Travelling not soliciting: May 2012

Easter Island --or Rapa Nui as the locals would prefer--is a long long way from anywhere---4000 kms from Chile (of which it is part) and 4000 km from Tahiti. It forms the bottom right corner of the imaginary triangle that encloses the Polynesian islands, the other points being Hawaii and New Zealand.

Easter Island is itself a rough isosceles triangle with sides of about 24 x 17 x17 kms. It has a large volcano at each corner of the triangle and many small secondary volcanoes scattered around the island. The island is relatively new, as these things go. The first volcano to erupt on one of the corners was three and half million million years ago, the second on another corner, two and a half million years ago, and the volcano on the third corner a mere 250,000 years ago. The lava flows from each of the three volcanoes and some of the smaller ones joined together to form the island as it is today.

So the defining feature of the island, as you can imagine, is lava in all its forms. The shoreline is rugged and black and there are caves which run from inland all the way down to the sea, formed by lava tubes (ie where the lava flowed through but the residue of the flow was soft and became eroded leaving a "tube" surrounded by harder lava.) That said, the island is remarkably flat --almost a platform in the middle of the ocean. The tallest volcano, Teravaka, is only 506 meters and the other two are about 300 and 370. In the middle of the island there are fields with cows and horses and some fruit farming--the pastoral aspect of Easter Island really surprised me.There used to be plenty of trees (see below).

Another thing that surprised me is that there were no indigenous animals on the island with the exception of two types of lizard and the migratory terns and frigate birds. The original islanders brought chickens (why???). Even the sea is rather barren here, not teeming with fish. The masses of phytoplankton which are the bottom of the marine food chain, are scarce and so there are no shellfish or sea weeds and the fish that passed the island which the islanders caught were on their way to somewhere else.

The temperature on Easter Island is in the mid-20 degrees centigrade all year. It has one town, which is quite pleasant with lovely flowering trees and shrubs and simple but charming small houses. It does not seem to suffer from the unfriendly malaise of Caribbean towns. There is a plague of wild horses---some 6000 which serve not particular purpose nwo that there are roads and cars and they are ruining the ecology and the archaeological sites.

One of the volcanoes, Rana Kau (the one in the south west--the bottom left hand corner), really blew its top leaving a huge crater, Orongo, which is filled with fresh (rain) water and supports reeds and some small fish and fruit trees around the edge of the water which is 100 meters below the rim. (There are no natural springs or rivers on the island, but because the lava is porous it absorbs rain water to provide a relatively abundant source to support the island.) One of the secondary volcanoes, Rana Raraku, also has a lovely fresh water crater surrounded by coral trees (so named because of their orange flowers). It is also referred to as the "quarry" since it is from Rana Raraku that the Easter Islanders got the tufa from which they carved their "moai" statues.

There are few definitive answers to where the Easter Islanders came from or why they built these moai or why they knocked down their own statues (that much is certain--it was the islanders themselves, not bad-guy Europeans), or why there are no trees anymore. But there is a general concensus on certain things.

The original islanders arrived in outrigger canoes about 800 AD from the Marquesa islands under their king Hotu Matua. One theory is that they abandoned their original home on an atol in the Marquesas because they were being swamped by a rising sea. There were not very many of them to begin with but they multiplied rapidly in the benign climate and conditions on Easter Island with no enemies from outside the island (the first Europeans to sight the island were not until 1722 and then not again until the 1780s).

So well did they prosper that there was a real overpopulation problem by the 1600s. By way of illustration, there are currently about 5000 permanent residents on the island, about 3500 with Rapa Nui blood (almost none "pure") and the rest expats involved in the tourism industry of Chilean goverment business. There are about 40,000 visitors each year. Although fruits and vegetables are grown and there is cattle ranching and fishing, most things are imported. In contrast, the estimate is that at the height of the population in the 1600s there were 20,000 Rapa Nui and of course they had to rely soley on the resources of the island. This many people would make the island overcrowded even today.

The sole occupation of the Rapa Nui islanders, aside from growing and finding food, was building the moai. It was nothing short of an obsession. Over 900 moai were built over the period of 500-800 years. They were key to a very fervent form of ancestor worship. Over the centuries the moai got bigger and more detailed but they did not differ in their essentials. With a few very late examples there was no attempt to give the statues identifying characterisitcs--they were powerful symbols, not likenesses. They were 99% male.

Although a few early ones were made of harder basalt, the islanders soon discovered that the softer tufa from the quarry was ideal for carving. The moai were carved on the spot in the quarry and then heaved upright and then "walked" to their site which was up to 20 km away. This probably explains the reason Easter Island was denuded of all its flourishing indigenous palms and other trees--it was not only to provide firewood for the growing population but they were cut down to be used as rollers to move these enormous--5 to 10 metre in some cases weighing many tons---statues. Once the statue had reached its destination the final touch was added --the coral eye with the obsidian pupil --and then the ancestor statue was "alive".

All the moai stood on "ahu"--platforms constructed of large boulders, some quite carefully shaped and carved reminiscent of some of the work of the Inca. The ahus provided the centre of religious ceremonies and burials. There are dozens if not hundreds of them in various states of repair dotting the coastline. The villages would then be built in front of the ahu on the landward side.

People at first assume that the statues will be facing the sea to protect the villages from invaders. But so many centuries of uninterrupted isolation had convinced the islanders that they were alone in the world and so they had no fear of the sea. No, the moai faced inland towards the villages of which they were the "ancestors". It was a form of intimidation by the chiefs of the villages---do you dare misbehave with your ancestor staring right at you?

So what happened? Here there are only theories. The overpopulation brought the inevitable warfare between tribes over the dwindling resources. It is also possible that in the islanders' limited contact with outsiders in the late 18th century--- one benign expedition left goats and sheep and seeds and other unheard of things for the islanders--- they saw that their ancestors had not in fact provided the best of everything for them. It may be that in the wars between the tribes the moai of the defeated tribe would be regarded as fair game for the winners to topple. It may also be that the warring chieftains got together and saw that the traditional method of crowd control and intimidation through the ancestor moai wasn't working any more.

Whatever the cause, during the later part of the 1700s and the first half of the 1800s the islanders toppled their moai and removed their eyes, the source of the statue's life, and crush them or throw them into the sea (ony one almost whole eye has ever been found). In a rather clever plan probably hatched by the tribe chiefs in some sort of peace council to stop the destructive wars, a new belief was devised, the cult of the Birdman. This was a competition each year in the spring.

Each tribe selected a champion athlete. The champions would race each other down the 300 meter cliff of the Orongo crater of volcano Rana Kau to the sea. They would then swim across to the small volcanic rocks off the coast (see photos) and scale the lava to await the arrival of the sooty tern which nested there. The first champion to seize a newly laid sooty tern egg and return across the sea and scale the 300 meter cliff was the winner and the chief of his tribe became the Birdman for that year. We know that this is not a myth since it was still going on in the 1860s when the first Catholic missionaries arrived. The documented in detail the whole competition before pronouncing it sacreligious and banning it. The islanders remain very religious, although apparently this is a mixture of Catholicism and the ancient spirit beliefs.

The late 1800s and the 1900s up to about 1975 were truly horrible for the islanders. All previous chaos had been self-inflicted but in the 1860s the outside world got well and truly involved in the destruction. The thousands of the islanders were kidnapped or tricked into signing up to work in Peru and Chile, some say in the mines, some say in agriculture. Whichever it was the results could have been predicted--they died in droves from European diseases and from overwork. Finally the bishop of Tahiti intervened and persuaded the Chilean government to return the islanders. Only 100 made it back and they brought the diseases with them thus virtually wiping out those who had remained behind.

Their tribulations next involved having their entire island confiscated in the 1870s by a Frenchman who proclaimed himself king and turned the whole island into a ranch. The islanders killed him off after about 7 years. After Chile proclaimed its sovereignity over the island in the 1880s, things did not improve. The entire island was leased to an English wool company who imported 60,000 sheep (you can imagine what that did to the fragile ecology of the island) and turned the island into a sheep farm and the islanders were confined to a fenced off area in what became the current town of Hanga Roa.

When this concession was finally ended in the 1950s, the Chilean navy took over and continued to restrict the islanders' movements.One of the guides told us that his uncles still remember being forbidden to go onto the beach. Things do now seem to be better for the islanders. They do not have any "home rule" but they can vote in Chilean elections and tourism has brought prosperity.

They are a very handsome people, but they have the dilemma of wanting to retain their identity but also being concerned not to restrict the gene pool which is very small since the devastation the population suffered in the last 150 years. you can see the potential problem on the streets---so many of the islanders look alike that I was often thinking that I saw one of our guides when in fact it was his or her cousin.

A note to readers

I hope you have enjoyed travelling with me since December. My posts will be more infrequent for the next few months since I am going to be at my summer place in Canada (it is beautiful there so I will post some pictures) and then in the UK for my son's wedding and for the Olympics.

I will get back on the road in October and will be returning to Central and South America. Early in 2013 I will be going back to Antarctica, this time from New Zealand or Tasmania. Then I hope to visit Papua and New Guinea, see Angkor Wat, and see more of Australia and New Zealand.

So keep tuning in.

Lynn

me with the moai known as "big nose". He never made it to his ahu(see blog) and is still one of many in the quarry (see blog). Perhaps because they didn't like his big ski-jump nose.

This is one of the big sights--The Fifteen, on their ahu with their back to the sea. Note the topknot on the one second from the right. These were a feature of the later moai and is supposed to represent their hair which they wore in a bun on the top of their heads.

This old boy is one of the earlier moai but my favourite

These are some of the later moai. Note the finer carving and the elaborate topknots which were a separate piece, carved of a red tufa found in a different quarry.

me with the bearded kneeling moai--a very late and not very good one, which was probably done at the time the whole ancestor cult was breaking down

This is the only moai with eyes (restored). They all had eyes (see blog) but since the eyes were what made them "alive" this is what was destroyed first when the islanders lost their faith.

the previous moai at sunset

another ahu of moai silhouetted against the sunset

This giant was never finished and it remains embedded in the quarry.

moai in various stages of completion at the quarry

These are sunk many feet into the ground. They have never left the quarry for whatever reason--maybe because they had a defect or didn't please the chief or were carved late and after the fervent obsession was fading an no one could be bothered to make the effort to move them across country to their ahu.

These were sunken garden enclosures for growing vegetables. The walls protected the crop from the elements and the porous tufa held the rainwater thus ensuring a constant supply of water to the plants.

Back view of a some moai by the beach. These are finely carved and have their topknots (see blog). But note the recycled older moai to the right which has been used as a building block for the ahu.

A petroglyph of two lizards.---lizards were the only indigenous animals on Easter Island

a fallen topknot (see blog). The red stone for the topknots came from a different quarry and were a late development. This one has been very finely carved.

another petroglyph of a sea turtle

This is The Fifteen again. Note their very fine location in a cove with their back to the sea (see blog). The flat land in front of them would have housed a substantial village

Believe it or not this is a female Moai.There are only one or two female moai

this panorama shows the secondary volcanoes that dot parts of the island

The jagged black lava coastline, dotted with caves and tunnels (see blog)

This gives a good idea of the landscape

one of the lava tube caves (see blog)

a lava tube tunnel

cows roam freely over the archaelogical sites, causing a lot of damag

---as do the 6000 wild horses

the lava islands off the coast which were where the Birdman champions needed to swim to to collect the first sooty tern egg in the spring. This photo is taken from the top of the cliff which they had to climb down and back up again. I was on a boat just like the one you can see in the middle of the picture---the sea is very rough with 40 or 50 foot swells.

ditto

This gives you an idea of what faced the Birdman champions in their swim

ditto

the pretty water-filled crater of one of the volcanoes

this is the largest crater, Oronogo, from which the Birdman competition commenced. The water is about 100 meters down below the crater rim and the rim itself is about 300 meters above the sea below