Rapa Nui National Park

Because of their religious beliefs, Polynesian settlers who arrived around 700 AD are credited with the creation of enormous stone statues known as Moai. In the present day, there are several important archaeological sites. People worldwide have been fascinated by the carving of these massive stones. The South Pacific island of Rapa Nui is a designated protected area. 

Discovery

• In 1722, European explorers discovered this mysterious island, and rumours of its colossal stone giants circulated worldwide

• British explorer James Cook was the first foreigner to land on the island in 1774. Easter Island became a Chilean territory in 1888 and has remained such

• Despite its status as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Easter Island is home to many traditional Polynesian practices

• The Rapa Nui Cultural Reserve in Chile is vital in preserving Chile’s cultural heritage

• Visitors can enjoy an excellent view of Moais at the Rapa Nui National Park on Easter Island.

East Easter Island Beach in Rapa Nui National Park

• Easter Island is one of the most remote settlements on the planet. The next inhabited island, Pitcairn, is almost 2,000 kilometres away

• Chile’s main continent is 3,700 miles away, whereas Tahiti is 4,100 miles away

• First discovered by Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen while seeking a second island. Upon his arrival on the island on April 5, 1722, which happened to be Easter Sunday, he gave it the name “Easter Island”

• This was the island’s first port of call in 48 years when another vessel arrived.  

• Facing East, Easter Island’s Moai Statue Faces the Horizon

• The massive moai statues that formerly graced Easter Island’s unrivalled cultural landscape are thought to number in the thousands

• Opalescent pupils were cut from obsidian for the eyes of the Moai, and white coral was used for the iris

• A single moai took a team of five to six men about a year to carve, and it took a hundred people to transport it

• The heaviest Moai ever found weighed in at over 80 tonnes.

Easter Island’s Moai Statues – Part of Rapa Nui National Park

• The stone moai are not merely headed, as previously thought (although some have been buried up to their necks over time)

• Researchers have unearthed several Moai. Archaeologists have uncovered connections between stone heads and torsos

• Several 23-foot-tall statues have been found in the vicinity (7 metres)

• Many of the Moai’s excavated remains had petroglyphs on them that were never explained, like the unrivalled cultural landscape

• In Rapa Nui National Park on the indigenous name of Easter Island, there is a close-up of Maois face. 

Condition of Trees in Rapa Nui

• The rugged Rapa Nui National Park provides a sharp contrast to Easter Island

• There are no trees to be seen in this stony terrain

• Even though Easter Island was once a beautiful forest, it is now completely devoid of trees

• As human populations grew and agricultural land was cleared for farming reasons, deforestation in Polynesia was accelerated by Polynesian rat invasions that may have devoured vast numbers of seeds to speed up the process of deforestation

• On the island, there aren’t many birds to be found. Before the devastation of the trees, the number of seabirds was in the 30s and 40s. 

UNESCO

• Since 1995, the Moai have been a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and as a result, they have been the focus of numerous archaeological investigations. 

• Tourists who damaged the Moai’s earlobes in 1995 were fined $17,000 and banned from returning to Easter Island for three years after the incident.

• Easter Island has a population of 5,800, mostly Rapa Nui descendants, according to the most recent census. For the indigenous people of Chile, a major political issue is their country’s designation as a “special territory” since 2007.

• Because there is no permanent source of water on Easter Island, there is a shortage of fresh water. 

• In the past, long-dormant volcanoes generated crater lakes, Rano Raraku, Rano Kau, and Terevaka, filled with fresh water by the Rapa Nui people’s ingenious rainwater gathering methods (some of which use elaborately carved stones). 

• Tropical rainforests on the island receive an average of 45 inches of rain annually.

Conclusion

The history of Rapa Nui serves as a sobering lesson. We must use our planet’s scant natural resources sustainably if we want it to maintain life in the long term. You could compare it to Easter Island if you wanted. The islands are so far apart that there is little hope for us here on Earth to locate a new place to call home. People like the Rapa Nui were wiped out because they consumed far more food than they could produce.