Island of Mystery

Posted on 19. Feb, 2009 by Kerry Banks in International

On Easter Day in 1722, a Dutch expedition under the command of Jacob Roggeveen sighted a low, flat Pacific Island, found it inhabited and went ashore. The sailors were amazed by the statues they found there, hundreds of huge heads made from volcanic stone. The equally amazed islanders brought the Dutch sailors bananas and chickens. But the visitors’ stay was short. The Dutch quickly departed after a nervous landing party “accidentally” killed 10 islanders. If historians are correct, this was the first contact the islanders had had with the outside world in 1,400 years, a theory based on geography. Easter Island is the most isolated inhabited island on Earth. It lies midway between Tahiti and Chile, 4,050 kilometres from the former and 3,700 kilometres from the latter. Pitcairn Island, 1,900 kilometres to the west, the last refuge of Fletcher Christian and the mutineers from the HMS Bounty, is the nearest inhabited land.

Yet, despite its isolation and tiny size (22 kilometres long and 11 kilometres wide) Easter Island was the site of one of the most remarkable cultures in all of Polynesia. The people here had their own system of writing called Rongorongo, different from any other in the world, and so far undecipherable. No other Pacific Islanders knew how to write. It’s just one of the many mysteries that surround this remote isle. Where had the inhabitants originally come from? Why and how had they built the stone figures? Modern science is piecing together the story, but it is too late for the Easter Islanders themselves. They were virtually wiped out by a series of disasters–natural and man-made–that reduced a population of 12,000 down to just 111 in a few centuries.

The tragic story of the collapse of the culture of Easter Island is the focus of a thought-provoking piece by journalist Daniel Wood in the latest issue of Westworld magazine. Wood sat down with me to answer a few questions about his article.

How many stone statues are there on Easter Island? How large are they? Do they face the sea or do they look inward?

There are over 900 stone statues, most of them either fallen or still lying in quarries, unexcavated. About 100 of these moais are standing, having been raised in the past century by archaeologists. The majority are around three to six metres high; the bigger ones get to 10 metres or more, and, in one case, 20 metres. Most face inland since they served to protect the now empty village sites.

What sort of questions are the archaeologists who are working on Easter Island today trying to answer?

The place is one of the great archaeological mysteries on earth. Researchers now know the origins of the Easter Islanders—they came across the Pacific from Polynesia some 1,500 years ago, but the language of Rapa Nui, as the locals call it, the religion of the people, the purpose of the statues, and the culture’s link to the civilizations of western South America are all unresolved.

There was once great debate among historians about where the inhabitants of Easter Island came from. Why was Thor Heyerdahl so convinced that the island was settled by people from a pre-Incan society in Peru?

The prevailing view 50 years ago was that the original peoples of the Americas were Neolithic travellers who crossed the Bering Strait 12,000-plus years ago. But it was Heyerdahl’s contention that early people utilized boats and rafts to cross westward from the Americas to populate the islands of the Pacific. Thus, the famous Kon-Tiki expedition from Peru to Polynesia in 1947. Archaeologists later proved that Heyerdahl was wrong: the migration was from the west to the east.

Do we know what sort of sailing craft the original settlers used to make the long voyage to Easter Island from Polynesia?

The best guess is large outrigger canoes, not so different from those that the people of Polynesia used until a few generations ago. If you think about the dimensions of the big Haida whaling canoes, you can get an idea of the size. It’s now known that the Polynesians regularly sailed throughout the Pacific a millennia ago. We have come in recent years to gain a new appreciation of the capabilities of so-called “primitive” peoples. They knew 1,000 years ago about the ocean currents and the winds and celestial navigation.

Are there any descendants of the original inhabitants still living on Easter Island and what do they look like?

Yes. From the original surviving 111 of 1,900, people have bred with the 20th century newcomers so that intermarriage has diluted the gene pool of the natives. But the people with strong Polynesian ancestry are quite distinctive–tall, barrel-chested, dark-skinned–much like the Maoris of New Zealand.

Do these people have a strong sense of their own history or have they been totally assimilated by the Chileans?

No, the Rapa Nuians have a strong sense of self and have lobbied the Chileans for a fair amount of cultural protection. They have their own local government with some autonomy, as well as schools in the Rapa Nuian language, and they try to limit the excesses of tourism imported from outside by hotel developers and marketers.

The Galapagos Islands off the coast of Ecuador are famous for their unique forms of animal life. Are there any interesting ecological oddities on Easter Island?

No. Because of Easter Island’s distance from anywhere, it never received the drifting creatures—like iguanas or turtles—that got washed up and bred on many of the Galapagos Islands.

What does the island’s capital, Hanga Roa, look like? Is there any industry there?

“Hanga Roa,” one older tourist said to me, “looks like Hawaii did in the 1940s.” The highest building is two storeys, and most are one-storey, tin-roofed bungalows. The word “quaint” applies. There is no industry, just tourism. Local people farm small garden plots, cowboys herd cattle and horses, fishermen use small inshore boats.

Do you think that the Easter Island inhabitants’ isolation from the outside world was a contributing factor to the downfall of their culture?

Good question. The cause of the civil wars that ended in the society’s demise was, according to legend, the environmental collapse of the mid-16th century. The people could not escape—they had cut down every tree–so they turned on each other–finally cannibalizing their neighbours. So, yes, the isolation contributed to their tragic story because they couldn’t trade goods to reprovision themselves, or build boats to escape the chaos.

Photo Credits:

#1: philipcoppens.com

#2: msnbc.msn.com

#3: flickr.com

Tags: Easter Island, Sustainability, Westworld writers