Easter Island

To witness the island’s culture at its best, time your visit to coincide with one of the festivals. Tapatai Rapa Nui is a ten-day cultural celebration held in late January or early February. Famous for celebrating Rapa Nui culture, tradition and history, the festival features dancing, body painting, statue carving, choral recitals, surfing displays, canoe races, re-enactments of old legends and huge curanto feasts. Semana Santa (Easter week) features lively celebrations at Hanga Roa’s church. The Ceremonia Culto al Sol is a feast that takes place on June 21 for the winter solstice, while Día de la Lengua Rapa Nui, a celebration of the Rapa Nui language, is held in late November.

The Birdman ceremony took place annually at the September equinox, when the chiefs of the various kin-groups assembled at Orongo to compete. The aim was to find the first egg laid by the sooty tern (a migratory bird) on Motu Nui, the largest of three islets sitting opposite Orongo, 2km out to sea. Each chief would choose a representative, or hopu, who would scale down the sheer cliff to the ocean and swim through shark-infested waters to the islet. It could take several weeks for the egg to be found; meanwhile, the chiefs would remain in Orongo, where they participated in ritual dances, songs and prayers.

Once the egg was finally found, its discoverer would bellow the name of his master, and then swim back to the island with the egg tucked into a headband. The victorious chief now became the new tangata manu, or birdman. The new birdman would first have all the hair shaved off his head; he would then live in strict seclusion for a whole year in a sacred house at the foot of Rano Raraku, eating only certain foods, and forbidden to bathe or cut his nails. His kin-group, meanwhile, was endowed with a special, high status, which was often taken as an excuse for members to dominate and bully their rival groups.

The enduring symbol of Easter Island always has been the moai. A Neolithic statue cult on this scale would impress in any location, but the fact that it developed in total isolation on a tiny island in the middle of the Pacific almost defies belief. There are some four hundred finished statues scattered around the island, and almost as many in the quarry, in varying stages of completion. The moai range in height from 2m to about 20m, and though styles evolved over time, all are carved in a highly stylized manner. Their bellies are gently rounded, and their arms are held tightly by their sides, with their strange, long-fingered hands placed across their abdomens. Their heads are long and rectangular, with pointed chins; prominent, angular noses; and thin, tight lips.

Function and form

According to the islanders’ assertions, which are consistent with widespread Polynesian tradition, these figures represented important ancestors, and were erected on the ancestral land of their kin-groups, which they would watch over and protect with their mana (almost all the moai face inland). Archeologists have proposed tentative dates of around 1000 AD for the carving of the early statues, and around the fifteenth century for the bulk of the statues, when production peaked. Rano Raraku’s unfinished statues demonstrate how their forms were chiselled out of the rock face until they were attached to it by just a thin keel running down their spine. When all was completed but their eye sockets, they were freed from their keel and slid down the quarry’s slope, then temporarily erected in a pit until they were transported to their ahus.

Transportation

The island’s oral histories offer no clues as to how the 20 to 25-tonne statues were moved, claiming the statues’ mana enabled them to walk short distances each day until they reached their platforms. Modern theories have included horizontal and vertical swivelling, but since it was established in the 1980s that the island was once densely covered by trees, it’s been assumed that they were dragged on wooden sledges or on top of rollers.

Raising the moai

How the statues were erected onto their platforms in the absence of any type of machinery is another enigma, though in 1955, Thor Heyerdahl challenged the island’s mayor to raise a fallen, 25-tonne statue at Anakena Beach and, under the mayor’s supervision, twelve islanders raised the statue in eighteen days, using two levers and slipping layer after layer of stones underneath the horizontal statue. Little by little, it was raised on the bed of stones until it was level with its platform; at this point, the layers of pebbles were placed only under its head, until the statue was nearly vertical and could be slipped into place. Archeologists agree this method is highly likely to have been used to raise the statues. In contrast, no one has been able to demonstrate how the large, heavy “topknots” were placed on the raised statues’ heads – a monumental feat, achieved only with a crane in modern times.

The statue-carvers

Easter Island society was based around independent clans, or kin-groups, each with its own high-ranking members. The statue-carvers were highly revered members of a privileged class who were exempt from food production and were supported by farmers and fishermen. Such a system must have involved a great deal of economic cooperation, which appears to have been successfully maintained for hundreds of years.

The beginning of the end

Then, in the later stages of the island’s prehistory, the system collapsed, and the island became engulfed by warfare. Archeological records reveal a sudden, dramatic proliferation of obsidian weapons during the eighteenth century, as well as the remains of violently beaten skulls, and evidence of the widespread use of caves as refuges. Archeologists have also found possible evidence of cannibalism – something featured prominently in the island’s oral traditions. The most dramatic testimony of this period, however, is provided by the hundreds of fallen statues littering the island, deliberately toppled as enemy groups set out to desecrate each other’s sacred sites.

So what went wrong on Easter Island?

It seems likely the seeds of social collapse lay in the extremes the statue cult was taken to by the islanders. As the impulse to produce moai required more and more hands, the delicate balance between food distribution and statue-carving was destroyed. This situation was profoundly aggravated by the growing scarcity of food brought about by overpopulation, and deforestation, following centuries of logging for boat-building, fuel consumption and statue-transportation. This must have had a catastrophic effect on the islanders’ ability to feed themselves: deep-sea fishing became increasingly difficult, and eventually impossible, owing to the lack of wood available for new canoes, and even land cultivation was affected, as the deforestation caused soil erosion. In this climate of encroaching deprivation, the Easter Island civilization descended into anarchy, dragging its majestic monuments with it.

An oft-repeated oral tradition has it that the island’s population, in the time just before the toppling of the statues, was divided into two principal groups, the “Short Ears” and the “Long Ears”. In fact, the whole myth is based on a mistranslation. It seems the two clans were really the Hanau eepe (“short and stocky”) and the Hanau momoko (“tall and slim”); the strange mix-up came from mistranslating eepe – short and stocky – as “ear” (“epe” in Rapa Nui).

The “Long Ears”, who saw themselves as more aristocratic, were extremely domineering, and the “Short Ears” resented them intensely. The “Short Ears” rebelled when forced to clear rocks off the land, forcing the “Long Ears” to retreat to the Poike Peninsula. Here they dug deep ditches, and filled them with branches and grass, intending to force their enemies inside and set them alight. However, a “Short Ears” woman who was married to one of the “Long Ears” alerted her people, and allowed them to surround their enemies while they were sleeping. When they attacked, the “Long Ears” ran straight into their own ditch, which was set alight. Most of the “Long Ears” burned to death, but three escaped. Two of them were caught and executed, but one, Ororoina, was allowed to live, and went on to father many children – whose descendants, to this day, are proud of their Hanau momoko heritage.