Easter Island origin. Easter Island: “Mysterious Rapa Nui. A people exterminated in half a century

Easter Island is a tiny piece of lava, its outline reminiscent of a Napoleonic cocked hat, surrounded by ocean, expanse of heaven and silence for thousands of miles around. Unless, of course, you take into account the cries of seagulls and the monotonous rhythm of the ocean surf.

As the tireless explorer of the island, Catherine Roopledge, wrote, “whoever lives here is always listening to something, although he himself does not know what, and involuntarily feels himself on the threshold of something even greater, lying beyond the limits of our perception.”


Everywhere on the island there are traces of a bygone past - in the long corridors of countless caves strewn with fragments of obsidian; on the slopes of volcanoes covered with the remains of a disappeared culture; in the eye sockets of stone giants, some of which lie staring at the zenith, while others tower above the island, gazing into the unknown distance.



One of the famous mathematicians noticed that life on earth is an immense kingdom of approximate quantities. It seems that this thesis quite convincingly demonstrates our ideas about Easter Island.


So when it comes to the origin of the island, its origins ancient civilization, about the purpose of the mysterious stone colossi and about many other things that make up its many mysteries, it is always useful to remember the relativity of the knowledge that the scientific world has today.


Interest in this tiny volcanic formation, lost in the vastness of the ocean, has not waned over time. And the number of publications about this place is growing every year. It is difficult to say whether this makes us closer to the truth, but something else is certain: Easter Island knows how to puzzle and surprise.


A similar feeling arose in Thor Heyerdahl in the face of exciting uncertainty when he studied the mysterious island, where the inhabitants “built neither castles, nor palaces, nor dams, nor piers. They hewed gigantic humanoid figures from stone, tall as a house, heavy as carriage, dragged many of them through mountains and valleys, and installed them on powerful terraces at all ends of the island..."


The tireless desire of the ancient inhabitants of the island to carve out huge stone figures, the largest of which was the height of a seven-story building and weighed 88 tons, bore fruit: there are many hundreds of them on the island. There are said to be about a thousand maoi (the local name for the statues). But each time the next archaeological expedition discovers more and more statues.

One of the island’s explorers, Pierre Loti, described his impressions of the stone giants as follows: “What human race do these statues belong to, with slightly upturned noses and thin protruding lips, expressing either contempt or mockery.

Instead of eyes only deep depressions, but under the arch of wide noble eyebrows they seem to look and think. On both sides of the cheeks there were protrusions representing either a headdress similar to the cap of a sphinx, or protruding flat ears from five to eight meters long. Some wear necklaces inlaid with flint, others are adorned with carved tattoos."


The statues described by Pierre Loti are considered by a number of island researchers to be the most ancient. But besides these, there are sculptures of a different kind. “Every day we find statues of a different style - of other people,” wrote Francis Mazières, who visited the island with a scientific expedition in the mid-60s of the last century. “Facing their backs to the sea, placed on giant funeral platforms made of stone - ahu, they seem to be They monitor the life of the island. They and only they have open eyes. On the heads of these statues are huge red cylinders made of red tuff."


Thor Heyerdahl's expedition discovered a bearded figure in a sitting position. It was not like other island sculptures, causing a lot of speculation about its origin.


The French explorer Francis Mazière became the owner of a human figurine made of wood, which, in terms of its execution, was strikingly different from everything he had seen on the island before. This prompted the researcher to suggest that this figurine has nothing to do with Polynesian traditions and belongs to a different race.


Surprises await explorers in the labyrinths of the island caves. Rock frescoes were discovered in one of them. One of them resembles a penguin with a whale's tail. Another depicts the head of an unknown creature. This is the head of a bearded man with insect eyes. Deer antlers branch on his skull. The islanders call him "the insect man."


But what peoples created eyeless giants at the foot of the Raku-Raraku volcano? Who is the creator of the giants that stand along the coast? Whose hand painted the head of an “insect man” in one of the caves? “The local residents cannot explain anything,” wrote Francis Mazières. “They tell such a confusing jumble of legends that one would think that they never knew anything and that they are not at all the descendants of the last sculptors.”


A modern tourist visiting the island, as a rule, is presented as an “exotic dish” with a story about a war between two island tribes - the “long-eared” and the “short-eared”.


There is still a legend in circulation about the arrival of Hotu-Matua, the leader of the ancestors of the current islanders, on the island. "The land that Hotu-Matua owned was called Maori and was located on Hiva... The leader noticed that his land was slowly sinking into the sea. He gathered his servants, men, women, children and old people and put them on two large boats. When they reached the horizon, the leader saw that the whole land, with the exception of a small part called Maori, had gone under water."


These stories may contain echoes of some ancient events. Their fragmentary and vague nature makes it impossible to even get closer to true history islands. Even the purpose of the statues is not clear.
James Cook believed that the stone idols were built in honor of the buried rulers and leaders of the island. Professor Metro thought that the statues depict deified people. The American scientist Thomson believed that the statues were portraits of noble people, and another explorer of the island, Maximilian Brown, believed that they depicted their creators.


Katherine Roopledge said that stone figures are images of gods. Admiral Roggevahn, without expressing himself specifically, only noticed that local residents lit a fire in front of the statues and, squatting, bowed their heads.


Among Western researchers there is a “competitive” version about the purpose of the statues. According to it, the tribes living on the island were at enmity with each other for the right to be first. And supposedly prestige in this tireless struggle was won, among other things, by the number of statues carved by each rival tribe. Thus, according to this version, statues are not even a goal, but only a means of self-affirmation for people.


It is unlikely that the “native” of the island, old Veriveri, would agree with such an interpretation, who once told Francis Mazières, as a sign of special trust, the following: “All maoi (statues) of Raku-Raraku are sacred and face the part of the world over which they have power and which is responsible. That is why the island was given the name Te-Pito-o-te-Whenua, or the Navel of the Earth... The Maoi, which face south, are different from the rest. They retain the forces of the Arctic winds..."


Easter Island, the Navel of the Earth... But these are not the only names of the island. Our compatriot Miklukha Maclay recorded the following local name - "Mata-ki-te-Rangi". James Cook recorded several at once: “Vanhu”, “Tamareki”, “Teapi”. The Polynesians called the island "Rapanui", and the islanders still call it "Te-Pito-o-te-Whenua".


Many who visited the island paid attention to the striking disproportion between the giant statues, quarries of a truly cyclopean scale and modest-sized residential buildings local residents.


“The obvious disproportion of the ahu with the overthrown statues compared to the remains of the houses was striking. The statues towered over the village, fixing their gaze on it. With their backs to the sea, these giants seemed to be called upon to support the courage of the human captives of the land lost in the ocean.” So wrote Francis Mazières.


These lines also belong to him:
“The walls of the quarry, hollowed out in the shape of a crater, are located on a very steep slope, and a lot of work had to be done, not only to make cylinders out of it (Maoi headdresses. - Author's note). And here, as elsewhere on the island, it seems as if ordinary human scale did not suit those who worked in this quarry."


Meanwhile, Rapa Nui can hardly be called an ideal abode for the realization of titanically energy-intensive fantasies. To begin with, food and water resources on the island are limited. Fresh water, the main source of which has been rain for centuries, is deprived of many mineral salts necessary for the body - this is the result of filtration of water as it passes through the spongy volcanic rocks of the island. Drinking such water, according to experts, led to serious illnesses.

Obtaining food itself required, apparently. huge energy costs. And, of course, she was missed. This is evidenced by the fact that cannibalism was developed on the island relatively recently. According to evidence, even two Peruvian merchants became victims of cannibals.
Most scientists have come to the conclusion that the first, unknown to us, civilization, which was the creator of the Maoi, other colossi, was subsequently destroyed and assimilated by the second migration, the decline of which has been observed on Rapa Nui for at least the last three hundred years.


“On the island you can find traces of a prehistoric people,” concludes Francis Mazières, “whose presence we are beginning to feel more and more and which forces us to reconsider all the data about time and ethics that science is now imposing on us...”


Let's go back to the present day. In the early 60s of the last century, a powerful tidal wave that penetrated 600 meters deep into the island, some Maoi were thrown back to a distance of up to 100 meters. Work to restore the statues began relatively recently - there was no appropriate lifting equipment.
It was only after the Japanese company Tadano donated $700,000 and delivered a powerful crane to the island that things started to take off. This year, many maoi that were toppled by the tsunami were raised. But the question arises: how did the ancient inhabitants of the island move the stone giants, the smallest of which weighs at least 35 tons?


All hypotheses that have arisen around this problem can be divided into three categories. Fantastic ones appeal to alien power. The rationalistic approach relies on the islanders using all kinds of ropes, winches, winches, rollers... There is even a version according to which the statues moved along a road several kilometers long, covered with sweet potato puree, which made it slippery.


There is also a hypothesis of a mystical nature. According to the islanders, the statues moved through the spiritual power of mana, which was possessed by the leaders of their distant ancestors. “What if in a certain era,” asks Francis Mazières, “people were able to use electromagnetic forces or anti-gravity forces? This assumption is crazy, but still less stupid than the story of the crushed sweet potato.”


Of course, you can assume anything, but in the face of a 22-meter-high colossus, ordinary logic becomes powerless.

Easter Island is sometimes compared to a fragment of lava, on which, without any transitional steps, the most original art and the most mysterious writing in the world arose. The latter is a fact all the more significant since until now writing has not been discovered on the Polynesian islands.

On Easter Island, writing was discovered on relatively well-preserved wooden tablets, called kohau rongo-rongo in the local dialect. The fact that the wooden planks have survived the darkness of centuries is explained by many scientists by the complete absence of insects on the island.
And yet, most of them were eventually destroyed. But the culprit for this turned out to be not tree bugs, accidentally introduced by a white man, but the religious fervor of a certain missionary. The story goes that the missionary Eugene Eyraud, who converted the inhabitants of the island to Christianity, forced these writings to be burned as pagan. So even tiny island Easter got his Herostratus.
However, a certain number of tablets have survived. Today, there are no more than two dozen kohau rongorongo in museums and private collections around the world. Many attempts have been made to decipher the contents of the ideogram tablets, but they all ended in failure.
As well as an attempt to explain the purpose of paved roads, the time of their creation is lost in the mists of time. On the Island of Silence - another name for the island - there are three of them. And all three end up in the ocean. Based on this, some researchers conclude that the island was once much larger than it is now.

Near Rapa Nui is the tiny island of Motunui. It's a few hundred meters steep cliff, dotted with numerous grottoes. A stone platform has been preserved on it, on which statues were once installed, which were later thrown into the sea for some reason. “How could people build an ahu with a maoi there,” reflects Francis Mazières, “where we cannot approach even by boat? There, where it is impossible to climb the rock? What mass carried these multi-ton giants here? The theory of using a bed of yams is equally powerless here , and the theory of wooden rollers!"

Was Easter Island once part of a larger landmass? There are still ongoing debates around this issue in the scientific world. In the second half of the 19th century, well-known scientists at that time, Alfred Wallace and Thomas Huxley, hypothesized that the population of Oceania, including the inhabitants of Easter Island, was a remnant of the “oceanic” race that lived on the now sunken continent.

Academician Obruchev generally supported this theory. He believed that when the continent began to gradually sink under water, the population of the elevated territories began to carve stone statues and place them in the lowlands, in the hope that this would appease the gods and stop the advance of the sea. Sometimes this continent appeared in scientific hypotheses as Pacifida, sometimes as Lemuria.

The modern scientific world, with a few exceptions, perceives this kind of hypothesis with a great deal of skepticism. But on the other hand, history knows many examples when, at first glance, a completely crazy idea turned out to be true. Let us recall at least the classic case with the hypothesis of “stones that fall from the sky.”
In 1790, a meteorite fell in Gascony. A protocol was drawn up, signed by three hundred eyewitnesses, which was sent to the French Academy of Sciences. But the “tall Areopagus” called all this stupidity, since science was well aware that stones cannot fall from the sky. But this is true, by the way.

Recently, two hypotheses have become most widespread: the hypothesis of the American origin of Polynesians and Polynesian culture (to which a number of scientists include the Rapanui civilization) and the hypothesis of the settlement of the Polynesian islands from the west. Thor Heyerdahl argued that Polynesia was inhabited by two waves of migration.
The first arrived from the South American Pacific coast (the location of modern Peru). Polynesia owes the appearance of stone statues and hieroglyphic writing to settlers of Andean origin. The second wave came at the beginning of our millennium with northwest coast North America. At one time there was a rumor about the Vikings who sailed to Easter Island in ancient times and settled there.

In some versions, they try to interpret the history of the island’s civilization from the perspective of ethnogenesis: supposedly the first settlers, who had a high level of passionarity, were the only ones in all of Polynesia who knew writing. But gradually, century after century, the original level of passionarity began to dissipate, which ultimately led to the extinction of culture...

Will our knowledge of Easter Island become more accurate? In any case, a number of researchers, for example our compatriots F. Krendelev and A. Kondratov, rely on this in their book “Silent Guardians of Secrets.” “The mysteries of Easter Island are one of the most pressing and pressing problems of modern geology,” they write. “One can hope that the data obtained by geophysicists, geologists, oceanologists, volcanologists and other representatives of the exact sciences will be able to shed new light on the long-standing known facts and help find solutions to problems that ethnographers, archaeologists, and historians have struggled with unsuccessfully.”

It must be said that today the “exact sciences” have brought a number of interesting data to the problems of the island’s evolution. Rapa Nui is located in a unique place from a geological point of view. Beneath it is the fault boundary of giant tectonic plates, which seem to divide the ocean floor. The oceanic plates Nazca and Pacifica and the axial zones of underwater ocean ridges converge on the island. Which gives another reason to think about the symbolic name of the island. This is truly a kind of “Navel of the Earth”.

Today, the main wealth of the inhabitants of Rapa Nui is, of course, the mysterious past of their small island. It is precisely this that attracts scientists from all over the world here, which is why planes with tourists land at the local airport twice a week. At such hours, the life of the island, unhurried and monotonous, like the ocean surf, comes to life. The small airport building is filled with multilingual polyphony: someone is looking for a guide, someone is offering a car for rent, someone needs a hotel... But a few hours pass, and again peace and quiet reign over the island. You can count the number of cars here on your fingers. And they also obey the general rhythm of unhurried existence. In these parts, a speed of 50 kilometers per hour looks like unforgivable recklessness. Along the roads from time to time there are signs limiting the speed to 30 kilometers.

Easter Island is not in too much of a rush into the future. Modernity - air travel, the Internet, telephone communications - has a limited sphere of influence here. The true owners of the island are still the silent stone guards, firmly holding their secrets in securely closed lips.

The publication is based on Russian and foreign materials about Easter Island.
Author of the publication

This is a volcanic island, its size is relatively small, only 166 square meters. km, and a height of 539 meters, is located in the eastern part of the Pacific Ocean. On the island 70 extinct volcanoes, which have never erupted in the 1,300 years since colonization. The island belongs to Chile (3,600 km to the west of the Chilean city of Valparaiso). Its population is only about 2,000 people, so it is said that it is the most secluded corner of the world.

Ancient sculptors tried to use natural material sparingly and not to do unnecessary work; for this, when marking future statues, they used the slightest cracks in the stone monolith and cut out the statues in whole series, and not one at a time.

Easter Island and its entire history are shrouded in mystery. Where did its first settlers come from? How did they even manage to find this island? Why were 600 multi-ton stone statues made and installed? In 1772, the island was discovered by the Dutch navigator Jacob Roggeveen, this happened on Easter Sunday, hence the name - Easter Island (in the language of the Polynesians the island was called Rapanui).

Imagine the surprise of J. Roggeveen when he discovered that three different races, blacks, redskins and completely white people, coexisted peacefully here. They were all welcoming and friendly to guests.

The Aborigines worshiped a god they called Mak-Mak. Researchers found carved writings made on wooden tablets. Most of them were burned by Europeans and it can be called a miracle that something survived. Researchers think these may be statues of leaders deified by local residents after their deaths.

These tablets, called rongo-rongo, were written first from left to right, and then from right to left. For a long time, it was not possible to decipher the symbols printed on them, and only in 1996 in Russia was it possible to decipher all 4 surviving tablets.

But the most mysterious and fascinating discovery on Easter Island is the giant monolithic statues, called moai by the aborigines. Most of them reach a height of up to 10 meters (some are smaller than 4 meters) and weigh 20 tons. Some reach even larger sizes, and their weight is simply fantastic, about 100 tons.

The idols have a very massive head, long ears, a heavy protruding chin and no legs at all. A few have red stone caps on their heads (perhaps these are leaders deified after death in the form of statues).

To create the moai, builders used solidified lava. The moai were hewn straight out of the rock and were supported only by a thin bridge, from which, after processing was completed, the statue was chipped off and brought to the desired shape. The crater of the Rano Raraku volcano, as a visual aid, still preserves all the stages of processing stone giants. First, the general appearance of the statue was carved, then the craftsmen moved on to the contours of the face and carved the front part of the body.

Then they treated the sides, ears and finally, hands folded on the stomach with disproportionately long fingers. After this, the excess rock was removed, and only the lower part of the back was still connected to the Rano Raraku volcano by a narrow strip. Next, the statue was moved from the crater, across the entire island, to the installation site (ahu).

How difficult it was to move the moai is evidenced by the fact that many of the statues were never installed on their ahu and a large number of them were left lying halfway to the goal. Sometimes this distance reached 25 kilometers. And now it remains a mystery how these statues, which weighed dozens of tons, were actually moved. Legends say that the idols themselves walked to the ocean shore.

Scientists conducted an experiment where they swung a vertically mounted statue (with ropes tied to the top) and alternately pushed forward with either the left or the right shoulder. To those who watched the work, it gave the impression that the statue was moving on its own. And yet, simple calculations prove that a small population could not process, move and install even half of the finished statues.

Who are the inhabitants of Polynesia, who did they come from, how and when did they populate these islands? The mystery about the origin of the local residents has given rise to many different hypotheses. And since there were no records of the history of Easter Island, but only oral stories, it is clear that with the passing of generations, the culture and traditions of the islanders became increasingly vague.

It is believed that the local population of Polynesia originated from the Caucasus, India, Scandinavia, Egypt and of course from Atlantis. The islanders themselves claim that 22 generations have passed since then, when the leader Hotu Matua brought the first settlers to this paradise, but no one on the island knows where it came from.

Thor Heyerdahl put forward his hypothesis. He drew attention to the physical coincidences between the elongated appearances of Easter statues with certain peoples South America. Heyerdahl wrote that the sweet potatoes that grew in abundance on the island could only have been brought from the Amazon. Having studied local legends and myths, he concluded that all the poetic epics of the Polynesians are in one way or another connected with the god Tiki (son of the Sun), who once sailed here from the eastern mountainous country.

Then Heyerdahl began to study South American culture ancient times. Legends have been preserved in Peru that people of white gods came from the north and established them in the mountains. giant statues made of solid stone. After a clash with the Incas at Lake Titicaca and complete defeat, this people, led by the leader Kon-Tiki, which translates as Sun-Tiki, disappeared forever.

In legends, Kon-Tiki led the remnants of his people across the Pacific Ocean to the west. Thor Heyerdahl argued in his book that Polynesians have an American past, but scientific world did not pay due attention to his work. Can we seriously talk about the resettlement of American Indians to Easter Island if they did not have ships, but only primitive rafts!

Then Heyerdahl decided to prove in practice that he was right, but the methods by which he wanted to achieve this were not at all scientific. He studied the records of the Europeans who first came here and found many drawings describing Indian rafts, which were made from balsa wood; it was very durable and weighed half as much as cork. Based on ancient models, he decided to build a raft. The crew was immediately selected: Yorick Hesselberg the artist, Hermann Watzinger the engineer, the Swede Bengt Danielsson the ethnographer, Torstein Raaby and Knut Haugland..

The raft was built and in 1947, on April 28, they sailed from the port of Callao, many people gathered to see off the brave sailors. It should be noted that few people believed in the successful end of this expedition; they predicted its certain death. Kon-Tiki himself was depicted on the square sail - great navigator, which (as Heyerdahl was sure) in 500 AD. discovered Polynesia.

An unusual ship was named after him. In 101 days, the expedition members covered 8,000 km in Pacific Ocean. On August 7 the raft reached desert island Raroia, almost crashed on a coral reef at the very edge of the shore. After some time, the Polynesians sailed there on pirogues, they gave a worthy welcome to the brave sailors.

And after a few days, the travelers were picked up by the French schooner “Tamara,” which had specially sailed for them from Tahiti. A grand success of the expedition. Thor Heyerdahl proved that American Peruvians could reach the Polynesian islands.

Obviously, the Polynesians were the first to populate the island, or maybe it was the Peruvians or even tribes from South-East Asia. A. Metro, a professor who led the Franco-Belgian expedition to Easter Island in 1934-1935, came to the conclusion that the first settlers led by the leader Hotu Matua sailed here in the 12th-13th centuries.

S. Englert is sure that the settlement of the island began even at a later time, and the installation of giant idols began in the 17th century, almost on the eve of the discovery of this island by Europeans. There are many more different versions. For example, supporters of mystical sects are confident that the cradle of humanity is Lemuria, a continent that died four million years ago and Easter may be part of it.

In scientific circles they are still arguing about the purpose of stone statues, why they threw ready-made moai in the quarry, who knocked down the already standing statues and why, why were some people given red hats? James Cook wrote that the moai were erected by the inhabitants in honor of the deceased rulers and leaders of the island; other researchers think that the Easter giants marked the boundaries between sea and land in this way. These are ritual "guards" that warn against any invasion from the sea. There were those who thought that the statues served as boundary pillars marking the possessions of tribes, clans and clans.

Jacob Roggeveen thought that statues were idols. In the ship's log he wrote: “About their worship services... we only noticed that they made a fire near tall statues and squat down next to them, bowing their heads. Then they fold their hands and swing them up and down. A basket of cobblestones was placed on the head of each statue, having previously painted them white.”

On Easter Island there are statues that reach a height of 22 meters (the height of a 7-story building!) The head and neck of such statues are 7 meters high with a diameter of 3 m, the body is 13 m, the nose is a little more than 3 m, and the weight is 50 tons! In the whole world, even nowadays, there are not many cranes that can cope with such a mass!


The discoverer of this mysterious island was captain Juan Fernandez. The history of Easter Island is the subject of long-standing controversy. Historians cannot find all the answers.

History of Easter Island


This island is one hundred and seventeen square kilometers of almost bare land. The more scientists try to understand this island, the more questions they have. Recently, scientists began drilling into the ground to take samples to answer some questions. They were surprised to find an underlying layer of beetles. The question remains unanswered. This is another mystery. Will scientists be able to guess it?


When the Spaniard Juan Fernandez discovered this island, he decided to keep the discovery a secret. But he himself later died under unclear circumstances.
A century and a half later, the same land was discovered by Admiral Jacob Roggeveen. This discovery occurred on Easter Day. This is where this name came from.
An interesting fact is that there were other islands near Easter Island that were mapped and clearly described. But they mysteriously disappeared without a trace. Having learned the history of Easter Island, you can find out the fate of the disappeared islands. At one time, Roggeveen claimed that local aborigines sat near the idols, lit fires and rocked them. This action of theirs says little. It does not answer the question: who were the idols for them? But it is obvious that the idols were of great importance to them.

Attempts to learn the history of Easter Island


Everyone who visited the island talked intelligently about the purpose of the idols. Cook, for example, believed that these were monuments to buried rulers. There were suggestions that some of the idols depicted gods, and the rest people. So these “moai” idols are a complete mystery that still has no answer today. Some idols lie on the ground. An explanation can be found here. All the idols were placed with their backs to the sea and could fall at the slightest earthquake. But they could have fallen on their own due to water or time.

You will not find such a developed state in all of Polynesia. And, as usual on earth, advanced civilizations are subject to persecution. This happened with mysterious island. Humanity decided to destroy the islanders. To take revenge on them for their high civilization. They have been destroyed for centuries. Let's turn to history. In 1862, pirates from Peru enslaved the entire male population. After some time, missionaries began to cynically destroy island paganism. Forbidden topics in the history of Easter Island have emerged.


They burned signs with signs. The island began to belong to Chile at the end of the 19th century. They created a penal colony here. Later they decided to organize farming there. As a result, all settlements were destroyed. There is only one city left in Hanga - Roa.
The Last Aboriginal Mutiny


At the beginning of the 20th century, the last Aboriginal rebellion was suppressed. The Chilean authorities ruthlessly dealt with the rebels. After this destruction there are no people who were eyewitnesses of the reliable history of the island. There are no masters who kept the secrets of their ancestors. Well, we use legends. One of them says that the idols could move on their own. How this happened remains a mystery. But what this was for in principle is not at all clear.

Ancient craftsmen carved “moai” from tuff. Afterwards they lowered the idols down and distributed them according to a certain plan. The weight of the idols reached up to 5 tons, and the height was on average 7 meters. The material from which they were made was called volcanic pumice. Today, only 150 Rapanui people live on the island. The rest of the population are Chileans and mestizos. In total there are three thousand people on the island.

Unsolved mysteries


Today's inhabitants are Polynesians. But no one knows for sure where the first settlers came from. Even famous scientists and travelers, trying to defend their next version, did so without evidence. Thus, the number of hypotheses was added, but knowledge of the history of the island remained in place. This island was once extremely densely populated. This may have caused civil strife on the island. The anger of the island's inhabitants was repaid on the idols, as a symbol of the enemy.


Another reason for the historical obscurity of the island is that to this day the writings of the inhabitants of Easter cannot be deciphered. The found tablets with inscriptions remain unread. Many tablets were burned by Christian missionaries, and those that remained turned out to be too tough for modern science.

Climbing the Rano Kau volcano, you can see a panorama of volcanic lakes. These lakes are surrounded by Orongo Cave. Swallows fly here every spring. On the island they are considered messengers of the gods. Currently, everything on the island has been preserved unchanged, as it was hundreds of years ago. So what happened on Easter Island? This answer awaits us ahead. In the meantime, the history of Easter Island is yet another mystery for humanity.

Easter Islandis one of the most remote inhabited islands in the world, and largely due to its isolation, Rapa Nui's history is unique. There are many scientific hypotheses and guesses regarding the time of settlement of Rapa Nui, the racial background of the local residents, the cause of the death of a unique civilization, whose representatives built huge stone sculptures (moai) and knew writing (rongorongo), which has not yet been deciphered by linguists. With the discovery of the island in 1722 by the Dutch traveler Jacob Roggeveen and the appearance of the first Catholic missionaries, fundamental changes took place in the life of the Rapanui people: the hierarchical relationships that existed in the past were forgotten, and the practice of cannibalism was stopped.

Time of settlement of Easter Island

Radiocarbon dating data obtained by scientists Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo from the University of California (USA) during the study of eight samples of charcoal from Anakena indicate that the island of Rapa Nui was inhabited around 1200 AD. BC, which is 400-800 years later than previously thought, and only 100 years before trees began to disappear on the island.

According to the legends of the ancient Rapanui people, collected by Sebastian Englert, Easter Island appeared thanks to the giant Uoke, who destroyed large country, comparable to Khiva (the Polynesian name for the Marquesas Islands). The first settlers of Rapa Nui were Ngata Wake and Te Ohiro. They landed on an island near the town of Te Rotomea and stopped at Wai Marama (name small lake near Mataveri). Woke began to destroy the island again, and to stop the giant, Te Ohiro cast a spell, after which Woke's staff broke and the island was saved.

Having sailed to Easter Island, the scouts landed at Hanga Tepa'u (Vinapu Beach), and then went to the Rano Kao volcano, where Ku'uku'u planted yams. They then began to walk around the island to find appropriate place, where the ariki of Hotu Matu'a could land. However, the Poike Peninsula and Hanga Hoonu Bay were not suitable for large canoes. In Hanga Hoonu Bay they noticed a large sea ​​turtle, which was actually the spirit that haunted them throughout their journey. The scouts decided to go after the turtle. So they reached Hiro Moko (part of Anakena Bay), where the travelers decided to raise the turtle.

However, the travelers did not have time to sail away: after a two-month voyage, Hotu Matu’a Ariki had already approached three islands near Easter Island near the Rano Kao volcano in two canoes. Near the island of Motu Nui, Ira and Raparenga explained to the leader that the island was unsuitable for life, but Ariki still decided to land on it. Then the scouts told how to swim to Anakena Bay, which they found convenient for landing. Two canoes sailed to different directions to explore the entire island: Hotu Matu'a sailed from the east, and Tuu Ko Iho and his wife Ariki sailed along the western shore of Rapa Nui. During the voyage, Ava Reipua gave birth to a son, who was named Tu'u Maheke. The king landed at Hiro-Moko, and the queen at Hanga-Hiro. Soon houses were built on the shore of Anakena Bay where the settlers lived.

Theory of American settlement of the island

In his works on Easter Island, the Norwegian traveler Thor Heyerdahl put forward a hypothesis according to which the islands of Polynesia were inhabited by American Indians. In his opinion, population migration occurred in two stages. The islands of Polynesia were originally settled in the mid-1st millennium AD. e. immigrants from Peru who had fair skin, aquiline noses, and thick beards. They contributed to the spread of the megalithic type of civilization in the Pacific Ocean, the most striking example of which was the Rapanui civilization.

Having explored Easter Island, Heyerdahl supported his hypothesis with several arguments. First, he argued that the technique used to build the Rapa Nui ahu and moai was similar to that of similar structures in the Andes. He found the greatest similarity between the ahu Vinapu on Rapa Nui and several buildings in Cusco that date back to the pre-Inca period. However, there are clear differences between them: the structures in Cusco were built from solid polished stone, while on Easter Island the ahu were built by covering rough stonework with small stone slabs.

Secondly, while studying the Rapa Nui writing, Heyerdahl discovered the similarity of the graphic representation of signs in Rapa Nui with the writing of the Kuna Indian tribe, but at the same time doubted the direct connection between these two languages. In his opinion, writing on Easter Island appeared in the 5th century along with the Peruvian leader Hotu Matu'a, with whom the first settlers of Rapa Nui arrived.

Thirdly, the Rapanui people built single and double canoes similar to the Peruvian ones, wore feather headdresses like the South American Indians, and deformed the earlobe by placing large jewelry in it.

Theory of Melanesian settlement of the island

The legend of the short-eared and long-eared would not have aroused such great interest among scientists of the 20th century if the point of view about the racial difference between the Rapanui and Polynesians and the similarity of the inhabitants of Easter Island with the Melanesians had not been widespread among them. This hypothesis, widely debated in scientific circles in the mid-20th century, was put forward by the scientist José Imbelloni. However, there were also many opponents; for example, this hypothesis was not supported by the anthropologist Harry Shapiro, who devoted a lot of time to studying the structure of the skulls of the ancient Rapanui people and defended the point of view of the Polynesian origin of the inhabitants of Easter Island. British anthropologist Henry Balfour identified several features that were similar between the Rapa Nui and Melanesian cultures. Firstly, similar obsidian points that were used by the ancient Rapanui people were found on the island New Guinea. Secondly, the Rapa Nui figurines have the same aquiline nose as the Papuan ones. Third, ear deformity was also widespread among Melanesian peoples. Fourthly, the cult of “bird people” was widespread not only on Easter Island, but also on the Solomon Islands.

No South American traces were found in the genes of the ancient inhabitants of Easter Island.

Moai are the name given to the monolithic stone statues for which Easter Island is primarily known. (Photo: Terry Hunt)

Who doesn’t know the stone statues from Easter Island - giant nosed sculptures made from compressed volcanic ash? According to local beliefs, they contain the supernatural power of the ancestors of the first king of Easter Island. There are about 900 known statues; They are believed to have been built between 1250 and 1500 AD. e.

But who were these people who created the statues, and how did they populate the island? The nearest continental coast (Chile) is about 3.5 thousand km, the nearest inhabited island is more than 2 thousand km. Thanks to Thor Heyerdahl, we know that you can sail across the ocean between Polynesia and America on a homemade raft. It is likely that populations from Polynesia and America could have mixed on Easter Island at one time, and Polynesian travelers could have populated America. “But probability is not proof,” says Lars Fehren-Schmitz ( Lars Fehren-Schmitz), professor of anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

 

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