Easter Island, or Rapa Nui, is an island and a territory of Chile located in the Pacific Ocean, extremely far from any other land. In fact, Easter Island is one of the most remote places on Earth, being over 2,000 km away from the nearest inhabited island, Pictairn Island (which only has around 50 residents), and 3,500 km away from South America, the nearest continent. Despite being so far away from any other land, Easter Island has been inhabited for a long time, and a unique civilization developed here. These people left around 1,000 monumental statues, the world-famous moai, but how did this happen?
Position of Easter Island in the Pacific Ocean (Xander89, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)
It is not clear when Easter Island was first settled, with estimates ranging between 400 and 1300, but most likely people arrived on the island around the 12th century. The first settlers of Easter Island were probably Polynesians who navigated in canoes and catamarans from modern-day French Polynesia, located over 2,500 km away. This seems to be confirmed by similarities between the Rapa Nui language and the languages of the Gambier and Marquesas Islands, and other similarities in statues and tools.
According to local oral tradition, the legendary first settler of Easter Island was Hotu Matuꞌa, a king who arrived with a group of colonists from a faraway island. Tradition also claims that the island had a class system and was ruled by the descendants of Hotu Matuꞌa. The land was divided between nine clans, each with their own chief, but all submitted to the king.
Between 1250 and 1500, the people of Rapa Nui erected around a thousand large monolithic statues depicting human figures, the moai. Most were built around a volcanic crater called Rano Raraku, but many others were transported around the island, especially near the coastline. How exactly these statues were transported is still debated. The moai have an average height of 4 meters and usually weight around 12.5 tonnes, with the tallest being 10 meters tall and the heaviest weighing 86 tonnes. The statues likely represented deified ancestors or powerful individuals, and clans might have competed against each other to build the grandest moai.
Moai in Rano Raraku on Easter Island (TravelingOtter, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0).
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While it is unknown what happened exactly over the following centuries, some scholars have suggested that the Rapa Nui society collapsed after the construction of the moai. At its peak, Easter Island might have housed 15,000 people, but by the early 18th century, the population had dropped to between 2,000 and 3,000. It has been suggested that building the moai resulted in extreme deforestation that almost completely eliminated trees from the island, and this destabilized the already precarious ecosystem of the island. The arrival of the Polynesian rat also contributed to extinction of many plant species.
Without trees, the Rapa Nui people were no longer able to build large vessels to fish far from the coast, and the erosion caused by the deforestation also resulted in a decline in agricultural production. All species of land birds were hunted to extinction, and overpopulation caused resources to be consumed quickly. Some also suggested that the societal collapse might have resulted in wars between clans and even cannibalism. As resources diminished, in the 16th century the people of Rapa Nui began to believe that ancestors communicated with the living through powerful warriors instead of statues. So, a new cult emerged, centered around Makemake, the god responsible for creating humans in Rapa Nui mythology.
However, the societal collapse hypotesis has been criticized, as more recent studies suggest that few deaths could be attributed to violence, and deforestation began earlier than the construction of the moai. According to other studies, there is no evidence of a societal collapse in Rapa Nui, and some have suggested that the population decline only happened after the first contact with Europeans.
Europeans first reached Easter Island on 5 April 1722, which was Easter Sunday, when a Dutch ship commanded by navigator Jacob Roggeveen arrived here. The Rapa Nui people were initially curious about the Europeans, and tried to touch them and their guns, but this resulted in some of the Dutch sailors opening fire, and the death of some islanders. After the incident, the Dutch grieved the death of the islanders, and the locals traded some food for the bodies of their fallen, so the conflict was resolved without further violence. Roggeveen reported that the island housed numerous monumental statues and the land was entirely dedicated to agriculture, with no trees, and estimated a population between 2,000 and 3,000 people.
The next Europeans to arrive on Easter Island were two Spanish ships in 1770. British explorer James Cook reached the island in 1774, and reported that some of the statues had been toppled. The toppling of the moai continued for decades, until the mid 19th century, and only some areas were spared. Once again, the reason behind this is unclear, but it might have been caused by wars between tribes or a loss of faith in ancestors. Some of the toppled moai have been restored in modern times. Cook also reported that there were only around 700 people on the island, the land was poor and had fallen into disuse, and the islanders only had three or four small canoes.
Chilean priest Juan Ignacio Molina reached the island in 1776 and also described huge statues. French explorer Jean François de Galaup La Pérouse arrived on Easter Island in 1786 and described the island as one-tenth cultivated, estimating a population of around 2,000. Over time, more and more European ships began using Easter Island as a resupply stop, and often took islanders by force to use them as slaves.
These moai at Ahu Tongariki on Easter Island were toppled, but were then restored in the 1990s (Ian Sewell, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0).
The Rapa Nui people risked being completely wiped out after Peruvian slave traders arrived on Easter Island in December 1862 and spent the following months capturing or killing around 1,500 people, half of the island’s population. Most of these died of tuberculosis, smallpox, and dysentery. Only after heavy international pressure the slaves were freed in the autumn of 1863, but by that time only a dozen islanders were still alive. However, when they got back on Easter Island they brought smallpox and tuberculosis with them, and an epidemic killed hundreds of islanders.
Eugène Eyraud was the first Christian missionary to arrive on Easter Island in 1864, and converted the entire population, less than a thousand people, to Catholicism, before dying of tuberculosis in 1868. The already dire situation of the Rapa Nui people worsened after the arrival of French mariner and former artillery officer Jean-Baptiste Dutrou-Bornier, who settled on Easter Island in 1868. In the span of a few years, he bought almost the entire island and turned into a sheep ranch, kicking out some of the locals and enslaving many others. Dutrou-Bornier was killed in 1876 after an argument with the locals. Meanwhile, the missionaries also evacuated hundreds of Rapa Nui people to other islands, and by 1877 only 111 people lived on Easter Island, most of which were older men.
Alexander Ariʻipaea Salmon, son of an English merchant and a Tahitian princess, took over the island in 1878, and ruled it until he sold it to Chile in 1888. Meanwhile, by 1892 there were only 101 natives left on Easter Island. The population later recovered, but most of the island’s cultural knowledge was lost as almost all the Rapa Nui people were wiped out in a few decades.
The annexation to Chile brought an end to raids by foreign slavers, but many islanders were still forced to work for the English-Chilean Williamson-Balfour Company, which bought the island and turned into a sheep farm. Islanders were confined to the town of Hanga Roa, and were not allowed to leave without permission. The natives revolted against the company, but the Chilean government only gave a few lands to the natives, and only in 1936 the islanders were allowed to leave Hanga Roa without permission.
In 1953 the Chilean government expelled the Williamson-Balfour Company, and the Chilean Navy took over the island, ruling it for the next 13 years. Between 1965 and 1970, the United States Air Force also had a presence on the island. In 1966, the island was finally reopened in its entirety and the Rapa Nui people were given Chilean citizenship. The construction of the Mataveri International Airport in 1965 made traveling to Easter Island easier, while television arrived on the island in 1975. The island was then oriented towards tourism and in 1995 it was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Easter Island is now a famous tourist destination, known all over the world for its unique moai. However, there are still concerns about the treatment of the Rapa Nui people by the Chilean government, and occasional protests demanding independence still occur. According to the 2017 census, 7,750 people lived on Easter Island, about 60% of which are Rapa Nui people. Easter Island is also a site of archaeological studies, and new discoveries are still being made.