In a pretty isolated part of the world there are some fascinating islands to explore

What happened to Easter Island’s indigenous population? And what are those massive statues all about?

The native inhabitants

In the middle of the Pacific Ocean sits a small Polynesian Island that the world knows as Easter Island.

The island is pretty isolated sitting over 3500 km off the coast of Chile. Although it’s not all too big measuring just 23 km long and 11 km wide.

To most people a place this remote is filled with mystery. Here’s what French artist Pierre Loti wrote back in the 19th century:

There exists in the midst of the great ocean, in a region where nobody goes, a mysterious and isolated island.

To the native inhabitants, the island is known as Rapa Nui, or ‘the Great Rapa’. Today, the descendants of these great seafarers, refer to themselves and the island as RapaNui, so it seems it’s quite an inclusive term.

Those that call the island home are a mixed bunch, but most are of Polynesian descent. Traditionally, the islanders divide themselves into two ethnic groups, as being descendants of the ‘Long-Ears’ or the ‘Short-Ears’, it’s all very scientific.

These days almost the entire population live in the one village, that being Hanga Roa, which can be found on the west coast.

Despite descendants clearly surviving to the modern day, much has been lost to time. And it’s really not clear when people first arrived on the island. Although carbon dating does give us a rough range from 800 to 1200 AD.

Thanks to archaeological excavations, The First International Science Congress agreed to define Easter Island as the site of a pre-European civilisation in 1984. It’s these excavations that revealed that the early settlers to arrive on Easter Island came with architectural concepts and specialised masonry techniques, meaning that they came from an already established civilisation. Which, you could say, means that the first people to settle on Easter Island did so as part of a party of immigrants, and not some people lost at sea who happened to come across this fancy life-saving island in middle of the ocean.

Over the years the group that settled would grow into several thousand, and then naturally they started having their own problems. It seems there was only so much island to go around.

European contact

Eventually, the giant palm trees that had provided food and shelter for the early Rapanui had dwindled, most likely thanks to overuse. And because there were no trees, the nutrient-rich soil started to erode, meaning there wasn’t much wood, or food, going around. And so the people calling Easter Island home at the time had to turn to grass.

You have to be pretty desperate to take to burning grass.

That’s a quote from John Flenley, who co-authored a book called The Engimas of Easter Island. And he’s right. It must be a pretty desperate situation where you’ve burnt all the wood on the tiny island that the only way to get any kind of fire going is to burn grass.

And things didn’t really get better. By the time the first Europeans arrived at the Island, this would be the Dutch who turned up on Easter Day in 1722, spending only one day exploring they weren’t very creative when giving the Island it’s European name, they noted the island as being pretty much barren. The Dutch also found a population that appeared to worship massive statues, and some had slit earlobes that hung low, an oddly non-Polynesian custom.

Jared Diamond in his book Collapse, wrote that Easter Island was:

…the clearest example of a society that destroyed itself by overexploiting its own resources.

Which if we’re being honest, is probably an apt lesson to learn for modern people, since we are living and, by happenstance, overexploiting our own resources.

A couple decades later an expedition out of Peru re-found Easter Island in 1770. Having spent about 4 days on the Island, the population seemed to be fairing a bit better with an estimated number of 3000.

But just a couple years later, civil war appears to have ravaged the island by the time Captain James Cook arrives in 1774. By this time, the population is struggling with only 600-700 men and around 30 women. The English explorer also found that the large statues were no longer being honoured, with most having been overthrown.

It really is crazy how much can change in just a couple years.

The next century saw the population rise and fall quite dramatically. In 1786, the French found about 2000 people living on the island, then in 1860, despite the population having grown to 3000 there was a pretty big slave raid from Peru, and then of course smallpox did its thing, and by 1877 the population was down to 111.

But then as we near the end of the 19th century, the Easter Island population starts to bounce back again. A French Catholic missionary settled on the island in 1864, and Christianity started to spread. Then you have settlers arrive with some sheep in 1870, and in 1888 Chile annexes the island, which means that by the time we get to 1963, all islanders are full Chilean citizens.

Where did everyone go?

The one question that seems to get historians and archaeologists stuck when it comes to Easter Island, is where did everyone go?

Something clearly happened between the Peruvians having a look around and James Cook stopping in for a cuppa. And naturally, there are a couple of theories.

The general theory is that at some point the island’s resources were overtaxed. That seems pretty simple. They simply cut down too many trees.

Cristián Arévalo Pakarati, an artist who’s worked with archaeologists that have come to study the island tells us just how bad this could have been:

Without trees you’ve got no canoes. Without canoes you’ve got no fish…

That’s pretty straightforward. Pakarati also reckons that it was when the population ran out of resources that a full blown civil war broke out, they abandoned their massive idols and just started killing each other.

We already know that the population was made up of two distinct cultures, the Long-Ears and the Short-Ears. And tradition says that it’s between these two groups that war raged. The Short-Ears, tired of being treated like the servants of the Long-Ears, decided to become their own masters, and that meant removing the Long-Ears from power and from life. It was probably also around this time that the stone statues that were once worshipped were also overthrown.

Now while that is the standard surface level story that’s told, some think there was another cause.

Back in 2000 an archaeological team led by Terry Hunt excavated what they believed to be one of the earliest settlement sites at Anakena on the northern side of the island. Hunt sent samples from the site off for radiocarbon dating. Thanks to other archaeological finds in the area, Hunt fully expected the results to date to around 800 AD, which is when people were first believed to have arrived and settled on the island. But Hunt’s sample returned a date of around 1200 AD, meaning that the people who called themselves Rapanui arrived much later than first thought.

Hunt, believing his dating to be correct and those of other archaeologists to be wrong, realised that the deforestation of the island must have occurred a whole lot faster than originally thought, meaning that the devastation wrought on the island’s environment by human hands was pretty fast.

But Hunt clearly has a soft spot for his fellow humans, because he didn’t think that humans alone could destroy the forests on the island. Throughout his dig he found a fair few rat bones and came to the conclusion that the rats must have helped the humans along.

After hitching a sneaky ride on the boat, the Polynesian rat found unlimited delicious food thanks to the palm trees. Here’s how Hunt says it happened:

Rats would have an initial impact, eating all of the seeds. With no new regeneration, as the trees die, deforestation can proceed slowly.

So the rats eating habits coupled with the people’s penchant for cutting down and burning trees would not have been Captain Planet’s idea of teamwork. In the end both helped the downfall of the other.

This hypothesis is not really a popular one among other Easter Island historians and scientists.

One such pollen analyst out of New Zealand, John Flenley, accepts that rats were in abundance on the island, but doesn’t think they would have helped with the deforestation. Thanks to core samples featuring charcoal Flenley reckons:

Certainly there was burning going on. Sometimes there was a lot of charcoal. I’m inclined to think that the people burning the vegetation was more destructive [than the rats].

Interestingly, Flenley also found that the samples showed an abundance of pollen, until about 800 AD when the pollen number dramatically dropped off, suggesting less trees able to produce that tasty pollen. Which would concur with other radiocarbon dates suggesting early human occupation.

And then off course you can’t forget the absolutely mind-boggling, devasting effects of Western diseases. Here’s Flenley again:

I think that the collapse happened shortly before European discovery of the island. But it could be that the collapse was more of a general affair than we think, and the Europeans had an effect on finishing it off.

And then of course there’s the research of Jo Anne Van Tilburg, the founder of the Easter Island Statue Project, who just so happens to be one of the island’s leading archaeologists on the moai, which are those massive statues you probably associate the most with Easter Island.

She reckons there’s no way that people were building megalithic structures so soon to arriving on the island. That kind of building would have taken time. Here’s her two cents:

By 1200 AD, they were certainly building platforms, and others have described crop intensification at about the same time. It’s hard for me to be convinced that [Hunt’s] series of excavations can overturn all of this information.

Seems like quite the discussion takes place at the good old Easter Island pub.

Regardless of what happened all those centuries ago, it’s almost certain that a population that was able to get as big as 20 000 within a few years down to just a few thousand at best by the time the Europeans reached them in the 1700s. And then it just would have been a slow decline from there with disease, slave raids and other political and social issues until the Rapanui people were all but gone.

By 1877, there are reports that only about 110 natives were left on the island, and these days you’re only native by a distant blood relation. But the archaeological evidence is absolutely fascinating.

The Moai

For most people the one thing they associate with Easter Island are the massive statue heads, also known as the Moai. But even after all these centuries, it’s still slightly up for debate as to why these massive statues were even around. Here’s Pierre Loti again:

The island is planted with monstrous great statues…its great remains an enigma

Very little remains of the oral history of the original islanders, so the reasoning behind the Moai is fairly uncertain, although it is thought they were created in order to honour the ancestral chiefs, who, through these statues, would protect the community from harm.

And there certainly are a few of them, there’s almost 1000 statues throughout the island, with some just short of 10 metres tall, and they are heavy, you’re certainly not going to be lifting and moving this around on your own.

And that in itself is the real mystery. There are some who think that the population residing on the island were just too primitive and isolated to have come up with the stonemasonry and engineering to achieve such a feat as can be seen in the presence of the Moai.

James Cook even had his own opinion in 1774:

We could hardly conceive how these islanders, wholly unacquainted with any mechanical power, could raise such stupendous figures.

Classic British explorer thinking everyone but themselves are unevolved.

But we’ll return to moving the massive statues in just a moment. First let’s discover what we can about their appearance.

The statues are of course naturally gigantic, but through several excavations there appears to be three distinct cultural periods each with a slightly different moai design.

Statues dating to the early period are easily identified thanks to their ahu, or stone platform, these guys are fairly blocky, not a whole lot of curves, and interestingly have a fair few characteristic features that are quite similar to pre-Inca monuments as can be seen in Tiwanaku over in Bolivia.

The middle period, shows us more and more sturdy ahus to go along with taller and heavier Moai, and it’s probably the middle period statues that you think of when you think of Easter Island statues.

Quite interesting was that these statues also featured a pukao, described as a ‘topknot’ that sat atop the statue. Easily identified as these were carved out of a different type of rock, a ‘tuff’ rock, which gave them a red hue.

Generally these guys are about 4 to 6 metres tall, but there are one or two at 10 metres, all from a single block of stone, and of course with its pukao proudly balancing on top.

What’s truly fascinating is that back in the quarry where they carved the statues, there are even bigger unfinished statues. There’s one that’s half buried, but measures about 11 metres, and then there’s another at 21 metres tall that still has its back attached to the quarry wall. Now that’s impressive.

Now this quarry I’m talking about is actually a volcano’s crater, what’s left of Rano Raraku is where you can find numerous unfinished statues all seemingly just left as though the sculptor was suddenly interrupted.

It seems that the main body shape was carved out straight from the crater, with the eye cavities and topknots added only after the statue was erected atop its ahu.

It was back in 1978 that archaeologists and historians decided that the cavities for the eyes would have been inlaid with white coral and a dark stone disk in the centre for the pupil. And then it was only in 2009 that British archaeologists found that the topknots were made in a separate quarry hidden within another ancient volcano, this time Puna Pau.

While the early period statues had similarities with artwork in ancient South America, these middle period statues have no likeness anywhere around the world, they are entirely unique to Easter Island and the Rapa Nui.

Now the late period is where things start getting dicey. Almost all of these statues were overthrown and left unfinished, as it’s thought the population descended into a full-blown civil war, remember the Long-Ears and the Short-Ears?

Here’s Pakarati to give a bit more information:

It’s hard to imagine how the carvers must have felt when they were told to stop working. They’d been carving these statues here for centuries, until one day the boss shows up and tells them to quit, to go home, because there’s no more food, there’s a war and nobody believes in the statue system anymore!

Woah, it must have been quite the shift in the social moray that they all just downed their tools and started fighting.

Let’s now have a closer look at how these people, islanders who didn’t have anywhere near the kind of technology we do now, where able to move massive, enormous stone statues to wherever on the island they choose.  

Here’s Pakarati again:

These people had absolute control over the stone. They could move stones from [the volcano quarry] to Tahai, which is 15km away, without breaking the nose, the lips, the fingers or anything.

You have to admit, that is pretty impressive.

But just how did they do it? That is yet another thing being hotly debated.

There’s a Rapa Nui legends that says the Moai ‘walked’ across the island to their chosen spot. And by using this legend, archaeologists have proposed several methods that involve log rollers, sledges and ropes.

In fact in 1955 and ’56, 12 islanders were able to re-enact how they thought it all happened. Over 18 days, with only two wooden logs as their tools, they were able to lift a 23 000 kg statue 3 metres off the ground and tilt it onto an ahu. They believed that stones of all shapes and sizes would be wedged under the statue one at a time to slowly raise it so that it could be easily moved onto its platform.

Now when it came to ‘walking’ the statue, that actually took 180 islanders to pull what was a medium sized statue. But when the experiment was tried again in 1986, they ended up only needing 15 people to move a medium sized statue by pulling one side then the other, essentially waddling the monument across the ground.

Just imagine one of the larger statues going through this process, now that would have been an amazing sight to see.

Visiting the Island today

Easter Island is far from abandoned these days. There’s about 2000 native people, descendants of the Rapa Nui, who still live on the island, with about just as many Chileans who call the islands only village, Hanga Roa, home.

While in the past the modern Easter Island economy has centred around sheep, these days it’s tourism that supports most of the locals. From indigenous artistic traditions, to the cultivation of sweet potato, chickens and coastal fishing, tourism is what helps people pay the bills.

Despite only being added to the UNESCO’s World Heritage list in 1995, the island has been welcoming tourists since the 1960s. There are even a few hotels that have been built to accommodate the visitors.

And the Chilean government does what it can to keep Easter Island on the map, there are flights twice a week to and from Santiago, guided tours are organised and reforestation projects have been initiated.

If you wish to visit Easter Island for yourself and see just how enormous those Moai really are, then you can visit the island all year round, although January to March (the summer months) are peak season. Spanish is generally the language you’ll hear spoken, as it is in Chile, and you can hire a motorcycle or mountain bike to get around to all the classic tourist spots.

And it’s important to say that the island isn’t just for its cultural history, it is an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean after all, so there’s all the classics like diving, surfing and relaxing on beaches to enjoy as well.

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