Rapa Nui (Pre-European Contact)
(300 to 1722)
What happened?
The Rapa Nui are the native Polynesian people of Easter Island. Local oral traditions claimed that a Polynesian chief Hotu Matu'a arrived on the island in 1 or 2 large canoes with his wife and extended family. This is an unclear legend.
The island appears around 300-400 AD to be inhabited. Some claim that the island was inhabited not until 700-800 AD. Another study that included radiocarbon dating of what is very early material hypothesizes that the island was not inhabited until 1200. A study of deforestation on the island would support this as fossil evidence.
TheAustronesian Polynesians probably arrived from the west of the Marquesas Islands. The settlers brought with them bananas, sugar cane, taro, and paper mulberry. They also had chickens and Polynesian rats with them. The Rapa Nui people are found to be of Polynesian origin through genetic analysis of prehistoric skeletons.
Replica in Scale. Found: Rapa Nui, Chili (JN0345)
Moai
± 1250
Not much is known. 887 statues up to 9,5 km high on the island have been found, built by the Napa Nui. They were made between the 1st and the 17th century. They consist of 1 whole stone that protrudes above the ground.
Easter Island's mysterious statues have baffled visitors for centuries, raising questions about "giants" and lost civilizations. They stand like silent sentinels in the barren landscape. At one point, 300 of them created a continuous line around the island, all carved out of the black lava rock of the island's Rano Raraku volcano. This crater was a quarry for over 500 years until the 18th century. 95% of all moai are made from this volcanic stone.
At ten meters (33 feet) high and weighing up to 80 tons, the majority were once covered in red hats and engraved on the back with ancient initiation symbols. The weather has eroded many of these characteristics. For the people who founded them, the images were repositories of spirit charged by the Creator's Life Force, which they called "mana."