Our next stop was Easter Island, located in the South Pacific Ocean 2,300 miles west of Chile, 2,500 miles southeast of Tahiti, 4,300 miles south of Hawaii, and 3,700 miles north of Antarctica, it is one of the world’s most isolated inhabited islands. This triangular shaped island is made mostly of volcanic rock and it has more mystery and speculation about its history and existence than most other prehistoric places on Earth. Today, Easter Island is dominantly archaeological sites with half of the 887 massive ancient relic stone monuments (moai) left unfinished. Most of the moai reside in the Rano Raraku quarry, and from archeologists surveys, they predict most of them were carved there between 1250-1500 AD. We were very fortunate to have Patricia Vargas as our guide for our 3 full days on the island. Patricia was one of the key leaders of the archeological team from the University of Chile who, between 1992-1996, completed the reconstruction project of ahu Tongariki, the largest and most impressive ceremonial center on Easter Island. Patricia and co-leader Claudio Cristino, both archeology professors at the University of Chile had extensive knowledge of the island, as they spent from 1977 to 1996 recording more than 20,000 archeological sites and features on the island.
The 5,800 current inhabitants reside mostly in the small capital city of Hanga Roa and they call their land Te Pito o TeHenua “the navel of the world.”
The 5,800 current inhabitants reside mostly in the small capital city of Hanga Roa and they call their land Te Pito o TeHenua “the navel of the world.”
The first site we visited located closest to Hanga Roa is called Ahu Tahai. The area felt like a hollowed out bowl, leading you toward the statues and the ocean. It is believed the moai statues were carved by the Polynesian colonizers of the island and were claimed to represent deceased ancestors. The moai were erected on an ahu, the platform, to face the chief’s village and were claimed to be the embodiment of the powerful living or former chiefs and represented important lineage status symbols. Archeologists today believe the larger the statue placed upon an ahu, the more mana the chief who commissioned it had. It is also speculated by a team of archaeologists that the hemispherical or deep elliptical eye sockets were designed to hold coral eyes with either black obsidian or red scoria pupils. Here at Ahu Tahai one of the re-erected tuff moai was restored with the topknot and replica eyes. It is the only location on the island where a restored moai has coral eyes. It is also a mystery that the number of eyes expected has not been found anywhere else on the island.
We next visited Rano Raraku, the main quarry where the moai were carved and then transported to set on various ahu ceremonial platforms around the island’s perimeter. Today, approximately half of all the moai still remain in the quarry. Visitors to the site follow a path that leads past many moai that are half buried and up to the rock quarry itself, where you can see a statue left in the stone, unfinished. It isn’t until we walked through this land of tall, unfinished statues that we come to realize just how strange the island’s history is – what was it that caused these people to just drop everything and leave their years of hard work sitting at the quarry?
In the more recent history of the island (19th century), the birdman was the political figurehead for the islanders for his term: one year. Each year a contest was held to determine who the birdman would be, for which each tribe on the island put forward one member to compete. The participants would descend a 1000-foot cliff drop into the ocean from Orongo, swim across a narrow channel where they awaited the coming of the birds, and the first participant to bring an egg back, would either be declared birdman, or his chief would be. At the top of the cliff are many reconstructed houses, where the important members from each tribe would stay during the contest. We visited these small houses and the cliffside, and were very glad that we neither had to live inside them, nor scale that cliff. On the other side of the site is the Rano Kau crater, which was just as stunning a view as the open ocean behind us.
It was the next site that is the largest restoration site of moai on the island. Ahu Tongariki measures nearly 720 feet long, with a central platform measuring 325 feet and a wing on either side. A total of fifteen statues weigh 40 to 90 tons once stood on that platform. The tallest moai erected, called Paro, was almost 10 meters (33 ft) high and weighed 82 tons. The reconstruction took 4 years and a team of 50 people, most of them where islanders themselves. Each rock segment was studied, drawn and redesigned with a computer using historic photographs and maps to ensure the reconstruction was done as representative as possible. This project was said to give the locals a greater appreciation for what their ancestors did and their sense of pride was enormous.
One afternoon we visited one of two white sandy beaches on the island, Anakena. Located on Anakena are two ahu’s; one which has a single moai and the other Ahu Nao Nao which has seven. It was a fun afternoon as we were able to swim in the nice beautiful ocean while enjoying the view of these mysterious statues.
All but one of the restored moai statues face inland toward the villages and reside close to the cliffs of the ocean. The one exception is Anu Akivi, a particularly sacred place on Easter Island is inland and faces the Pacific Ocean. The site has seven moai, all of relatively equal shape and size. Another unique aspect of this sacred site is how astronomically precise the celestial feature is. Only at this location on the island; the seven identical moai statues face sunset during the Spring Equinox and have their backs to the sunrise during the Autumn Equinox.
Our few days on Easter Island, were hot and full of archeological history, but we had a great few days (although we missed the cold of Antarctica) and look forward to our next (short) adventure in Peru!