Easter Island Moai photo by G.Wilson

Easter Island - Land of Enigmas

"Everywhere is the wind of heaven; round and above all are boundless sea and sky, infinite space and a great silence. The dweller there is ever listening for he knows not what, feeling unconsciously that he is in the antechamber to something yet more vast which is just beyond his ken."
Katherine Routledge,
The Mystery of Easter Island, 1919.

Easter Island photo by G.Wilson

As our cruise ship approached Easter Island or Rapa Nui 'Great Island' as it is known to the inhabitants, it appeared out of the mist like a giant sperm whale. Called the most isolated place on the globe, this grass-covered island is 14 miles long and 7 miles wide and has an area of 66 square miles. It is composed of three main volcanic summits, Rano Kau, Poike and Terevaka. The oldest is Poike which erupted on two occasions: one 9-million years ago and the other 2.5-million years ago. Lava from Rano Kau is as old as 950,000 years and the youngest from Terevake is about 300,000 years old. The last volcanic eruptions on Rapa Nui occurred about 13,000 years ago. Its maximum elevation is 1670 feet. Chile is located 2300 miles to its east and Pitcairn Island 1300 miles to the west. The island was annexed to Chile in 1888 and today some 4000 people call it home, 2000 of whom are said to be able to trace their ancestry back to the original Polynesians.

Radiocarbon tests done on charcoal produced during forest clearing activities indicate that the island was probably settled by Polynesians around 300-400 AD. These people likely arrived from the Marquesas Islands from the west. They brought with them bananas, taro, sweet potato, sugarcane and paper mulberry as well as pigs, chickens and rats. The island at one time supported a relatively advanced and complex civilization.

The first Europeans to see Rapa Nui came with a Dutch navigator named Admiral Jakob Roggeveen. His little flotilla of three small ships were thousands of miles from nowhere in the vastness of the world's largest ocean when they reached the shelter of an island not yet plotted on any map on April 5, 1722. "To the land the name Paasch Eyland was given because it was discovered by us on Easter Day." AT the time the population was about 2-3 thousand but may have been as high as 10-15 thousand a cenury or two before.

At daybreak the Europeans witnessed what they considered a religious ceremony of sorts. The islanders, whose name for their island was Te-Pito-o-te-Henua or 'The Navel of the World', were moving about some giant images in the rising sun. Fires had been built in front of each huge statue before which they prostrated themsleves in the sun. The island appeared to be well populated for as the sun rose higher the natives in great number swam out to the ships while hundreds more sat in groups on the cliffs about watching these strange vessels from another world. Since that first sighting of the huge statues, Easter Island's great tourist attractions are these awe-inspiring stone images called Moai which number some 900 scattered across the island, half of which are in various stages of completion.

According to our guide, sometime after the arrival of the island's Polynesian settlers they split into ten clans or tribes with each having its own well demarked part of the island. One hundred years before the arrival of the Europeans the civilization began to collapse as a result of overpopulation, deforestation and exploitation of an isolated island with limited natural resources. As a result this led to civil strife and cannabalism based on evidence found of human bones at cooking sites and in caves. The ultimate insult one could express was to say, "The flesh of your mother sticks between my teeth."

The Moai were carved with primitive tools between the 11th and 17th centuries AD in incredible burst of creative activity which for some unknown reason came to a halt around 1680. The statues represented incarnations of deified ancestors either because they were important chiefs or individuals who had made a significant contribution to the community. The statues - all men - faced inward to bestow their blessings and powers on the surviving clan members. Each face of the long-eared, legless human male torso is different and intended to represent in a stylized way the appearance of the person commemorated. Most are 15 to 20 feet tall but the largest is 70 feet all (taller than the average 5-story building) and weigh from 10 up to 270 tons. The largest ones were thought to have been made in the 1600s.

The Carving Tool - A Piece of Basalt Rock photo by G. Wilson

A Tool Called Toki - A Piece of Basalt Rock

Using basalt carving tools they carved the statues out of a yellowish-grey rock called basaltic tuff found in one large quarry which all tribes shared. The topknots were carved from basaltic spatter. The tool was called a toki, an ancient word for the stone axe among the aboriginal people of North Chile. They held the toki in their hand and hacked away at the tough tuff and when their tool's point wore down, they simply chipped off pieces with another stone of the same kind. It was a long, painstakingly tedious process and required many sculptors working at the same time. Once complete the moai were detached and polished. The face was carved first and room was allowed for the long ears and hands clinging around the stomach. The eyes were hollow and left 'blind' until the statue was transported to the sacred site. Four hundred partially completed statues remain in the vicinity of the quarry, some buried or partially buried and others still part of the rock face. The abrupt halt to the production of the statues hinted at some devastating occurrence which ended the customary life and culture of the island.

The Quarry photo by G. Wilson

Unique Crouched Basalt Figure Considered the Oldest Moai and one of the most powerful of the ancient sculptures. photo by G. Wilson

Statues Strewn About photo by G. Wilson

An Early Moai Statue - later Moai had long ears and long fingers photo by B. Wilson

Moai Jay Jaw photo by G. Wilson

Moai Named Nixon photo by G. Wilson

Once the images were completely carved, the statues weighing many tons were 'walked' across the island using ropes, rocks and wooden logs, the latter palm tree trunks. The island once supported a forest of the now extinct palm, Jubaea chilensis, which was deforested in the process of the islanders erecting their statues. The were placed on wooden frames made of the palms and pulled to their final destinations on ceremonial sites. Tradition refers to a spiritual power mana as the means by which the moai were 'walked' from the quarry. What an awesome sight it must have been with all the stone monsters standing in tall ranks at the foot of the quarry awaiting marching orders to an ahu where they received their eye sockets and inlaid eys.

A Stunning Stone Giant

The destruction of their civilization is thought to have occurred largely from over-population and the ruination of the island's natural resources including wood which they squandered by denuding the islands palm trees to roll these statues about the island. When Europeans arrived in the 17th century no palm trees remained. The people wasted their energies and nature's reserves on useless statues, many of which were later destroyed and buried as the various tribes slaughtered each for hatred and hunger that led eventually to cannibalism. Ultimately this resulted in the destruction and disappearance of their society, nothing of which remains but these mute monsters, mindless memories of a failed civilization. .

The Moai were located on platforms along the seashore always facing inward. Some wore what look like 'hats' called topknots, which were not hats but hair representing the way chiefs plaited and coiled their hair on top of their heads.

Moai with A TopKnot photo by G.Wilson

Islander with braided and looped topknot photo by G. Wilson

Originally all the Moai had eyes which were created with a central disk of dark lava rock inlaid in a cavity on the inside of the almond-shaped eye of white coral so that the pupil would not fall out and the whole piece fitted perfectly into the eye socket of the statue. None of the Moai with eyes now exist. The coral was taken because of its value and because removal of the Moai's eyes eliminated their spiritual power.

A Restored Moai with Eyes photo by G. Wilson

A Recovered Eye that exactly fitted the eye socket of one of the Middle Period statues lying nearby.

During the latter period tribal wars led to the decline and fall of the society. The statues of the enemy tribes were toppled and broken to destroy their protecting spirits. The largest and most impressive platform on the island exhibits 15 Moai that were once toppled as a result of these wars. In an attempt to ensure the Moai broke when they fell, the distance from the neck - the thinnest and weakest part of the statue - to the bottom of the statue was measured and that distance was then measured on the ground and a rock was placed so that when the neck hit the rock it broke off the head. Much later a tsunami occurred that slid these behemoths across the ground like surf boards.

To restore these many-toned statues to their platforms, large cranes were needed to lift and replace them onto the original platform. The statues and the platforms on which they stand are considered sacred and may not be touched or walked on.

Fifteen Restored Moai On Platform photo by G. Wilson

The Bird Man Cult at Orongo

(/14tj/15th CE - 18th Century CE)

The surviving population developed new tradions to allot the remaining resources.

The Bird Islands Matu Nui Sooty Island(furthest); Moto Iti Island (middle); Moto Kaa Kau Island (nearest) photo by G.Wilson

Orongo is a restored ceremonial village where there are 53 rebuilt houses and about a thousand petroglyps. The petroglyphs carved on a rock overlooking the three islands depict various aspects of the Bird Man Cult which existed only in the Middle Period in the island's history. An important part of these ceremonies that took place on the rim of the circular volcanic crater 600 yards in diameter was to watch for the return of the first sooty terns to the three islands off the coast of Easter Island from their annual migration.

Petroglyphs photo by G.Wilson

At Orongo stone houses were built to accommodate those taking part in the ceremony. These were the only buildings not destroyed in the tribal wars because this little area or village was the only religious shrine on the island. The people gathered here to greet the sun at each vernal equinox and to participate in the annual birdman contest. These houses also allowed them to dig in against the wild weather but they could not protect them against a greater threat - themseves.

Stone Houses at Orongo photo by B. Wilson

The regular homes according to the account by Captain James Cook when he visited the island were "low, miserable huts, constructed by setting sticks upright in the ground at six or eight feet distance, then bending them towards each other and tying them together at the top, forming thereby a kind of Gothic arch. The longest sticks are in the middle and lower and narrower towards each side. The these are tied others horizontally and the whole thatched over with leaves of cane. The doorway is in the middle of one side formed like a porch and so low and narrow as just to admit a man to enter on all fours. "

Foundation of Easter Island Reed House

Dome Stone Houses

Some called a tupa were a kind of vaulted house built of stone and partly under ground ith a square entrance.

In the cult of the birdman Rapanui: kangata manu a competition took place annually when a champion was chosen by each clan to represent it. The starting signal for the bird-man contest was the arrival of the manutara ' sun bird,' the sooty tern on Moto Nui a nearby islet off the coast of Easter Island. These sacred migratory birds were called manu-tara meaning 'sun birds'. At a given signal after the first birds were sighted, the champions took off down the steep, very hazardess cliffs from where they plunged into the water and swam to the islands using their pora rafts made out of totora reed. Each man swam as quickly as possible to the island where he checked the nest of a tern.

Totora Reed Poro Rafts

When he found an egg he placed it in a leather pouch around his neck then swam back to shore, scampered up the cliffs and raced to his chief. The first to place an egg in the hand of his tribe's chief made him the chief king of the island for the year with the extensive power including the distribution of the island's resources for his clan for the year.

Re-enactment of Bird Man Competition

The islanders had a written language which they incised with a rat's tooth on wooden boards in parallel lines. Alternate lines are written upside-down with the end of one line running into the beginning of the nest. They inscribed their hieroglyphs on rongo rongo tablets, many of which were destroyed by early missionaries to the islands who believed they contained heathen rites and burned thousands of them. Fortunately the islanders had hidden in secret family caves some of these priceless treasurers saving them for posterity. They have presented the world with one of the most baffling challenges in the history of written language for they have never been deciphered.

A rongo rongo tablet

We enjoyed a performance of folkloric songs and dances performed by descendants of the island's original Polynesians inhabitants.

Islanders Telling Stories About Their Ancient Ancestors in Song, Story and Dances photo by G.Wilson

A Dancer Sings a tale about the Island's Past photo by G.Wilson

Male Dancers Perform photo by G.Wilson

AHU TAHI photo by G. Wilson

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Copyright © 2007 W. R. Wilson