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A VISIT TO EASTER ISLAND, "NAVEL OF THE WORLD"
by Ted Cookson
Published in March 2004
On 25 January 2003 I sailed from Valparaiso, Chile to Papeete, Tahiti on the
513-passenger German-registered cruise ship MS Deutschland. During the 16-day
cruise the Deutschland called at Chile's Robinson Crusoe Island, Easter Island
and Pitcairn Island as well as Fakarava and Moorea in French Polynesia. On 1
February I toured Easter Island for the third time in 2 1/2 years! Cruise ships
often call at both Pitcairn Island and Easter Island when sailing between Tahiti
and South America's west coast ports. So it was due to my interest in trying to
land at Pitcairn Island that I also happen to have visited Easter Island on
cruises in both 2000 and 2002.
Easter Island is some 3,600 km west of Chile. Pitcairn Island, 1,900 km
distant, is its nearest inhabited neighbor to the east. Triangular in shape and
hilly, with a maximum altitude of 600 meters, Easter Island is 23 km long, 11 km
wide and has an area of 163 square km (63 square miles). Easter Island, with an
extinct volcano at each corner, was formed by a series of separate underwater
volcanic eruptions.
Dutch admiral Jakob Roggeveen, who discovered the island on Easter Sunday in
1722 and spent only a single day there, described a population which worshiped
huge standing statues with fires while they prostrated themselves to the rising
sun. The island was also visited by an expedition sent by the Spanish viceroy
of Peru, which spent four days on the island in 1770. This expedition reported
that the local population of 3,000 had its own form of script. It appears that
a civil war may have taken place prior to the visit of Captain James Cook in
1774. Cook found only 700 poverty-stricken men and fewer than 30 women on the
island. He wrote that most of the statues had been overturned and were no
longer venerated.
In 1864 a French Catholic missionary, the first European to settle on Easter
Island, converted the population to Christianity. Settlers from Tahiti began to
raise sheep on the island in 1870. In 1888 the island was annexed by Chile.
Easter Island was administered by the Chilean navy for 11 years from 1954, but
since 1965 Easter Island has had a civilian governor.
The population was decimated to a low of 111 in 1877 by Peruvian slavers,
smallpox, tuberculosis and emigration. Today's population of about 3,000,
living in the town of Hanga Roa on the sheltered west coast, has been augmented
by emigrants from the Chilean mainland. Tourism, the mainstay of the modern
economy, began with commercial air service in 1967. Nowadays about half a dozen
cruise ships also call at Easter Island annually. Chile has declared the entire
island a historic monument.
Polynesian culture was able to spread across the Pacific within the great
triangle formed by New Zealand, Hawaii and Easter Island due to the fact that
Polynesian mariners had devised ways to navigate in small boats between very
widely-dispersed islands. Also known as Rapa Nui, its Polynesian name, Easter
Island was probably colonized by mariners from the Marquesas Islands in French
Polynesia in about 400 AD. The oldest ceremonial altars and statues are similar
to those found in the Marquesas. However, later development of the tall gaunt
statues with elongated faces and ears for which Easter Island is famous is
unique to Easter Island. Mysterious "rongorongo" hieroglyphs found on the
island have never been deciphered. Curiously, the first inhabitants called
their island "Navel of the World."
It is thought that five clans on Easter Island, each of which had its own lands,
attempted to display their strength through the construction of complex
monuments of ancestor worship. Incredibly, over the centuries about 1,200
monolithic stone statues were quarried at Rano Raraku, on the sides of an
extinct volcano. The statues were then transported to their various resting
sites on the periphery of the island, perhaps by means of wooden rollers. (A
1986 experiment showed that it was also possible for 15 men to move a
medium-sized statue in an upright position by means of ropes.) Each statue
originally wore a red topknot which was quarried at another location distant
from Rano Raraku. In addition, large round pebbles laid out in long rows in
front of the statues were all gathered from one particular beach. Virtually all
of the statues faced inward so as to watch over the clans' ancestral lands.
The remarkable monoliths, carved from tuff, a soft volcanic stone, range in
height from 3 to 12 meters. Some weigh more than 45,500 kg (50 tons). The
largest weighs 74,500 kg (82 tons) and wore a topknot weighing 10,000 kg (11
tons). It has been theorized that the engineers, quarrymen and sculptors were
paid from surplus agricultural production by the families which commissioned the
statues. After about 1400 AD the quarrying slowed and then eventually ceased.
This might have been due to deforestation caused by production of rollers which
in turn led to soil infertility. Heavy cropping may have contributed too.
Today Easter Island is mostly grassland aside from some introduced eucalyptus
trees. It is still possible to see the remains of hillside trails created by
sheep which were ranched on the island for a century until the mid-1980's.
Another interesting but later phenomenon is the birdman cult. In an annual
ceremony young men raced down steep volcanic cliffs and swam to three small
islets offshore to try to obtain the first egg laid by the sooty tern, a
migratory seabird which still nests there. The chief of the clan of the winner
of this race was named Bird Man. This position apparently allowed that elder to
govern Easter Island for the next year.
In addition to the obvious Polynesian cultural borrowings, some strong arguments
can also be made for influences from South America to the east. In particular,
the stone work on one of the ceremonial altars and at the ceremonial village of
Orongo are similar to masonry in South America. Also, the early Easter Island
statues bear characteristics reminiscent of pre-Inca monuments.
As Easter Island has no cruise ship dock, the Deutschland stayed at anchor; and
I rode ashore in the morning on the ship's tender. Riding horses were available
for rent at the small dock. But to see the most in a short amount of time, a
vehicle is best. My day tour began with a drive up the steep slope of Rano Kau,
the largest volcano, to the ceremonial village of Orongo which consists of low
stone buildings associated with the Bird Man cult. Petroglyphs there show a
creature which is half man and half bird. From Orongo I could look out to sea
toward the nearby islets where the annual Bird Man competition was held. From
this same vantage point I could also see the fresh water lake in the crater far
below which provides sufficient drinking water for the entire island.
I drove back down the slope of Rano Kau and then continued around the airport,
the original runway of which was lengthened by NASA for use as an emergency
landing strip for the space shuttle. Beyond the small town of Hanga Roa I
reached the ceremonial altar known as Ahu Ko Te Riku. Not only is the statue
here one of the few to again wear its original red topknot, but this is the only
statue which currently contains eyes. It was only in the 1990's when a single
eye-shaped coral piece was unearthed that archeologists realized that all of the
statues originally had eyes carved from white coral. The pupils were made of
dark stone.
From there I drove to the volcanic crater Rano Raraku where all of the statues
were quarried. Some statues still recline in situ, only partially excavated.
Many others lie abandoned nearby, having broken at the very beginning of their
separate journeys to the various clans' lands around the island.
The quarrying at Rano Raraku took place with basalt picks both inside and
outside of that lake-filled crater. Today statues stand buried near the quarry
site at random depths and at random angles. Some statues are buried by silt to
their abdomens or waists, some to their necks and still others to their chins.
Nearly all of the statues are cut off at waist level. On only one of the
remaining statues are stubby legs carved on its sides. Interestingly, one
statue has a three-masted sailing ship inscribed on its chest. This artwork
must have been added sometime after the arrival of the first Europeans in the
eighteenth century.
My next stop was the largest ceremonial altar, Ahu Tongariki, where 15 statues
stand on the same platform facing inward from the sea. In 1960 a tsunami caused
by an earthquake near the coast of Chile swept all 15 statues off their
platform, hurling some of these huge stone megaliths hundreds of meters inland.
My guide explained that a Japanese owner of a crane company had donated one of
his cranes for use in restoring this altar after returning home from a visit to
Easter Island.
The final destination on my tour was Anakena, Easter Island's only true sand
beach where the ceremonial altar Ahu Nau Nau contains half a dozen statues, four
of which wear red topknots. A plaque at Anakena records the visit by Thor
Heyerdahl to this site in the mid-1950's. After a picnic lunch I returned to
the town of Hanga Roa to try to see the museum. Unfortunately the museum was
closed due to the 10-day-long Semana Rapa Nui, a festival with dancing, singing,
tattooing and body-painting plus horse racing and swimming competitions, which
was due to commence that evening.
ABOUT TED COOKSON: Egypt's most widely-traveled travel agent, Ted has been
to every country in the world! He has also visited 307 of the 315 destinations
on the list of the Travelers' Century Club (visit
www.eptours.com and refer to World Travel Club). A travel agent in Cairo
since 1986, Ted manages EGYPT PANORAMA TOURS, a full-service travel agency, at 4
Road 79 (between Roads 9 and 10, near the "El Maadi" metro station) in Maadi.
Contact Egypt Panorama Tours (open 7 days a week 9 AM-5 PM) at: Tels. 2359-0200,
2358-5880, 2359-1301. Fax 2359-1199. E-mail:
ept@link.net. Web site:
www.eptours.com.
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