Project Thirteen- Easter Island

EASTER ISLAND

Hi, my project is on the Easter Island. Easter Island has 887 statues called Moai, they are believed by the Rapa Nui people that they protect the island and they are gods. And they range from 7-33 feet tall. It is said that they were created by the early Rapa Nui people, The Rapa Nui are the native Polynesian inhabitants of Easter Island who moved to Easter Island 400-700 CE, the Rapa Nui people currently make up 60% of Easter Island's population. Deforestation led to the human population of Easter Island start dying out. By the time of the arrival of the European people in 1722 the islands population had dropped down to 2000-3000 from approximately 15,000. A century earlier diseases brought by European voyagers and Peruvian slave raiding brought the population to 111 in 1877.

FACTS:

1- Easter island is a world heritage site.

2- The largest Easter Island statue is 86 tons

3- It has recently been discovered that the Easter heads also have bodies buried in the ground

4- Easter Island is the most popular, yet least visited archaeological site.

5-Easter Island has three volcanoes, the tallest rising 1674 feet. It is called Terevaka.

6- The island has barely any trees.

7- A small number of the moai has hats or crowns on top of their heads made of red volcanic rock.

8- They are built of hard volcanic rock.

9- Easter island was discovered in 1722 by European people on Easter day. That is why it is called Easter Island.

10- Archaeologists’ found ruins hundreds of houses, and archaeologists’ also discover that the early Rapa Nui people fished and farmed.

11- The nearest inhabited place to Easter Island is and island called Pitcairn Island 2,075 Kilometers away

12- The Rapa Nui people came from Polynesia not Chile.

Some Large Easter Island Statues, Or Moai. (Above)

Where Easter Island Is. (Above)

Easter Island Flag. (Above)

Easter Island Crowns

THE DOWNFALL OF EASTER ISLAND
Sometime in the history of Easter Island some of the statues were pulled down. This broke the statues and the platforms which the heads were on were also razed. Also the quarry where the statues were built was abandoned around the 1600’s. It seemed for some strange reason the people of Easter Island had turned against their gods. Scientists’ tried to find out about what happened by asking local Rapa Nui tribe people but all they got were legends of terror hardship and even cannibalism. But nobody could tell them what actually happened. While searching for answers they found something that they hadn’t before, spear tips. The spear tips were made the same time as the quarry was abandoned. For some reason the Easter Islanders were making weapons. Then Scientist’s found what the weapons were being used for. Doug Owsley studied 600 of the Easter islanders’ skeleton from the same period, He found signs on all of them that they died from injuries. Lots of the skulls were caved in fractured or broken in some other way. He realized that he was looking at evidence that the Islander were at war with themselves. But a mystery remained… Why? It was Dave Stetlin who found the first clue. He is an expert on the Islanders diet. By studying the bones of the Islanders meals’ he found that the islanders’ it seems that when the Easter Islander first arrived the Island was the biggest bird home in the world. And that meant the Rapa Nui people had a large amount of food to eat. Around the 1600’s when the quarry was abandoned, all those birds had disappeared. Almost all of the 30 bird species Dave Stetlin had identified that the Islanders were eating were gone. And the same story went with fish once the diet of the islanders’ were full of tuna maceral and even porpoises, but they too vanished. The Islanders’ were starved. Wood carvings’ showed starved people with their ribs showing. Any little incident like people stealing others food because they were hungry led to revenge, which let to war. Cannibalism grew to be a necessity. It looks as if the outbreak of war was caused by starvation. But now there is a new mystery how had an Island so full of food become a place so short of food. At first Scientists thought that it might just be the result of over population of humans. But then they found beneath a lake in the island mixed up in mud palm tree pollen. They realized that once the Island was completely covered in palm trees’. The reason the island full of trees changed into an island with barely any trees? The reason was because the statues themselves. Imagine every time you move a statue you cut down trees to make a path and you cut down more trees to make wooden beams to slide the moai statues on. Also scientist realized that the newer the statue the more detailed it was and also the statues got larger. It seemed that the separate tribes of Easter Island were competing against each other. Hundreds of statues were made and then meant thousands of trees were cut down. And eventually all the trees of Easter Island were cut down. Without trees to protect the soil from rain all soil were the farms were was washed away. There was no more wood for canoes so that meant no more fish. But that also meant no leaving the island. And with no trees the birds left. Although the document of a European sailor said that when they came to Easter Island in 1722 they saw potato fields, and sugar cane growing out of the ground. And the people looked healthy. So that means by the time the Dutch appeared the crisis was over. But if the islanders survived that, what caused the population to die out? After the discovery of Easter Island more and more ships sailed to Easter Island, not only bringing fear but diseases. A disease called Syphilis killed off most of the population. In 1862 slavers from Peru kidnaped one and a half thousand about 1/3 of the population. All most all of the kidnapped people died within a year. The ones who lived returned to Easter Island only 15 of them survived, but when they came back they brought another disease called small pox. And in 1877 the population was at 111. The Islanders called it the great death. And by this time records say that the island was littered with human bones where ever you looked.

HOW THE EARLY RAPA NUI PEOPLE MOVED THE STATUE FROM ONE PLACE TO ANOTHER

In the early 1980s, researchers tried to recreate some of the statues and move them using only tools that the people in the island had to their disposal. They found this almost impossible to do. Then in 1987, an archaeologist named Charles Love managed to move a ten ton replica. He put it on a makeshift vehicle consisting of two sledges, and he and 25 men rolled the statue 150 feet in just two minutes.

Ten years after this discovery a Norwegian explorer recreated another moai statue, and tied one rope to its head and another around its base, with the help of 16 other people they rocked the statue from one side to another, moving it forwards. But they had to stop early because this was damaging the statue.

HOW THE STATUES WERE CARVED

One of the biggest mysteries of Easter Island was how the statues were carved. The answer was found in Rano Raraku. A large crater used as a stone quarry were the statues were carved from about 500 years until around the 1600’s. There are more than 300 statues left in their left in many different stages of carving. And there are hundreds of rectangular shaped holes in the cliffs where the statues were removed. The Rapa Nui people only had stone chisels and other stone tools, carving the statues must have taken years. But this was the easy part, next they had to be moved from the quarry to somewhere else.

                                             Rano Raraku, The Quarry For Moai

THE STATUES EYES

Local Easter Islander Sergio Rapu discovered that that the Easter heads also used to have eyes. One day he found bits of coral and when he put them together it shaped an oval with a small hole in it. Nobody knew what it was for a long time but then Sergio realized that the coral oval fit the eyes of an Easter Head.

                                                                    The Coral Eyes