Gonca got an email or "slack-message" as they call it, with a request from her lab regarding her paper. As Valpo seemed to be a good place for her to work, we spontaneously decided that I could visit Easter Island, or Rapa Nui, during this time. So I booked a flight for the following day, packed my rucksack and left Valpo the next morning.
Rapa Nui is the island's native name. This term also denotes the native Polynesian inhabitants of the island as well as their language. To us the island is primarily known as Easter Island, as Dutch seafarers “discovered” the island on Easter Day 1722. Today the island is Chilean territory, thus in Spanish it is known as Isla de Pascua. Since 1995 much of the island is protected as an UNESCO world heritage site.
I have first read about Rapa Nui almost 20 years ago and it has fascinated me ever since. On the five hour flight from Santiago, I had time to read more about the island and thought to have a basic understanding of Rapa Nui and its history. However, while exploring the island and talking to people I have realized that there is so much more to know about Rapa Nui than what you can find in the usual books and travel guides. The more I talked to Rapa Nui people, the more I appreciated and adored their culture, which had evolved over so many years. I also come to the conclusion how complex it was to understand their myths and cults. And also found out that Rapa Nui had suffered and endured blunt injustice in the past centuries by European colonialists, Peruvian slavery or Chilean annexation in 1888 with their subsequent unfair treatment.
My plane arrived late at night in the middle of the South Pacific at Mataveri International Airport in Hanga Roa, the most remote airport of the world. In the 1980s the NASA had supported the extension of the airstrip as the airport was designated as an emergency landing site for their Space Shuttle. As a result also larger airplanes can approach the island today, even the Concorde used to fly to Rapa Nui. Hanga Roa is the only village on Easter Island and home to 95% of the islanders, only 5% live in remote places with no water and electricity. While the island is populated by around 6’600 people, a mere 3’000 are descendants of Rapa Nui. The majority of non-Rapa Nui people living on Easter Island are from mainland Chile.
The island is triangle-shaped and rather small with just over 160 square kilometres. It basically consists of three extinct volcanoes at each corner. When the first settlers arrived in boats from Polynesia during the 5th and 6th century, the island was entirely covered with giant palm trees. Nowadays, there is little tree-like vegetation on the island and the mainly rocky surface is covered with bushes or grass. In general, I got the impression that the island has a very rough and wild character. Ample tarmac or gravelled roads link the various historical sites. After all that reading, I couldn't wait to finally explore the island myself. So as the first thing in the morning I rented a motor bike and hit the road to see the giant statues, the so called moai, for which the island is primarily known.
Why the descendants of the Polynesian settlers started carving these sculptures of giant size is still unclear. Nowhere else on earth similar sculptures have been found so far. As there is hardly any written tradition, much of the island's history is still not fully understood and remains speculative. The current theory is that the moai were part of an ancestors worship. For example, when important clan members died a moai was commissioned in his (/her ?) honour. The affiliation to certain people can be seen as petroglyphs or inscriptions on the back of the statues.
All of the over 1'000 moai, which are still ubiquitous on the island, were created presumably from around 1100 to 1650 in Rano Raraku, the volcanic quarry of the island. They were created in a way that their front site was finished first while they were still attached to the volcanic rock with their back. Only then, keels were used to separate the statues from the surrounding rock. The creation of a moai took obviously around two years. Today the quarry is one of the main attractions of the island as it contains almost 400 unfinished or damaged moai of different sizes. In general earlier moai were smaller and carved in less detail. The Rapa Nui continuously perfected their skills which led to increasingly larger statues and eventually gigantism. The largest moai with a size of 21 metres and a weight of approximately 200 tons remained unfinished and is seen today at this quarry. When a moai was damaged in the process of its creation or transportation, it was left where it was as the Rapa Nui believed that damaged moai loose their 'Mana’, their power. Undamaged and finished moai were transported to various places across the island and put on so-called ahu, ceremonial platforms, to represent the islanders' power. The ahu often contained mortal remains of the clans' ancestors. Most ahu are close to the coastline with the moai originally facing the villages in order to protect the houses and its' inhabitants. The houses were built in canoe form and many of their layout stones are still visible on the island today.
For me it was highly impressive to wander along this mystical place and marvel at the moai in various conditions and stages of their creation. I learnt that all seven clans of the Rapa Nui people had used the quarry cooperatively. However, in the 17th and 18th century when the different clans went to war against each other, work at the quarry was abruptly stopped. As a result today the quarry reminds of a place that was abandoned in great hurry. The quarry is huge and everything about the moai was so interesting that I could have easily spent days exploring or just sitting and watching them. But late in the afternoon I went on to the nearby crater lagoon and later head on to ahu Tongariki where I watched an unforgettable sunset illuminating the 15 moai, which are spread in a single line along the coast.
On my second day I spent a long day hiking across the entire northern island, the area between Te Peu and Anakena. During this hike I encountered many ceremonial sites and remains of ancient villages. All of them were unrestored exactly as the people had left them some three hundred years ago. The ahu and moai are still regarded as holy to the Rapa Nui, so it is of great importance not to touch them.
It is not entirely understood and again subject to speculation how the large and heavy statues were transported many kilometres across the rugged island. As evidence for the difficulty of the moving process many broken statues can be seen along ancient pathways. While originally it was proposed that the Rapa Nui rolled them in a horizontal position on palm tree logs, a newer theory assumes their transport in an upright position stabilized with many ropes. Interestingly, some folk songs relate to the moai as 'dancing' to their final destination, therefore potentially supporting the latter theory.
Irrespective of the exact mode of transportation, the Rapa Nui needed vast quantities of wood to transport the giant moai. It was previously suggested that the Rapa Nui people and their culture were diminished due to felling all trees for their statues which led to soil erosion and a shortage of timber for building houses, fishing boats or making fire. The theory assumed that the deforestation of the entire island finally led to wars among the clans almost resulting in their own demise. It was suggested that the winners ate their dead enemies to gain strength. Indeed, deformed bones found on the island indicated cannibalism. Despite these indications, newer theories suggest that slavery and diseases such as syphilis or smallpox imported by the different invader groups have contributed more significantly to the large wipe out of Rapa Nui than their own behaviour.
During the civil war the moai were pushed down from their ahu. Some Rapa Nui I have met explained to me that moai were also destroyed by their own clan people as they realized that the moai had not protected them well in the past and feared they could bring bad luck in the future. Therefore, the moai were mostly pushed down on their face side and were often also decapitated. Archaeologists have restored around 40 of these moai, i.e. most of the over 1’000 moai remain unrestored due to limited funding.
Often a submarine moai in perfect condition is seen on pictures. This moai is a replica which was intentionally placed just outside the fisher port of Hanga Roa in 1995 for a TV production at 20 metres depth. It has become a popular dive site, which of course I had to see as well :-). While this was a rather touristy experience I visited a traditional dance show one night and could clearly see that the importance of these traditions goes beyond tourist entertainment for the Rapa Nui.
I have also visited Rano Kau and Orongo ceremonial village. This giant crater lake covered with reeds is surrounded by the mighty blue ocean, which is an incredibly dramatic view. I stood there excited watching the huge waves bursting against the steep crater wall. This site overlooks the motu (three tiny rocky islands, about two kilometres off the island’s coast), which were part on an island-wide birdman cult in the 18th and 19th century.
This interesting cult was developed later, when the ancestors moai cult was in decline as a consequence of the turmoil in the past. Every September a competition was held among the seven clans upon the arrival of the terns. The village Orongo was built for this purpose. Competitors of the different clans moved to this village and waited for the terns to nest on the motu. As soon as the birds arrived and nested the men swam out to the motu. The competitor who brought the first tern egg back to Orongo became the birdman of the next year enjoying many privileges. The birdman with its attributes of fertility and freedom are often seen as petroglyphs across the whole island and even carved on some moai's backs, which indicates that the two cults overlapped each other. It is interesting that the birdman cult focused around freedom and fertility, as both were missing at the end of the moai cult.
I used the opportunity to talk to Rapa Nui people whenever I could. At the entrance of the ahu Te Pito Kura I met Tao, a Rapa Nui parliamentarian in charge of health care. I spent a couple of hours with her, where she told me a lot about the fascinating history of the island. Not only her, but all the Rapa Nui I have met were so proud of their Polynesian heritage, their history and traditions and often kept talking about it with an incredible passion. Ironically, I visited the island just after I had read "Sapiens: A Brief History of Mankind" by Yuval Noah Harari (thanks Daniel for this great gift ;-). In his book Harari explains how societies evolve around myths and cults. So it was very interesting for me to learn about the initial settlement of the island and its history from this perspective. In general, I would strongly recommend to read this book!
I hope that Rapa Nui will carefully manage its touristic potential also in the future to avoid overexploitation of its amazing heritage as tourism is basically the only source of income on the island. Visiting Rapa Nui was a great experience for me and it was definitely worth digging deeper into the unique culture of Rapa Nui.
Maur-uru Rapa Nui!
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