Easter Island was not settled by Americans. How was Easter Island settled? The emergence of life on Easter Island

Plan
Introduction
1 Early history of Rapa Nui
1.1 Time of settlement of Easter Island
1.2 Theories of the settlement of Easter Island
1.2.1 The legend of the settlement of the island
1.2.2 Theory of American settlement of the island
1.2.3 Theory of Melanesian settlement of the island
1.2.4 Theory of Polynesian settlement of the island

1.3 Reign of Hotu Matu'a
1.4 “Long-eared” and “short-eared”
1.5 Other wars on the island
1.6 Inca voyage to the island

2 Culture of the ancient Rapanui people
2.1 Activities of the ancient Rapanui people
2.2 Social relations of the ancient Rapanui people

3 Disappearance of the Rapa Nui civilization
4 Europeans on the island
5 Missionary activity on the island and the history of Rapa Nui in the second half of the 19th century
6 XX century
7 Island status
Bibliography

9.1 In Russian
9.2 On English language


10.1 General
10.2 Materials on the status of the island

Introduction

Easter Island (or Rapa Nui) is one of the most remote inhabited islands in the world, and thanks largely to its isolation, Rapa Nui's history is unique. There are many scientific hypotheses and guesses regarding the time of settlement of Rapa Nui, the racial background of the local residents, the cause of the death of a unique civilization, whose representatives built huge stone sculptures (moai) and knew writing (rongorongo), which has not yet been deciphered by linguists. With the discovery of the island in 1722 by the Dutch traveler Jacob Roggeveen and the appearance of the first Catholic missionaries, fundamental changes took place in the life of the Rapanui people: the hierarchical relationships that existed in the past were forgotten, and the practice of cannibalism was stopped. In the middle of the 19th century local residents became the object of the slave trade, as a result of which most of the Rapa Nui people died, and along with them many elements of the unique local culture were lost. On September 9, 1888, the island was annexed by Chile. In the 20th century, Rapa Nui became an object of great interest for scientific researchers trying to unravel the secrets of the disappeared Rapa Nui civilization (among them was the Norwegian traveler Thor Heyerdahl). During this time, there were some improvements in the island's infrastructure and the quality of life of the Rapa Nui people. In 1995 national park"Rapa Nui" became an object World Heritage UNESCO. In the 21st century, the island continues to attract tourists from all over the world, and tourism has become the main source of income for the local population.

1. Early history of Rapa Nui

1.1. Time of settlement of Easter Island

Radiocarbon dating data obtained by scientists Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo from the University of California (USA) during the study of eight samples of charcoal from Anakena indicate that the island of Rapa Nui was inhabited around 1200 AD. BC, which is 400-800 years later than previously thought, and only 100 years before trees began to disappear on the island. Previously it was believed that the colonization of Rapa Nui took place in 800-1200. n. e., and the environmental disaster, which was characterized by the disappearance of palm trees on the island, began at least 400 years after settlement. However, the issue of colonization of the island has not yet been reached, and it is likely that this figure can be refuted.

The question of how Easter Island was settled also remains open. Throughout the 20th century, many scientific hypotheses have been proposed that identify several centers from which Rapa Nui was settled.

1.2. Theories of the settlement of Easter Island

The legend of the settlement of the island

Anakena Bay, where, according to Rapa Nui legend, King Hotu Matu landed

According to the legends of the ancient Rapanui people, collected by Sebastian Englert, Easter Island appeared thanks to a giant Walke , who with his staff destroyed a large country comparable to Khiva(Polynesian name for the Marquesas Islands). The first settlers of Rapa Nui were Ngata Wake And Te Ohiro . They landed on an island near the town Te Rotomea and stopped at Vai Marama(Name small lake near Mataveri). Woke began to destroy the island again, and to stop the giant, Te Ohiro cast a spell, after which Woke's staff broke and the island was saved.

The settlement of Easter Island is associated with the name of the leader Hotu Matu'a . According to one of the most common versions of the local legend, Hotu ruled in Mara'e Renga- Maori region of the country of Hiva. His father's name was Taane Arai, wife - Wakai A'Hewa. Hota's sister was named Ava Reipua, who lived at Mara'e Tohia. During the reign of Hotu Matu'a, the country was in great danger: flooding occurred, which could lead to the disappearance of Mara'e Renga. To one of the inhabitants of this Polynesian country, Hau Maka , had a dream in which his soul traveled across an unknown island. The next day he reported it to Hotu Matu'a, who immediately ordered a group of seven young brave men to be equipped to find and explore the mysterious island. They turned out to be Ira , Raparenga , Ku'uku'u A'Huatawa , Ringigingi A'Huatawa , Nonoma A'Huatawa , U'ure A'Huatawa , Mako'i Ringiringi A'Huatawa .

Having reached Easter Island, the scouts landed in Hanga-Tepa'u(Vinapu beach) and then went to the Rano Kao volcano where Ku'uku'u planted yams. They then began to walk around the island to find a suitable place where the ariki of Hotu Matu'a could land. However, the Poike Peninsula and Hanga Hoonu Bay were not suitable for large canoes. In the bay Hanga Hoonu they noticed a large sea turtle, which was actually the spirit that had been following them throughout their journey. The scouts decided to go after the turtle. So they reached Hiro-Moko (part of Anakena Bay), where travelers decided to raise a turtle. But no one managed to do this except Ku'uku'u. However, the turtle hit him with its fin. Ku'uku'u could not move, and his friends took the brave man to a cave, where they left Ku'uku'u unattended to certain death.

At this time, Ira and Raparenga went to the Rano Kao volcano. In secret from other scouts, they hid the brought statue (moai) Hinariru. When they reached Orongo, the travelers discovered that the yam planting had been replaced by weeds. poporo. Ira concluded that this is an uninhabitable island. Therefore, the scouts decided to return home. Only Ringiringi opposed this. Sympathizing with him, Mako'i decided to find out from Ira and Rapareng the place where the statue of Hinariru was hidden. Ringiringi, who pretended to be asleep, overheard a conversation in which Ira said: "Rukhi to the right, Pu to the left, a necklace of pearls on the statue of Hinariru" .

However, the travelers did not have time to sail away: after a two-month voyage, Hotu Matu’a Ariki had already approached three islands near Easter Island near the Rano Kao volcano in two canoes.

Near the island of Motu Nui, Ira and Raparenga explained to the leader that the island was unsuitable for life, but Ariki still decided to land on it. Then the scouts told how to swim to Anakena Bay, which they found convenient for landing. Two canoes sailed in different directions to explore the entire island: Hotu Matu'a sailed from the east, and Tuu Ko Iho and his wife Ariki sailed along the western shore of Rapa Nui. During the voyage, Ava Reipua gave birth to a son, who was named Tu'u Maheke . The king landed in Hiro-Moko , and the queen - Hanga-Hiro . Soon houses were built on the shore of Anakena Bay where the settlers lived.

Theory of American settlement of the island

In his works on Easter Island, the Norwegian traveler Thor Heyerdahl put forward a hypothesis according to which the islands of Polynesia were inhabited by American Indians. In his opinion, population migration occurred in two stages. The islands of Polynesia were originally settled in the mid-1st millennium AD. e. immigrants from Peru who had fair skin, aquiline noses, and thick beards. They contributed to the spread of the megalithic type of civilization in the Pacific Ocean, most a shining example which the Rapa Nui civilization became. The first settlers of Polynesia, who lived in isolation for several centuries, were subsequently exterminated by a new wave of emigrants who sailed from the northwest coast of North America. They spoke languages ​​from which modern Polynesian languages ​​later evolved. The second wave of colonization dates back to 1000-1300. n. uh..

Having explored Easter Island, Heyerdahl supported his hypothesis with several arguments. First, he argued that the technique used to build the Rapa Nui ahu and moai was similar to that of similar structures in the Andes. He found the greatest similarity between ahu Vinapu on Rapa Nui and several buildings in Cusco that date back to the pre-Inca period. However, there are clear differences between them: the structures in Cusco were built from solid polished stone, while on Easter Island the ahu were built by covering rough stonework with small stone slabs.

Secondly, while studying the Rapa Nui writing, Heyerdahl discovered the similarity of the graphic representation of signs in Rapa Nui with the writing of the Kuna Indian tribe, but at the same time doubted the direct connection between these two languages. In his opinion, writing on Easter Island appeared in the 5th century along with the Peruvian leader Hotu Matu'a, with whom the first settlers of Rapa Nui arrived. But this implies a writing system among the ancient Incas, who actually used knot writing rather than petroglyph writing. Heyerdahl argued that at least two symbols in the Rapa Nui script are of Peruvian origin, since they depict animals that are not found in the local fauna: a petroglyph in the form of a bird with a long beak like a condor and a very sketchy anthropomorphic or zoomorphic sign similar to a puma.

Thirdly, the Rapanui people built single and double canoes similar to the Peruvian ones, wore feather headdresses like the South American Indians, and deformed the earlobe by placing large jewelry in it.

It should be noted that Heyerdahl does not take into account a number of facts that could play a decisive role in determining the homeland of the Proto-Rapanui. First, he misses the obvious similarities between Polynesian languages ​​and other languages ​​of the Austronesian family. Secondly, it is difficult to explain the presence on Rapa Nui of a number of crops that were traditionally grown by the Polynesians. The question arises: where did these plants come from on Easter Island, if people from the American continent lived on it, who had never seen or cultivated such crops. It can be assumed that the Indians, having settled on Easter Island, began to contact the peoples of Melanesia or even Indonesia. But could the Indians, who can hardly be called very good navigators, sail to these islands against the wind and current? Thirdly, Heyerdahl claims that Hotu Matu'a sailed with people on rafts (which, in his opinion, were also where American Indians settled other Polynesian islands), although the Rapa Nui legend speaks of a canoe. In addition, Heyerdahl acknowledges the truth of Thomson's list of 57 Rapa Nui kings, although it contains many inaccuracies. Using it, the Norwegian traveler comes to the conclusion that the settlement of the island occurred around the end of the 5th century. Another man who devoted most of his life to studying the history of the island, Father Englert, believed that Rapa Nui was only colonized in the 16th century.

War of the Long Ears, or hanau-eepe (rap. hanau-eepe), and short-eared, or hanau-momoko (rap. hanau-momoko), on Easter Island serves as one of the main themes of local legends, some of which seem extremely absurd. Some scientists suggest that this event occurred in the 17th century, shortly before the discovery of the island by the Dutch traveler Jacob Roggeveen, others believe that this is just a legend that should not be believed. Thor Heyerdahl, claimed that the long-eared ones were the Peruvian Indians who settled on the island around 475 AD. e., the short-eared ones are Polynesians, whose ancestors came from the northwestern coast of North America and subsequently conquered Easter Island. Father Sebastian Englert adhered to the point of view that the long-eared ones were Melanesians who sailed to Rapa Nui in 1610 from an unknown island. Marcelo Bormida agreed with this date, but believed that the long-eared ones were Polynesians. The last representative of the long-eared animals died in the second half of the 19th century.

Despite the fact that the legend actually tells about two different peoples, all the buildings on Easter Island were built by representatives of the same people, who have common roots with the peoples of eastern Polynesia. The ahu, or stone mausoleums on which the moai were placed, are a type of East Polynesian shrine, or marae (Maori marae), whose platforms were also called ahu. In addition, if you compare the language of Easter Island with the Polynesian languages, you will find great similarities with the languages ​​of the Maori, Mangarevan or Marquesan peoples.

Theory of Melanesian settlement of the island

The legend of the short-eared and long-eared would not have aroused such great interest among scientists of the 20th century if the point of view about the racial difference between the Rapanui and Polynesians and the similarity of the inhabitants of Easter Island with the Melanesians had not been widespread among them. This hypothesis, widely discussed in scientific circles in the middle of the 20th century, was put forward by the scientist Jose Imbelloni. However, there were also many opponents; for example, this hypothesis was not supported by the anthropologist Harry Shapiro, who devoted a lot of time to studying the structure of the skulls of the ancient Rapanui people and defended the point of view of the Polynesian origin of the inhabitants of Easter Island. British anthropologist Henry Balfour identified several features similar to the Rapa Nui and Melanesian cultures. Firstly, similar obsidian points that were used by the ancient Rapanui people were found on the island New Guinea. Secondly, the Rapa Nui figurines have the same aquiline nose as the Papuan ones. Third, ear deformity was also widespread among Melanesian peoples. Fourthly, the cult of “bird people” was widespread not only on Easter Island, but also on the Solomon Islands. Fifthly, the red tuff “hats” that are installed on the Rapa Nui moai are very similar to the Melanesian tradition of dyeing their hair. However, this point of view is poorly substantiated and can hardly serve as an explanation for the Melanesian origin of the Rapanui people. In New Guinea, obsidian points were not widespread, and their range of use was extremely limited. The use of obsidian on Rapa Nui was dictated by the need to process stone and tuff, which was later used in moai. In addition, it seems extremely unlikely that travel over a distance of more than 6 thousand kilometers using rafts or canoes, which were the main means of maritime transport of that time.

Theory of Polynesian settlement of the island

In Rapa Nui culture one can trace all the main features of Polynesian culture, especially East Polynesian. The cultural similarities between Easter Island and the Gambier Islands (Mangareva Island) are striking: the presence of ahu here and there, canoes with raised bow and stern, separate education of the children of chiefs, full body tattooing, use of the word "iwi-atua" to designate priests and "Hurumanu" for the community members and, in the end, the existence of singers called "rongorongo". Lavasheri, having established a stylistic similarity between the Mangarevan and Rapa Nui statues, came to the conclusion that in the past Mangarevans settled on Rapa Nui (it is quite possible that these are the “long-eared” ones mentioned in the Rapa Nui legends). However, the Mangarevan origin of the Easter Islanders raises certain difficulties. The Rapanui people do not use the word marae for their ceremonial grounds like the Mangarevans. In addition, the Easter Eggers could not come from the island of Mangareva, because the inhabitants of this archipelago did not raise chickens, but they had pigs, which were not found on the island of Rapa Nui.

If the Rapanui people did not come to Easter Island from the Gambier Islands, then, quite possibly, from the Marquesas Islands. Lowland coral islands of the Tuamotu Archipelago are excluded because the plants cultivated by the Rapa Nui were apparently brought from islands of volcanic origin. The culture of the Marquesas Islands differs in many ways from the Rapa Nui culture, but its features distinguish the archipelago from other Polynesian islands. At first glance, the ahu of the Marquesas Islands are practically no different from the Rapa Nui ahu, but upon closer examination, some differences are revealed. The situation is similar with statues. But these differences can be fully explained by the emergence of the ancient Rapa Nui people already having their own distinctive artistic traditions after settling the island. Similarities can also be found in the design of small figurines depicting people: huge eyes, which are the main motif of the Marquesan culture, as well as the Rapa Nui culture. If the ancestors of the ancient Rapanui people came from the Marquesas Islands, then their migration must have taken a very long time. big time. It probably occurred when the culture of the Marquesas Islands was still very little different from the culture of the island of Mangareva and the Maori people.

However, among specialists studying Easter Island, there are other hypotheses. For example, a German scientist T. Bartel believes that the ancestors of the Rapanui people most likely sailed not from the Marquesas Islands, but from Tahiti. In his opinion, this is indicated by several facts: the presence in the Rapa Nui writing of petroglyphs similar to images of pandanus and breadfruit (the Tahitians also had these), dancing clubs and double canoes.

Soviet scientist N. A. Butinov draws many parallels between the culture of Easter Island and the culture of the Cook Islands. Based on the legends of the Cook Islands, he comes to the conclusion that short-eared, or hanau momoko, arrived on Easter Island from the southern Cook Islands, and more specifically from the area of ​​Maraerenga (near the village of Avarua), on the island of Rarotonga, the inhabitants of which, in turn, sailed from the island of Mangaia (an island near Rarotonga).

1.3. Rule of Hotu Matu'a

While ruling Easter Island, Hotu Matu'a quarreled with his wife and son Tu'u Maheke. The reason was that Ariki called him a “bastard” because the child was crying and hungry. Hotu Matu'a's wife became very angry with her husband and told him that he himself was a "bastard" and revealed great secret: Hotu Matu'a was actually an illegitimate son Tai Amahiro, brother Taane Arai, who was previously believed to be Hotu's real father.

Much time passed, and Hotu Matu'a grew old. Sensing the approach of death, he divided the island between his sons. Before he died, Hotu shouted: “Oh, Kuihi! Oh, Kuaha! Let the rooster crow in Ariang!” From across the ocean he heard a rooster crow, and Hotu Matu'a died. He was buried in ahu Akahanga, in the same place as his wife.

1.4. "Long-eared" and "short-eared"

Before the arrival of Europeans, two different peoples lived on the island - hanau-eepe , or "long-eared"(they had elongated ears), which dominated and had a unique culture, writing, built moai, and hanau-momoko , or "short-eared" who occupied a subordinate position.

According to Rapa Nui legends collected by Sebastian Englert, the Hanau-Eepe sailed to Easter Island during the reign of Ariki Tu'u Ko Iho . Having settled in Hanga Nui on the Poike Peninsula, they subsequently populated the entire eastern part of the island, and the Rano Kao volcano became the border between the two peoples. Arriving on Rapa Nui without women, representatives of the Hanau-Eepe married representatives of the Hanau-Momoko.

At first, the “long-eared” lived in peace with the representatives of the “short-eared”, but due to the increase in the number of Hanau-Eepe, a higher culture, they subsequently subjugated the representatives of the Hanau-Momoko, which aroused hatred from the latter.

One day, Hanau-Eepe ordered Hanau-Momoko to throw all the stones on the island into the sea: they wanted to reclaim part of the land from the water. However, the “short-eared” refused to do this, citing the fact that the island was discovered by Hotu Matu’a, who was a hanau-momoko, which means that all of Rapa Nui belonged to them. The “Long Ears” were very angry. Thus began a war between the two tribes.

Representatives of the Hanau-Eepe developed a detailed plan on how to defeat their enemies. They dug a huge ditch from Te Hakarawa to Mahatua and threw logs into it. The “Long Ears” intended to lead their enemies into a trap, throw them into a pit and burn them there. However, among the Hanau-Eepe there was a representative of the Hanau-Momoko named Moko-Pinge'i, who lived on Poike and worked as a cook for the "long-ears". Having learned about the plan of the Hanau-Eepe, she told everything to her relatives, so the Hanau-Momoko decided to deceive the “long-ears” themselves, bypassing the obstacles across the sea. And so it was done. As a result, all hānau-eepe were burned. Only two survived, whom the hanau-momoko decided not to kill, but to free. Subsequently, one of them was killed, and the other married one of the representatives of the “short-eared” people.

The Poike Peninsula, where, according to the Easter Island legend, the main battle between the “long-eared” and “short-eared” took place, is the object of close study by experts. According to research, the pit in which the Hanau Eepe were allegedly burned does contain traces of charcoal, but there is no evidence that people were killed in it. In reality, this pit is most likely a geological formation that was used by the ancient Rapanui people for cooking, according to the archaeologist Charles Love, or for growing taro, bananas, sugar cane (this point adheres to C. P. Emory ).

Recent archaeological, ethnological, linguistic, genetic and other evidence from Easter Island suggests that the island was inhabited by only one wave of Polynesians, who sailed to Rapa Nui from the Marquesas Islands via Mangareva Island.

1.5. Other wars on the island

The Rapanui people were a warlike people, as evidenced by the numerous clashes between local residents described in Rapanui legends. The most striking of these is the war between two alliances, or mat , - tu'u And hot-iti. According to a legend published by Alfred Metro, the union hot-iti lived in the eastern part of Easter Island, and Tu'u lived in the western part. There were many wars between them, in which one or the other alliance alternately won.

Exact time The largest clash, the cause of which was a misunderstanding, is unknown. According to legend, two young men, " Makita And Roquehaua, paid a visit Kainge, great warrior of the union hot-iti. Kainga, trying to be a generous host, ordered his youngest son to bring the insides of a chicken that he had prepared in advance (this dish was considered a delicacy among the ancient Rapanui people). However, Roquehaua, deciding to laugh at the owner, refused to eat them, saying that he loved human entrails. Kainga, taking the guest's words seriously, killed his youngest son and served the cooked entrails to Makita and Roquehaua. They, in turn, got scared and started running. Kainga became angry with the guests because they refused to eat the host's food, and promised to take revenge on them. Soon he ordered his people to build large boats, which he planned to send to the places where the people of the Tu'u union lived. This is what Kainga did. The inhabitants of Tu'u, including Rokehaua and Makite, did not know where to go, and eventually found refuge on the island Motu Nui(island southwest of Rapa Nui). Kainga, surrounding them, grabbed one of the young men, killed him and fried him in an earthen oven, dividing the “trophy” among his warriors.

The second part of the legend tells about the war between two matas - stupid And to the world. Kainga, chief of the western Topa-Hotu tribes, quarreled with Toari, a warrior of the eastern Tu'u tribes, however, in none of the battles did he manage to kill Toari. Kainga had a son whose name was Uri-avai. One day he had a dream in which his soul was separated from his body. After wandering across the plain, she came across a rooster. The soul took a stone and threw it at the rooster, which immediately fell dead. When Kainga learned about this dream, he immediately rejoiced, because in the image of this bird he saw his main enemy - Toari. Kainga gathered his warriors and took one of his sons with him. As they approached the enemies, Kainga gave his son two spears and told him to throw them at Toari. The dream was not in vain: Toari fell dead like a rooster. Kainga felt satisfied and left the battlefield. But the representatives of Mata Tu'u only got angry and drove Tupa-Khota away. Some of the defeated Tupa-Hotu representatives hid on the island Motu Marotiri, the other is in a cave Ana-te-awa-nui. Mira was sent a canoe to the island of Marotiri to kill the enemies. Every day a canoe sailed there, which returned with a mountain of dead people, who were then eaten.

1.6. Inca voyage to the island

There is evidence of the Inca fleet under the command of the tenth Sapa Inca Tupac Inca Yupanqui on the island in the 80s of the 15th century. According to the Spaniard Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa, during the reign of Tupac Inca Yupanqui, the Incas had a fleet of balsa rafts, on which they (perhaps even Tupac Inca Yupanqui personally) reached Easter Island. There is also indirect evidence of the presence of the Incas on the island: legends of local residents about a powerful leader named Stupid; the ruins of Ahu Vinapu, built in the classic style of polygonal Inca architecture from carefully fitted basalt blocks of irregular shape without the use of mortar; as well as the fact that totora, which grows in the volcanic lakes Rano Raraku and Rano Kau, did not appear there until the 14th century, and outside Easter Island it grows only in Lake Titicaca.

2. The culture of the ancient Rapanui people

2.1. Activities of the ancient Rapanui people

An ancient fishhook made from human femur, or mangai-iwi rap. mangai ivi) from Easter Island. Consists of two parts connected by a rope

Easter Island is a treeless island with infertile volcanic soil. In the past, as now, the slopes of volcanoes were used for planting gardens and growing bananas. According to Rapa Nui legends, hau plants (lat. Triumfeta semitriloba), marikuru ( Sapindus saponaria), makoi ( Thespesia populnea) and sandalwood were brought by King Hotu Matu'a, who sailed to the island from the mysterious homeland of Marae-renga (eng. Marae-renga). This could really happen, since the Polynesians, settling new lands, brought with them the seeds of plants that had important practical significance.

The ancient Rapanui people were very knowledgeable about agriculture. Therefore, the island could easily feed several thousand people.

One of the island's problems has always been the shortage of fresh water. There are no deep rivers on Rapa Nui, and water after rains easily seeps through the soil and flows towards the ocean. The Rapanui people built small wells, mixed fresh water with salt water, and sometimes just drank salt water.

In the past, Polynesians, when setting out in search of new islands, always took with them three animals: a pig, a dog and a chicken. Only chicken was brought to Easter Island - later a symbol of well-being among the ancient Rapanui people.

The Polynesian rat is not a domestic animal, but it was also introduced by the first settlers of Easter Island, who considered it a delicacy. Subsequently, gray rats, brought by Europeans, appeared on the island.

The waters surrounding Easter Island are teeming with fish, especially off the rocks of Motu Nui (a small islet southwest of Rapa Nui), where seabirds breed in large numbers. Fish was the favorite food of the ancient Rapanui people, and during the winter months there was a taboo on catching it. On Easter Island, a huge number of fish hooks were used in the past. Some of them were made from human bones, they were called mangai-iwi (rap. mangai ivi), others were made of stone, they were called mangai-kahi (rap. mangai kahi) and was mainly used for catching tuna. Only privileged residents, called tangata-manu (rap. tangata manu). After the death of the owner, they were placed in his grave. The very existence of fishhooks indicates the development of the ancient Rapanui civilization, since the technique of polishing stone is quite complex, as is the achievement of such smooth forms. Fishhooks were often made from enemy bones. According to the beliefs of the Rapanui people, this is how mana was transferred to the fisherman (rap. mana) dead person, that is, his strength.

The Rapanui people hunted turtles, which are often mentioned in local legends. They were so highly valued by the Rapanui people that even on the shore they built tupas (rap. tupa), which served as watchtowers.

The ancient Rapanui people did not have many canoes (the Rapanui name is waka rap. vaka), as, for example, among other peoples of Polynesia, who surfed the waves Pacific Ocean. In addition, the obvious shortage of tall and large trees affected the technique of its production. The Rapanui people had two types of canoes: without an outrigger, which was used for sailing close to the shore, and with an outrigger, which was used for long-distance sailing.

2.2. Social relations of the ancient Rapanui people

Ahu Te Pito Kura - The center of the world in the folklore of the Easter Islanders

Very little is known about the structure of ancient Rapanui society that existed before the 19th century. Due to the export of the local population to Peru, where they were used as slaves, epidemics of diseases brought to the island by Europeans, and the adoption of Christianity, Rapanui society forgot about the previously existing hierarchical relationships, family and tribal ties.

At the beginning of the 19th century, there were ten tribes on Rapa Nui, or mat (rap. mata), whose members considered themselves descendants of eponymous ancestors, who, in turn, were descendants of the first king of the island, Hotu Matu'a. According to Rapa Nui legend, after the death of Hotu Matu'a the island was divided between his sons, who gave names to all the Rapa Nui tribes. Gradually new tribes emerged from the existing ones. This is how the Rapa Nui legend tells about the emergence of tribes raa And chamea who lived in the tribal territory to the world .

The complexity of the island's political geography also lies in the fact that by the time Rapa Nui was discovered by Europeans, the tribes did not live exclusively on their territory. This was explained, first of all, by intertribal marriages, as a result of which children could lay claim to the lands of their father from another tribe or inherit the lands of their mother.

Tribal territory was often divided among descendants of members mata-iti (rap. mata iti), or small clans formed within the tribe. The lands that belonged to them were strips of land stretching from the coast to the center of the island. The ahu on the shore, which was a cemetery and sanctuary, indicated that the territory belonged to a tribe.

In ancient times, tribesmen lived in huge huts. It was a semblance of a tribal community, which was called Eevee (rap. ivi). The role of such extended family is unknown. But if we talk about the Polynesians as a whole, then we can assume that all members jointly owned the land (that is, it was communal land) and were engaged in agriculture together.

In addition to the tribes and clan communities that formed the basis public organization Rapa Nui society, there were larger associations that were political in essence. Ten tribes, or mat (rap. mata), were divided into two warring alliances. The tribes of the west and north-west of the island were usually called people Tu'u is the name of a volcanic peak near Hanga Roa. They were also called Mata Nui. The tribes of the eastern part of the island are called “people of Hotu-iti” in historical legends.

The system of hierarchy that existed in the past on the island has now disappeared. At the head of the hierarchical ladder was ariki-mau (rap. ariki mau), or paramount leader, revered as a deity by local tribes. Below were the priests, or iwi-atua (rap. ivi atua), and local nobility, or ariki-paka (rap. ariki paka). Moreover, the entire tribe of the world belonged to the nobility. This was extremely contrary to Polynesian customs. It should be noted that in other tribes of the island, ariki-paka were completely absent.

At the next level of the hierarchical ladder were the warriors, or matato'a (rap. matato "a), who often claimed political power. The lowest position was occupied by kio (rap. kio), or dependent population (most likely, it was formed from members of the defeated tribe). The exact position of artisans in this ladder is unknown, but it is likely that they occupied a fairly high place in Rapa Nui society.

As on other Polynesian islands, the Rapa Nui king lost his title after the birth of his eldest son. In effect, the king held power as regent until his son became able to exercise his functions independently. Coming of age came after marriage, after which the former king lost his functions. The exact duties of the Rapa Nui king are unknown. One of its main functions was the imposition and removal of taboos.

The ancient Rapanui people were extremely warlike. As soon as hostility began between the tribes, their warriors painted their bodies black and prepared their weapons for battle at night. After the victory, a feast was held at which the victorious warriors ate the meat of the defeated warriors. The cannibals themselves on the island were called kai-tangata (rap. kai tangata). Cannibalism existed on the island until the Christianization of all the inhabitants of the island.

3. Disappearance of the Rapa Nui civilization

When Europeans first landed on the island in the 18th century, Rapa Nui was a treeless area. A small number of trees grew only at the very bottom of the crater of the extinct volcano Rano Kao. However, recent research work on the island, including the study of pollen samples, suggests that in the distant past, during the settlement of Rapa Nui, Easter Island was covered with dense vegetation, including extensive forested areas. As the population increased, these forests were cut down, and the liberated lands were immediately sown with agricultural plants. In addition, the wood was used as fuel, material for the construction of houses, canoes for fishing, and also for carrying the huge statues of the island, or moai. As a result, by about 1600 the forests on the island were completely destroyed. The construction of the moai ceased at this time.

The disappearance of trees from the island greatly affected the life of the islanders and the ecology of Easter Island. The population was forced to settle in the caves of Rapa Nui or build precarious houses made of reeds. Fishing also suffered, including the stopping of the construction of canoes made of wood and the weaving of nets from mulberries, which were also destroyed. The loss of forest cover has led to severe soil erosion and, as a result, crop yields have declined. The only source of meat on the island was chickens, which began to be highly revered and protected from thieves (special stone chicken coops were built for them). Due to catastrophic changes, the population began to decline on Rapa Nui. After 1600, Rapa Nui society gradually began to degrade. Changes took place in the social life of the islanders, enmity intensified between the various tribes of the island who fought for the scarce resources of Rapa Nui (this was mainly expressed in the destruction of the ahu of the opposing clan or the dumping of the moai), slavery appeared, and cannibalism began to flourish.

However, this theory of the disappearance of the Rapa Nui civilization is not the only one. According to the research of scientist Terry Hunt, deforestation on Rapa Nui occurred largely not due to local residents, but as a result of eating the seeds of local plants by Polynesian rats, which were brought to the island by the first settlers. The disappearance of forests on Easter Island did not lead to a demographic catastrophe. The dramatic decline in population only dates back to the European Rapa Nui period, when most of the islanders were enslaved and sent to South American or Pacific plantations.

4. Europeans on the island

Europeans discovered Easter Island only in 1722, when the crew of the ship "Afrikaanse Galley" under the command of the Dutch traveler Jacob Roggeveen noticed land on the horizon. However, for a very long time, the credit for the discovery of Rapa Nui was disputed by the British, who based their evidence on the book of the pirate Lionel Wafer, which tells about the 1687 voyage of the English privateer Edward Davis. After being defeated by the Spanish fleet, he headed via Cape Horn to the West Indies. When Davis's ship "Batchelor's Delight" floated from Galapagos Islands to the south, the ship accidentally stumbled upon an unknown island that was not protected by reefs. On the shore was visible sand beach, and behind him one could see silhouettes high mountains. However, Davis was unable to land on it, as he was pursued by Spanish ships. Wafer's story was later confirmed by another privateer, William Dampier.

This “Davis Land,” which much later became identified with Easter Island, reinforced the conviction of cosmographers of that time that there was a continent in this region that was, as it were, a counterweight to Asia and Europe. This led to brave sailors searching for the lost continent. However, it was never found: instead, hundreds of islands in the Pacific Ocean were discovered. With the discovery of Easter Island, an opinion arose that this is the continent eluding man, on which a highly developed civilization existed for thousands of years, which later disappeared in the depths of the ocean, and only high mountain peaks remained from the continent (in fact, these are extinct volcanoes). The existence of huge statues, moai, and unusual Rapa Nui tablets on the island only reinforced this opinion.

However, modern study of the adjacent waters has shown that this is unlikely. Easter Island is located 500 km from the ridge of seamounts known as the East Pacific Rise, on the Nazca lithospheric plate. The island sits on top of a huge mountain formed from volcanic lava. Last eruption volcanoes on the island occurred 3 million years ago. Although some scientists suggest that it occurred 4.5-5 million years ago. According to local legends, in the distant past the island was larger. It is quite possible that this was the case during the Pleistocene Ice Age, when the level of the World Ocean was 100 meters lower. According to geological studies, Easter Island was never part of a sunken continent.

It was only at the beginning of the 20th century that suggestions emerged that the island described in Wafer’s story was Crescent Atoll. Crescent Island), and the mountains are the peaks of the Gambier Islands.

On July 16, 1721, the Dutch traveler, Admiral Jacob Roggeveen, sailed from Amsterdam on ships "Thienhoven" , "Arend" And "Afrikaanse Galley" in search of Davis Land. On the evening of April 5, 1722, the crew of the main ship "Afrikaanse Galley" noticed land on the horizon. On the same day, Admiral Roggeveen named the island in honor of the Christian holiday of Easter. The next morning, a canoe with a bearded local man, clearly surprised by the large sea vessel, approached the Dutch ship. Only on April 10 did the Dutch land on land. Roggeveen described in detail the Rapanui people and the coordinates of Easter Island. Seeing unusual statues huge size, the traveler was very surprised that “naked savages” could build such colossi. It has also been suggested that the statues were made of clay. However, the first meeting of the Rapa Nui with the Europeans was not without bloodshed: 9-10 local residents were killed by Dutch sailors.

At the time of the discovery of the island by Roggeveen, about two to three thousand local residents lived on it, but archaeological research has shown that a hundred years earlier, 10-15 thousand people lived on the island. Due to overpopulation, deforestation and the exploitation of the limited resources of the isolated island, the settler civilization experienced a sudden crisis. Rats introduced by the aborigines, for whom the seeds were a source of food, also took part in the disappearance of palm forests. Aboriginal oral traditions tell of terrible famine and cannibalism. The consequences of the crisis were the degradation of the cultural traditions of the aborigines of Easter Island and a sharp decrease in the population of Rapa Nui.

For as long as 50 years, Europeans forgot about the existence of the island. The sailors continued to search mysterious Earth Davis, southern continent, which was never found. Meanwhile, Spain, fearing for its American colonies, decided to annex the territories that lay near them. For this purpose, warships were sent.

Map of Easter Island made in 1772 during an expedition led by Felipe Gonzalez de Haedo

In 1770, Manuel de Amat y Junyent, the colonial administrator of Peru, fearing France (due to the operation in Pondicherry) and the British Empire, sent a ship "San Lorenzo" under the command of Felipe Gonzalez de Aedo to the shores of Easter Island to annex it. The warship was escorted by a frigate "Santa Rosalia" under the command of Antonico Domonte.

During a few days of Gonzalez's stay on Easter Island, the first detailed map Rapa Nui, and the island itself was renamed San Carlos Island in honor of the Spanish King Charles III. In the presence of the islanders, the declaration of protectorate was read, and local residents signed as a sign of agreement. These signatures were most likely made unconsciously and were imitation of unfamiliar signs that the islanders saw on the paper. True, one of the Rapanui people painted a bird, which is a local petroglyph. In fact, the attempt to annex the island failed, and subsequently Spain forgot about its existence and never again laid claim to it.

At the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries, many sailors visited the island. In 1774, Captain James Cook landed on the island (he noted the great contrast between the magnificent giant statues of Rapa Nui and the very rare and wretched population of the island). Jean François La Perouse visited Rapa Nui in 1786. He carefully studied the Rano Kao volcano, the Rapanui dwelling and, sailing away, left the Rapanui people several sheep and pigs, and also planted a citrus tree and several vegetable crops. According to the calculations of the French traveler, the population of the island at that time was about 1,200 people. In 1804, the island was visited by Russian traveler Yuri Lisyansky on a sloop "Neva" .

In 1808, Americans who sailed to the island by ship "Nancy", 10 women and 12 Rapa Nui men were kidnapped. The sailors were going to transport the islanders to the Juan Fernandez Islands (a group of volcanic islands in the Pacific Ocean, 450 km west of the coast South America, territory of Chile) in order to use the captured Rapa Nui there as slaves who would hunt seals. IN three days During the voyage from Rapa Nui, the natives were brought onto the deck and freed from their chains. The men were able to jump overboard. However, the Americans' attempt to return the prisoners on board was unsuccessful: the Rapa Nui dived deep into the water. Tired of chasing them, the sailors left the islanders in the open ocean.

"Rurik", anchored off Easter Island

The manifestation of violence by foreigners towards the local inhabitants of the island led to the fact that the Rapanui people began to greet the ships with hostility. So in 1816 a Russian ship sailed to the island "Rurik" under the command of Otto Evstafievich Kotzebue, who led the round-the-world sea voyage. However, the Russians failed to land on Rapa Nui.

The year 1862 was a turning point in the history of Rapa Nui. At this time, the Peruvian economy was booming and was increasingly in need of labor. One of its sources was Easter Island, whose inhabitants became the object of the slave trade in the second half of the 19th century. On December 12, 1862, 8 Peruvian ships landed in Hanga Roa Bay. Several islanders, unsuspectingly, boarded the ship and were immediately captured and thrown into prison cells. In total, about 1,407 Rapa Nui were captured, who were defenseless at the sight of firearms. Among the prisoners were King Kamakoi of Rapa Nui and his son Maurata. In Callao and the Chincha Islands, the Peruvians sold captives to the owners of guano mining companies. Due to humiliating conditions, hunger and disease, out of more than 1,000 islanders, about a hundred remained alive. Only thanks to the intervention of the French Government, Bishop Tepano Jossano, as well as the Governor of Tahiti, supported by Britain, was it possible to stop the Rapanui slave trade. After negotiations with the Peruvian government, an agreement was reached according to which the surviving Rapanui were to be repatriated back to their homeland. But due to illness, mainly tuberculosis and smallpox, only 15 islanders returned home. The smallpox virus brought with them eventually led to a sharp drop in the population on Easter Island - to about 600 people. Most of the priests of the island died, who buried with them all the secrets of Rapa Nui. The following year, missionaries landing on the island found no signs of the recently existing Rapa Nui civilization.

5. Missionary activity on the island and the history of Rapa Nui in the second half of the 19th century

Makemake and Tangata-manu

Christianity played a significant role in the life of the Rapanui people. The missionaries who landed on the island installed a stone slab in the Hango Roa cemetery with the inscription: Easter Island - to brother Eugene Eyraud, who turned from a mechanic worker into a worker of God himself and thereby brought conquests to Jesus Christ(translation from French). This inscription summarizes the life of the Rapa Nui missionary, a Frenchman by nationality, Eugene Eyraud, a deeply religious man who emigrated to Argentina to pay for his brother’s education and chose the path of the priesthood. A mechanic by profession, Eyraud had many jobs, and eventually crossed the Andes and ended up in Chile. Looking at his brother, who became a missionary in China, Eiro wanted to choose the same path. He soon became a missionary for the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. In 1862, with a group of missionaries, he headed to Easter Island.

On the way there, to Tahiti, they learned about the war between the ruling Rapa Nui clans. Many missionaries began to doubt whether they should have sailed to Easter Island at all. But Eiro refused to go back. He proposed to first settle on the island himself in order to create all the conditions for future missionaries there. The missionaries supported Eiro. On January 2, 1864, Eiro arrived on Easter Island with two local slaves (among them a Rapanui man named Pana).

Eiro's missionary work had a significant impact on the local people. Immediately after landing on the island, the priest began teaching the Rapa Nui, and within a few months six islanders were reading the catechism in French. November 11, 1864 completely “tortured, almost naked and barefoot” Eiro was picked up by a schooner sent after him to the island.

After 17 months, Eiro returned to Rapa Nui with the missionary Hippolyte Roussel and seven Mangarevans. By exchange, a small plot of land was obtained, on which the missionaries built three houses, one of which, accommodating a hundred people, served as a chapel. The missionaries made Santa Maria de Rapa Nui their main center, uniting two towns - Hanga Roa and Mataveri. The lands around them were purchased from local residents in 1868.

The active conversion of the Rapanui people to Christianity began. The leaders were not very keen to change their faith. This is due to the fact that they did not want to give up a polygamous family. The leaders believed that if they had one wife each, they would lose influence in the tribe. However, gradually the leaders and all the Rapanui people adopted Christianity.

On August 14, 1868, Eugene Eyraud died of tuberculosis. The missionary mission lasted about 5 years and had a positive impact on the inhabitants of the island: the missionaries taught writing, literacy, fought against theft and murder, contributed to the development of agriculture, growing crops previously unknown on the island.

In 1868, with the permission of the missionaries, an agent of the Brander trading house Dutroux-Bornier settled on the island and began breeding sheep on Rapa Nui. He bought plots of land from local residents for next to nothing, which he later used for pastures. This led to open conflict with the missionaries, as a result of which they decided to leave Easter Island in 1871 and go to Tahiti. The population of Rapa Nui by this time had decreased significantly and in 1877 amounted to 111 people (in the same year, local residents killed Dutroux-Bornier).

At the end of the 19th century, many ships moored at Easter Island, the crews of which were mainly interested in art objects of Rapa Nui culture.

In 1871, the Russian corvette Vityaz sailed past the island, with traveler N. N. Miklouho-Maclay on board. Due to illness, he was unable to land on shore, but in Tahiti he personally met with Bishop Jossan, who gave him a tablet with Rapanui hieroglyphs, which is now kept in the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography. Peter the Great in St. Petersburg.

In 1872, a French corvette landed in Hanga Roa Bay. "La Flore" under the command of Vice-Admiral T. de Lappelin. The main goal pursued by the French was to transport one of the Rapa Nui statues to the Museum of Man in Paris - moai. In 1877, a Chilean ship sailed to the island "O'Higgins" under the command of Commander Lopez. In 1877, Alphonse Pinart landed on the island and, like Pierre Loti in 1872, collected a huge number of local items, including skeletons, which were then transferred to the Museum of Man in Paris.

The first Chilean ships were seen off Rapa Nui as early as the 1830s, but close trade ties were established only in the 1870s. After defeating Bolivia and Peru in the Pacific War of 1879-1883, Chile began active colonization of the land. On September 9, 1888, Captain Policarpo Toro Hurtado landed on the island and announced the annexation of Rapa Nui by Chile. The local church came under the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Santiago de Chile, and in 1896 the island became part of the Valparaiso region.

LAN Airlines plane at the island airport

In 1903, a Scottish-Chilean company opened a subsidiary on Rapa Nui. "The Easter Island Exploitation Company" engaged in sheep breeding and wool production. It soon became the main employer of the Rapa Nui people. However, this did not make life any better: problems arose with providing the population with food, the Rapa Nui people were forbidden to leave the Hanga Roa settlement without permission from the administration, and leprosy became epidemic. Sheep farming had a negative impact on the ecology of Rapa Nui: serious soil erosion began. All the circumstances that resulted in the humiliating life of the Rapa Nui people ultimately led to an uprising, which, however, was soon suppressed, and some of the rebels were exiled to the mainland of Chile.

During the First World War, German military ships moored to the island, the crew of which purchased meat and other food on the island.

Since the first quarter of the 20th century, numerous research expeditions to Easter Island began. From March 1914 to August 1915, an expedition of the English explorer C. S. Routledge worked on the island, which paid special attention to the study of stone burial sites ahu and stone statues moai. In 1934-1935 The island was visited by a Franco-Belgian expedition, which included such prominent scientists as A. Metro and H. Lavacherry.

In 1952, the island came under the control of the Chilean military, who believed that, from a geopolitical point of view, Rapa Nui was an important center of national defense. During this period in the island's history, the rights of the Rapa Nui people were again sharply limited: they were forbidden to go beyond Hanga Roa. As a result, there were even attempts to escape from Easter Island.

In the 50s of the 20th century, the famous Norwegian traveler Thor Heyerdahl rediscovered Easter Island to the world. According to Heyerdahl, Easter Island was inhabited by settlers from Ancient Peru. Although the Rapa Nui language belongs to the Polynesian subgroup of the Austronesian language family, there is much evidence that the Incas visited the island. The stone sculptures are reminiscent of figurines found in the Andes. In addition, sweet potatoes are grown on the island. The theory of the Peruvian origin of the ancient population, however, also does not find convincing confirmation. Genetic analysis of the population most likely points to a Polynesian origin, but the accuracy of the experiment does not exclude the possibility of Peruvian origin. Moreover, according to local legend, the ancestors of the Rapanui people came several centuries ago from an island located far to the east, called Rapa. In fact, in French Polynesia there is an island called Rapa-Iti, which translates from the Rapanui language as “Little Rapa”. Perhaps this is why the Rapa Nui name for the island is Rapa Nui, or Rapanui (translated as “Big Rapa”).

In 1967, the construction of the Mataveri airstrip was completed on the island. Since that time, regular flights to Santiago and Tahiti appeared, and the life of the Rapa Nui people began to change for the better: in 1967, regular water supply to homes appeared, and in 1970, electricity. Tourism began to develop, which is currently the most important source of income for the local population. Since 1966, local administration elections began to be held on the island.

In 1995, Rapa Nui was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

7. Island status

The main issue in local politics on Rapa Nui is last years The question arose about the special administrative status of the island. The project, officially presented in August 2005, found both support from the islanders and caused protests. Debate over Easter Island's future special political status has been fueled by Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, who has expressed strong support for a change in status.

The idea of ​​a special administrative status for the island strongly contradicts the modern status of Rapa Nui. According to Easter Island Act 1966 Rapa Nui is part of the Valparaiso region, which is located on mainland Chile. As a result, the island is dependent not only on the national government in Santiago, but also on the regional administration in Valparaiso. At the local level, the island acts both as a province, headed by a governor appointed by the government (since 1984, only an ethnic Rapanuan can become one), and as a municipality, which has its own municipal council and mayor, elected by voting by local residents. The very existence of these two administrative levels (provincial governor and municipal administration) results in duplication of responsibilities. Indigenous Act 1993, which recognizes the Rapanui people as one of the six indigenous peoples of Chile, also established another institution - Easter Island Development Commission, which consists of five ethnic Rapa Nui elected by the population, six representatives of the Chilean government, the governor, the mayor and the president of the Council of Elders of Rapa Nui. The Easter Island Council of Elders, established in the 1980s and representing the interests of each Rapa Nui family, has been a point of contention since splitting into a pro-Chile faction led by Alberto Otus and a more radical pro-independence faction led by Juan Chavez in 1994. . While only the first faction is recognized by the Chilean government as a "traditional institution" under the Indigenous Law, the second faction formed the "Rapanui Parliament" in 2001, which demands complete independence from Chile.

In order to resolve the situation, the issue of the autonomous status of Rapa Nui has been discussed since 2002. A special commission was formed, which included various Chilean politicians: former Chilean President Patricio Aylwin, Rapa Nui Governor Enrique Pacarati, Mayor Edmunds and the president of the "official" council of elders Alberto Otus. Its main function is to review the current status of the island and develop plans for a new status.

At the end of August 2005, the commission presented the final version of the draft on the future status of Rapa Nui. According to it, the island should leave the Valparaiso region and form an independent entity in the form of a “special territory” reporting directly to the “center”. In this case, the municipality is endowed with more extensive rights, as well as responsibilities. It is proposed to merge the Easter Island Development Commission with the governor’s office, giving it advisory functions. And, in the end, the council of elders should remain in the form in which it currently exists (the faction headed by Alberto Otus) and become an advisory body on cultural heritage issues.

The second part of the project deals with economic development and land use on Easter Island. It is planned to improve the infrastructure of Rapa Nui, in particular maritime shipping and air communications with the mainland of Chile, as well as medical services for the population. It is proposed to create special funds for economic development and regulate immigration from the continent. One of the most significant changes should be land use reform - all public lands that are not used for public services (schools, government offices and military zones) should be transferred to the collective ownership of the Rapa Nui community. In order to regulate this property, a new institution must be created - the so-called indigenous community .

In 2005, the President introduced a bill to the Chilean Congress to amend the Chilean Constitution, thereby making possible the creation of a "special administrative territory" outside the Chilean regional administrative system for both Rapa Nui and the Juan Fernandez Islands.

Although the emergence of this project is a significant step towards political reform, in reality it is a significantly simplified version, compiled from numerous proposals from 2002-2003. For example, the final document makes no mention of autonomy, but only a special administrative status. Earlier projects proposed the complete dissolution of existing institutions on the island and the creation of an "autonomous island unit" with a popularly elected assembly and a head of autonomy who would be responsible for defense, internal security, international relationships and court, but while maintaining unity with the Republic of Chile (this is somewhat reminiscent of France and French Polynesia). The final project involves less significant changes.

While supporters of the pro-Chilean faction celebrated, the local opposition protested. On August 30, 2005, members of the Rapa Nui Parliament staged a protest march in administrative center islands, Hanga Roa city.

At this time, the more radical independence activist Agterama Puhi Huira a Huki declared himself king and established a "national civil registry" for the indigenous people of Rapa Nui with the goal of issuing "Rapa Nui passports." Many politicians did not take this opposition figure seriously, but Alberto Otus filed a formal complaint demanding action against Juca, whom he accused of "attacked our country and caused a baseless insult to our culture" .

After Michelle Bachelet won the presidential election in Chile, the new president promised to continue discussing the project to reform the status of the island and thereby expressed support for the administrative reform of Easter Island.

While discussions about the status of Rapa Nui continue, tourism is rapidly developing on the island. In 2005, about 45 thousand tourists visited the island. Since the population of Rapa Nui is only 4 thousand inhabitants, this figure is very high. The increase in the influx of tourists is obvious: in 2004, 30 thousand people visited Rapa Nui, in 1999 - 21 thousand, and in 1990 - only 5 thousand. The tourism boom promises a bright future for the islanders, but with it comes new challenges. Since 91% of local income is from the tourism business, Rapa Nui becomes directly dependent on foreign tourists. The load on both the fragile ecosystem of the island and its infrastructure is increasing.

Bibliography:

1. Gibbons, Ann. Dates Revise Easter Island History. // Science. - 2006. - T. 311. - P. 1360.

2. In compiling this section, the most widely known and complete legends collected by Father Sebastian Englert were used. However, there are also versions of myths collected by other specialists: Thomson, Routledge, Bartel, Metro. The main difference between them is the difference between the names of the heroes of the legends and the geographical names presented. But often the content of myths itself differs.

3. In version Alfreda Metro is about completely different circumstances that prompted Hotu Matu'a to send scouts to Easter Island. In one of its versions on Maraerenga a war broke out between Hotu and his brother, Te Ira-ka-tea. The reasons for this enmity are unknown. According to another version, Hotu Matu'a's brother was in love with a girl whom Ariki wanted to marry Oroi. The girl, who could not decide who to choose, promised Oroi that she would be his if he walked around the island without stopping or sleeping. Oroi believed her, and the girl fled with Hotu's brother. Thus, a war broke out between the Hotu Matu'a tribe and the Oroi. Oroi turned out to be stronger, so Hotu was forced to start searching for a new land to avoid death and shame.

4. Heyerdahl, Thor. American Indians in the Pacific. - Stockholm, Forum A.B., 1952.

5. Metraux, Alfred. Easter Island: A Stone-Age Civilization of the Pacific. - Oxford University Press, 1957. - P. 223.

6. Metraux, Alfred. Easter Island: A Stone-Age Civilization of the Pacific. - Oxford University Press, 1957. - P. 224.

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8. Bormida Marcelo. Algunas luces sobre la penumbrosa historia de Pascua antes de 1722. - Runa, Buenos Aires, 1951. - T. 4. - P. 5-62, 178-222.

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12. Lavachery, Henri. Ile de Paques. - Paris: Outre-Mer, 1937. - T. 9. - P. 325-365.

13. The pig, due to its omnivorous nature, is a direct competitor to humans in the fight for food. In conditions of abundant food this does not cause problems. However, in conditions of limited resources (say, the food reserves of colonists in a boat during long ocean crossings), pigs are the first of the animals to go under the knife, because in order for a pig to gain 1 kg of weight, it is necessary to eat from 8 to 10 kg of grain, which can be similarly fed both man and chicken.

14. Metraux, Alfred. Easter Island: A Stone-Age Civilization of the Pacific. - Oxford University Press, 1957. - P. 228.

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18. In reality, neither "hanau-eepe", nor "hanau-momoko" cannot be translated as "long-eared" or "short-eared". A more correct translation is "fat race" And "race of the subtle" .

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38. Easter Island has its own king. CHILE: Easter Island gets a "king". El Mostrador (08/23/2005). (Spanish)

The discoverer of this mysterious island was Captain Juan Fernandez. The history of Easter Island is the subject of long-standing controversy. Historians cannot find all the answers.

History of Easter Island

This island is one hundred and seventeen square kilometers of almost bare land. The more scientists try to understand this island, the more questions they have. Recently, scientists began drilling into the ground to take samples to answer some questions. They were surprised to find an underlying layer of beetles. The question remains unanswered. This is another mystery. Will scientists be able to guess it?

When the Spaniard Juan Fernandez discovered this island, he decided to keep the discovery a secret. But he himself later died under unclear circumstances.
A century and a half later, the same land was discovered by Admiral Jacob Roggeveen. This discovery occurred on Easter Day. This is where this name came from.
An interesting fact is that there were other islands near Easter Island that were mapped and clearly described. But they mysteriously disappeared without a trace. Having learned the history of Easter Island, you can find out the fate of the disappeared islands. At one time, Roggeveen claimed that local aborigines sat near the idols, lit fires and rocked them. This action of theirs says little. It does not answer the question: who were the idols for them? But it is obvious that the idols were of great importance to them.

Attempts to learn the history of Easter Island

Everyone who visited the island talked intelligently about the purpose of the idols. Cook, for example, believed that these were monuments to buried rulers. There were suggestions that some of the idols depicted gods, and the rest people. So these “moai” idols are a complete mystery that still has no answer today. Some idols lie on the ground. An explanation can be found here. All the idols were placed with their backs to the sea and could fall at the slightest earthquake. But they could have fallen on their own due to water or time.

You will not find such a developed state in all of Polynesia. And, as usual on earth, advanced civilizations subject to persecution. This happened with the mysterious island. Humanity decided to destroy the islanders. To take revenge on them for their high civilization. They have been destroyed for centuries. Let's turn to history. In 1862, pirates from Peru enslaved the entire male population. After some time, missionaries began to cynically destroy island paganism. Forbidden topics in the history of Easter Island have emerged.

They burned signs with signs. The island began to belong to Chile at the end of the 19th century. They created here penal colony. Later they decided to organize farming there. As a result, all settlements were destroyed. There is only one city left in Hanga - Roa.
The Last Aboriginal Mutiny

At the beginning of the 20th century, the last Aboriginal rebellion was suppressed. The Chilean authorities ruthlessly dealt with the rebels. After this destruction there are no people who were eyewitnesses of the reliable history of the island. There are no masters who kept the secrets of their ancestors. Well, we use legends. One of them says that the idols could move on their own. How this happened remains a mystery. But what this was for in principle is not at all clear.

Ancient craftsmen carved “moai” from tuff. Afterwards they lowered the idols down and distributed them according to a certain plan. The weight of the idols reached up to 5 tons, and the height was on average 7 meters. The material from which they were made was called volcanic pumice. Today, only 150 Rapanui people live on the island. The rest of the population are Chileans and mestizos. In total there are three thousand people on the island.

Unsolved mysteries

Today's inhabitants are Polynesians. But no one knows for sure where the first settlers came from. Even famous scientists and travelers, trying to defend their next version, did so without evidence. Thus, the number of hypotheses was added, but knowledge of the history of the island remained in place. This island was once extremely densely populated. This may have caused civil strife on the island. The anger of the island's inhabitants was repaid on the idols, as a symbol of the enemy.

Another reason for the historical obscurity of the island is that to this day the writings of the inhabitants of Easter cannot be deciphered. The found tablets with inscriptions remain unread. Many tablets were burned by Christian missionaries, and those that remained turned out to be too tough for modern science.

Climbing the Rano Kau volcano, you can see a panorama of volcanic lakes. These lakes are surrounded by Orongo Cave. Swallows fly here every spring. On the island they are considered messengers of the gods. Currently, everything on the island has been preserved unchanged, as it was hundreds of years ago. So what happened on Easter Island? This answer awaits us ahead. In the meantime, the history of Easter Island is yet another mystery for humanity.

Easter Island is a tiny piece of lava, its outline reminiscent of a Napoleonic cocked hat, surrounded by ocean, expanse of heaven and silence for thousands of miles around. Unless, of course, you take into account the cries of seagulls and the monotonous rhythm of the ocean surf.

As the tireless explorer of the island, Catherine Roopledge, wrote, “whoever lives here is always listening to something, although he himself does not know what, and involuntarily feels himself on the threshold of something even greater, lying beyond the limits of our perception.”


Everywhere on the island there are traces of a bygone past - in the long corridors of countless caves strewn with fragments of obsidian; on the slopes of volcanoes covered with the remains of a disappeared culture; in the eye sockets of stone giants, some of which lie staring at the zenith, while others tower above the island, gazing into the unknown distance.



One of the famous mathematicians noticed that life on earth is an immense kingdom of approximate quantities. It seems that this thesis quite convincingly demonstrates our ideas about Easter Island.


So when it comes to the origin of the island, its origins ancient civilization, about the purpose of the mysterious stone colossi and about many other things that make up its many mysteries, it is always useful to remember the relativity of the knowledge with which scientific world today has.


Interest in this tiny volcanic formation, lost in the vastness of the ocean, has not waned over time. And the number of publications about this place is growing every year. It is difficult to say whether this makes us closer to the truth, but something else is certain: Easter Island knows how to puzzle and surprise.


Thor Heyerdahl had a similar feeling in the face of exciting uncertainty when he studied mysterious island, where the inhabitants “built neither castles, nor palaces, nor dams, nor piers. They hewed gigantic humanoid figures from stone, tall as a house, heavy as a carriage, dragged many of them through mountains and valleys, and installed them on powerful terraces all over the island..."


The tireless desire of the ancient inhabitants of the island to carve out huge stone figures, the largest of which was the height of a seven-story building and weighed 88 tons, bore fruit: there are many hundreds of them on the island. They say about a thousand maoi ( local name sculptures). But each time the next archaeological expedition discovers more and more statues.

One of the island's explorers, Pierre Loti, described his impressions of the island as follows: stone giants: “To what human race do these statues belong, with slightly upturned noses and thin, protruding lips that expressed either contempt or mockery.

Instead of eyes only deep depressions, but under the arch of wide noble eyebrows they seem to look and think. On both sides of the cheeks there were protrusions representing either a headdress similar to the cap of a sphinx, or protruding flat ears from five to eight meters long. Some wear necklaces inlaid with flint, others are adorned with carved tattoos."


The statues described by Pierre Loti are considered by a number of island researchers to be the most ancient. But besides these, there are sculptures of a different kind. “Every day we find statues of a different style - of other people,” wrote Francis Mazières, who visited the island with a scientific expedition in the mid-60s of the last century. “Facing their backs to the sea, placed on giant funeral platforms made of stone - ahu, they seem to be "They monitor the life of the island. They and only they have open eyes. On the heads of these statues are huge red cylinders made of red tuff."


Thor Heyerdahl's expedition discovered a bearded figure in a sitting position. It was not like other island sculptures, causing a lot of speculation about its origin.


The French explorer Francis Mazière became the owner of a human figurine made of wood, which, in terms of its execution, was strikingly different from everything he had seen on the island before. This prompted the researcher to suggest that this figurine has nothing to do with Polynesian traditions and belongs to a different race.


Surprises await explorers in the labyrinths of the island caves. Rock frescoes were discovered in one of them. One of them resembles a penguin with a whale's tail. Another depicts a head unknown creature. This is the head of a bearded man with insect eyes. Deer antlers branch on his skull. The islanders call him "the insect man."


But what peoples created eyeless giants at the foot of the Raku-Raraku volcano? Who is the creator of the giants that stand along the coast? Whose hand painted the head of an “insect man” in one of the caves? “The local residents cannot explain anything,” wrote Francis Mazières. “They tell such a confusing jumble of legends that one would think that they never knew anything and that they are not at all the descendants of the last sculptors.”


A modern tourist visiting the island, as a rule, is presented as an “exotic dish” with a story about a war between two island tribes - the “long-eared” and the “short-eared”.


There is still a legend in circulation about the arrival of Hotu-Matua, the leader of the ancestors of the current islanders, on the island. "The land that Hotu-Matua owned was called Maori and was located on Hiva... The leader noticed that his land was slowly sinking into the sea. He gathered his servants, men, women, children and old people and put them on two large boats. When they reached the horizon, the leader saw that the whole land, with the exception of a small part called Maori, had gone under water."


These stories may contain echoes of some ancient events. Their fragmentary and vague nature makes it impossible to even get closer to true history islands. Even the purpose of the statues is not clear.
James Cook believed that the stone idols were built in honor of the buried rulers and leaders of the island. Professor Metro thought that the statues depict deified people. The American scientist Thomson believed that the statues were portraits of noble people, and another explorer of the island, Maximilian Brown, believed that they depicted their creators.


Katherine Roopledge said that stone figures are images of gods. Admiral Roggevahn, without expressing himself specifically, only noticed that local residents lit a fire in front of the statues and, squatting, bowed their heads.


Among Western researchers there is a “competitive” version about the purpose of the statues. According to it, the tribes living on the island were at enmity with each other for the right to be first. And supposedly prestige in this tireless struggle was won, among other things, by the number of statues carved by each rival tribe. Thus, according to this version, statues are not even a goal, but only a means of self-affirmation for people.


It is unlikely that the “native” of the island, old Veriveri, would agree with such an interpretation, who once told Francis Mazières, as a sign of special trust, the following: “All maoi (statues) of Raku-Raraku are sacred and face the part of the world over which they have power and which are responsible. That is why the island was given the name Te-Pito-o-te-Whenua, or the Navel of the Earth... The Maoi, who face the south, are different from the rest. They retain the strength of the Arctic winds..."


Easter Island, the Navel of the Earth... But these are not the only names of the island. Our compatriot Miklukha Maclay recorded the following local name - "Mata-ki-te-Rangi". James Cook recorded several at once: “Vanhu”, “Tamareki”, “Teapi”. The Polynesians called the island "Rapanui", and the islanders still call it "Te-Pito-o-te-Whenua".


Many who visited the island noticed the striking disproportion between giant statues, quarries of truly cyclopean scale and modest-sized residential buildings of local residents.


“The obvious disproportion of the ahu with the overthrown statues compared to the remains of the houses was striking. The statues towered over the village, fixing their gaze on it. With their backs to the sea, these giants seemed to be called upon to support the courage of the human captives of the land lost in the ocean.” So wrote Francis Mazières.


These lines also belong to him:
“The walls of the quarry, hollowed out in the shape of a crater, are located on a very steep slope, and a lot of work had to be done, not only to make cylinders out of it (Maoi headdresses. - Author's note). And here, as elsewhere on the island, it seems as if ordinary human scale did not suit those who worked in this quarry."


Meanwhile, Rapa Nui can hardly be called an ideal abode for the realization of titanically energy-intensive fantasies. To begin with, food and water resources on the island are limited. Fresh water, the main source of replenishment of which for centuries has been rain, is deprived of many mineral salts necessary for the body - this is the result of filtration of water as it passes through the spongy volcanic rocks of the island. Drinking such water, according to experts, led to serious illnesses.

Obtaining food itself required, apparently. huge energy costs. And, of course, she was missed. This is evidenced by the fact that cannibalism was developed on the island relatively recently. According to evidence, even two Peruvian merchants became victims of cannibals.
Most scientists have come to the conclusion that the first, unknown to us, civilization, which was the creator of the Maoi, other colossi, was subsequently destroyed and assimilated by the second migration, the decline of which has been observed on Rapa Nui for at least the last three hundred years.


“On the island you can find traces of a prehistoric people,” concludes Francis Mazières, “whose presence we are beginning to feel more and more and which forces us to reconsider all the data about time and ethics that science is now imposing on us...”


Let's go back to the present day. In the early 60s of the last century, a powerful tidal wave that penetrated 600 meters deep into the island, some Maoi were thrown back to a distance of up to 100 meters. Work to restore the statues began relatively recently - there was no appropriate lifting equipment.
It was only after the Japanese company Tadano donated $700,000 and delivered a powerful crane to the island that things started to take off. This year, many maoi that were toppled by the tsunami were raised. But the question arises: how did the ancient inhabitants of the island move the stone giants, the smallest of which weighs at least 35 tons?


All hypotheses that have arisen around this problem can be divided into three categories. Fantastic ones appeal to alien power. The rationalistic approach relies on the islanders using all kinds of ropes, winches, winches, rollers... There is even a version according to which the statues moved along a road several kilometers long, covered with sweet potato puree, which made it slippery.


There is also a hypothesis of a mystical nature. According to the islanders, the statues moved through the spiritual power of mana, which was possessed by the leaders of their distant ancestors. “What if in a certain era,” asks Francis Mazières, “people were able to use electromagnetic forces or anti-gravity forces? This assumption is crazy, but still less stupid than the story of the crushed sweet potato.”


Of course, you can assume anything, but in the face of a 22-meter-high colossus, ordinary logic becomes powerless.

Easter Island is sometimes compared to a fragment of lava, on which, without any transitional steps, the most original art and the most mysterious writing in the world arose. The latter is a fact all the more significant since until now writing has not been discovered on the Polynesian islands.

On Easter Island, writing was discovered on relatively well-preserved wooden tablets, called kohau rongo-rongo in the local dialect. The fact that the wooden planks have survived the darkness of centuries is explained by many scientists by the complete absence of insects on the island.
And yet, most of them were eventually destroyed. But the culprit for this turned out to be not tree bugs, accidentally introduced by a white man, but the religious fervor of a certain missionary. The story goes that the missionary Eugene Eyraud, who converted the inhabitants of the island to Christianity, forced these writings to be burned as pagan. So even tiny Easter Island got its own Herostratus.
However, a certain number of tablets have survived. Today, there are no more than two dozen kohau rongorongo in museums and private collections around the world. Many attempts have been made to decipher the contents of the ideogram tablets, but they all ended in failure.
As well as an attempt to explain the purpose of paved roads, the time of their creation is lost in the mists of time. On the Island of Silence - another name for the island - there are three of them. And all three end up in the ocean. Based on this, some researchers conclude that the island was once much larger than it is now.

Near Rapa Nui is the tiny island of Motunui. This is several hundred meters of steep cliff, dotted with numerous grottoes. A stone platform has been preserved on it, on which statues were once installed, which were later thrown into the sea for some reason. “How could people build an ahu with maoi there,” reflects Francis Mazières, “where we cannot approach even by boat? There, where it is impossible to climb the rock? What mass carried these multi-ton giants here? The theory of using a bed of yams is equally powerless here , and the theory of wooden rollers!"

Was Easter Island once part of a larger landmass? There are still ongoing debates around this issue in the scientific world. In the second half of the 19th century, well-known scientists at that time, Alfred Wallace and Thomas Huxley, hypothesized that the population of Oceania, including the inhabitants of Easter Island, was a remnant of the “oceanic” race that lived on the now sunken continent.

Academician Obruchev generally supported this theory. He believed that when the continent began to gradually sink under water, the population of the elevated territories began to carve stone statues and place them in the lowlands, in the hope that this would appease the gods and stop the advance of the sea. Sometimes this continent appeared in scientific hypotheses as Pacifida, sometimes as Lemuria.

The modern scientific world, with a few exceptions, perceives this kind of hypothesis with a great deal of skepticism. But on the other hand, history knows many examples when, at first glance, a completely crazy idea turned out to be true. Let us recall at least the classic case with the hypothesis of “stones that fall from the sky.”
In 1790, a meteorite fell in Gascony. A protocol was drawn up, signed by three hundred eyewitnesses, which was sent to the French Academy of Sciences. But the “tall Areopagus” called all this stupidity, since science was well aware that stones cannot fall from the sky. But this is true, by the way.

Recently, two hypotheses have become most widespread: the hypothesis of the American origin of Polynesians and Polynesian culture (to which a number of scientists include the Rapanui civilization) and the hypothesis of the settlement of the Polynesian islands from the west. Thor Heyerdahl argued that Polynesia was inhabited by two waves of migration.
The first arrived from the South American Pacific coast (the location of modern Peru). Polynesia owes the appearance of stone statues and hieroglyphic writing to settlers of Andean origin. The second wave came at the beginning of this millennium from the northwest coast of North America. At one time there was a rumor about the Vikings who sailed to Easter Island in ancient times and settled there.

In some versions, they try to interpret the history of the island’s civilization from the perspective of ethnogenesis: supposedly the first settlers, who had a high level of passionarity, were the only ones in all of Polynesia who knew writing. But gradually, century after century, the original level of passionarity began to dissipate, which ultimately led to the extinction of culture...

Will our knowledge of Easter Island become more accurate? In any case, a number of researchers, for example our compatriots F. Krendelev and A. Kondratov, rely on this in their book “Silent Guardians of Secrets.” “The mysteries of Easter Island are one of the most pressing and pressing problems of modern geology,” they write. “One can hope that the data obtained by geophysicists, geologists, oceanologists, volcanologists and other representatives of the exact sciences will be able to shed new light on long-known facts and to help find solutions to problems that ethnographers, archaeologists, and historians have struggled with unsuccessfully.”

It must be said that today the “exact sciences” have brought a number of interesting data to the problems of the island’s evolution. Rapa Nui is located in a unique place from a geological point of view. Beneath it is the fault boundary of giant tectonic plates, which seem to divide the ocean floor. The oceanic plates Nazca and Pacifica and the axial zones of underwater ocean ridges converge on the island. Which gives another reason to think about the symbolic name of the island. This is truly a kind of “Navel of the Earth”.

Today, the main wealth of the inhabitants of Rapa Nui is, of course, the mysterious past of their small island. It is precisely this that attracts scientists from all over the world here, which is why planes with tourists land at the local airport twice a week. At such hours, the life of the island, unhurried and monotonous, like the ocean surf, comes to life. The small airport building is filled with multilingual polyphony: someone is looking for a guide, someone is offering a car for rent, someone needs a hotel... But a few hours pass, and again peace and quiet reign over the island. You can count the number of cars here on your fingers. And they also obey the general rhythm of unhurried existence. In these parts, a speed of 50 kilometers per hour looks like unforgivable recklessness. Along the roads from time to time there are signs limiting the speed to 30 kilometers.

Easter Island is not in too much of a rush into the future. Modernity - air travel, the Internet, telephone communications - has a limited sphere of influence here. The true owners of the island are still the silent stone guards, firmly holding their secrets in securely closed lips.

The publication is based on Russian and foreign materials about Easter Island.
Author of the publication

The natives who greeted the Dutch sailors on Easter Sunday 1722 seemed to have nothing in common with the giant statues of their island. Detailed geological analysis and new archaeological finds made it possible to uncover the mystery of these sculptures and learn about the tragic fate of the stonemasons.

The island became desolate, its stone sentries fell, and many of them drowned in the ocean. Only the pitiful remnants of the mysterious army managed to rise with outside help.

Briefly about Easter Island

Easter Island, or Rapa Nui in local parlance, is a tiny (165.5 sq. km) piece of land lost in the Pacific Ocean halfway between Tahiti and Chile. It is the most isolated inhabited place (about 2000 people) in the world - the nearest Town (about 50 people) is 1900 km away, on Pitcairn Island, where the rebellious Bounty crew found refuge in 1790.

The coastline of Rapa Nui is decorated with hundreds of frowning idols - the natives call them “moai”. Each is hewn from a single piece of volcanic rock; the height of some is almost 10 m. All the statues are made according to the same model: a long nose, drawn-out earlobes, a gloomily compressed mouth and a protruding chin over a stocky torso with arms pressed to the sides and palms resting on the stomach.

Many "moai" are installed with astronomical precision. For example, in one group, all seven statues look at the point (photo on the left) where the sun sets on the evening of the equinox. More than a hundred idols lie in the quarry, not completely hewn or almost finished and, apparently, waiting to be sent to their destination.

For more than 250 years, historians and archaeologists could not understand how and why, with a shortage of local resources, primitive islanders, completely cut off from the rest of the world, managed to cultivate giant monoliths, drag them for kilometers over rough terrain and place them vertically. Many more or less scientific theories were proposed, with many experts believing that Rapa Nui was at one time inhabited by a highly developed people, perhaps bearers of American pre-Columbian culture, who died as a result of some kind of catastrophe.

A detailed analysis of its soil samples allowed us to reveal the secret of the island. The truth about what happened here can serve as a sobering lesson for people around the world.

Born sailors. Rapanui people once hunted dolphins from canoes dug out of palm trunks. However, the Dutch who discovered the island saw boats made of many planks fastened together - there were no large trees left.

History of the discovery of the island

On April 5, Easter Day 1722, three Dutch ships under the command of Captain Jacob Roggeveen stumbled upon an island in the Pacific Ocean that was not shown on any map. When they dropped anchor off its eastern shore, a few natives sailed up to them in their boats. Roggeveen was disappointed, The islanders' boats, he wrote: “poor and fragile... with a light frame covered with many small planks”. The boats were leaking so much that the rowers had to bail out water every now and then. The landscape of the island also did not warm the captain’s soul: “Its desolate appearance suggests extreme poverty and barrenness.”.

Conflict of civilizations. Easter Island idols now adorn museums in Paris and London, but obtaining these exhibits was not easy. The islanders knew each “moai” by name and did not want to part with any of them. When the French removed one of these statues in 1875, a crowd of natives had to be held back with rifle shots.

Despite the friendly behavior of the brightly colored natives, the Dutch went ashore, prepared for the worst, and formed into a battle square under the astonished gaze of their hosts, who had never seen other people, let alone firearms.

The visit was soon overshadowed by tragedy. One of the sailors fired. Then he claimed that he allegedly saw the islanders lifting stones and making threatening gestures. The “guests,” on Roggeveen’s orders, opened fire, killing 10-12 hosts on the spot and wounding as many more. The islanders fled in horror, but then returned to the shore with fruits, vegetables and poultry - to appease the ferocious newcomers. Roggeveen noted in his diary an almost bare landscape with rare bushes no higher than 3 m. On the island, which he named after Easter, the only things of interest were the unusual statues (heads) standing along the shore on massive stone platforms (“ahu”).

At first these idols shocked us. We could not understand how the islanders, who did not have strong ropes and a lot of construction wood for making mechanisms, were nevertheless able to erect statues (idols) at least 9 m high, and quite voluminous ones at that.

Scientific approach. French traveler Jean Francois La Perouse landed on Easter Island in 1786, accompanied by a chronicler, three naturalists, an astronomer and a physicist. As a result of 10 hours of research, he suggested that in the past the area was wooded.

Who were the Rapanui people?

People settled Easter Island only around the year 400. It is generally accepted that they arrived in huge boats from Eastern Polynesia. Their language is close to the dialects of the inhabitants of the Hawaiian and Marquesas Islands. Ancient fishing hooks and stone adzes of the Rapanui people found during excavations are similar to the tools used by the Marquesanes.

At first, European sailors encountered naked islanders, but by the 19th century they were weaving their own clothes. However, family heirlooms were more valued than ancient crafts. Men sometimes wore headdresses made from the feathers of birds long extinct on the island. Women wove straw hats. Both of them pierced their ears and wore bone and wooden jewelry in them. As a result, the earlobes were pulled back and hung almost to the shoulders.

Lost Generations - Answers Found

In March 1774, the English captain James Cook discovered about 700 natives emaciated from malnutrition on Easter Island. He suggested that the local economy had been badly damaged by the recent volcanic eruption: this was evidenced by the many stone idols that collapsed from their platforms. Cook was convinced: they were hewn out and placed along the coast by the distant ancestors of the current Rapanui people.

“This work, which took an enormous amount of time, clearly demonstrates the ingenuity and tenacity of those who lived here during the era of the statues’ creation. Today’s islanders almost certainly have no time for this, because they do not even repair the foundations of those that are about to collapse.”

Scientists have only recently found answers to some of the mysteries of the Moai. Analysis of pollen from sediments accumulated in the island's swamps shows that it was once covered with dense forests, thickets of ferns and shrubs. All this was teeming with a variety of game.

Exploring the stratigraphic (and chronological) distribution of finds, scientists discovered in the lower, most ancient layers the pollen of an endemic tree close to the wine palm, up to 26 m high and up to 1.8 m in diameter. Its long, straight, unbranched trunks could serve as excellent rollers for transportation of blocks weighing tens of tons. Pollen of the plant “hauhau” (triumphetta semi-three-lobed) was also found, from the bast of which ropes are made in Polynesia (and not only).

The fact that the ancient Rapanui people had enough food follows from DNA analysis of food remains on excavated dishes. The islanders grew bananas, sweet potatoes, sugar cane, taro, and yams.

The same botanical data demonstrate the slow but sure destruction of this idyll. Judging by the contents of swamp sediments, by 800 the forest area was declining. Tree pollen and fern spores are displaced from later layers by charcoal - evidence of forest fires. At the same time, woodcutters worked more and more actively.

Wood shortages began to seriously affect the islanders' way of life, especially their menus. A study of fossilized garbage heaps shows that at one time the Rapa Nui people regularly ate dolphin meat. Obviously, they caught these animals swimming in the open sea from large boats hollowed out from thick palm trunks.

When there was no ship timber left, the Rapanui people lost their “ocean fleet,” and with it their dolphin meat and ocean fish. In 1786, the chronicler of the French expedition La Perouse wrote that in the sea the islanders only caught shellfish and crabs that lived in shallow waters.

The end of the moai

Stone statues began to appear around the 10th century. They probably represent Polynesian gods or deified local chiefs. According to Rapa Nui legends, the supernatural power of “mana” raised the hewn idols, led them to a designated place and allowed them to wander at night, protecting the peace of the makers. Perhaps the clans competed with each other, trying to carve the “moai” larger and more beautiful, and also to place it on a more massive platform than its competitors.

After 1500, practically no statues were made. Apparently, there were no trees left on the devastated island necessary to transport and raise them. Since about the same time, palm pollen has not been found in swamp sediments, and dolphin bones are no longer thrown into garbage dumps. The local fauna is also changing. All local land birds and half of the sea birds are disappearing.

The food supply is getting worse, and the population, which once numbered about 7,000 people, is declining. Since 1805, the island has suffered from raids by South American slave traders: they take away some of the natives, many of the remaining ones suffer from smallpox contracted from strangers. Only a few hundred Rapa Nui survive.

The inhabitants of Easter Island erected “moai”, hoping for the protection of the spirits embodied in stone. Ironically, it was this monumental program that led their land to environmental disaster. And the idols rise as eerie monuments to thoughtless management and human recklessness.

Easter Island is the most remote inhabited piece of land in the world. Its area is only 165.6 square kilometers. Belongs to the island of Chile. But the nearest mainland city of this country, Valparaiso, is 3,703 kilometers away. And there are no other islands nearby, in the eastern part of the Pacific Ocean. The nearest inhabited land is located 1819 kilometers away. This is Pitcairn Island. It is famous for the fact that the rebellious crew of the Bounty ship wanted to stay on it. Lost in the vastness of Easter, it holds many secrets. Firstly, it is not clear where the first people came there from. They could not explain anything to the Europeans about this. But the most mysterious mysteries of Easter Island are its stone idols. They are installed along the entire coastline. The natives called them moai, but could not clearly explain who they were. In this article, we tried to summarize the results of all recent scientific discoveries in order to unravel the mysteries that shrouded the most remote land plot from civilization.

History of Easter Island

On April 5, 1722, the sailors of a squadron of three ships under the command of the Dutch navigator Jacob Roggeveen saw land on the horizon that had not yet been marked on the map. When they approached the eastern coast of the island, they saw that it was inhabited. The natives swam towards them, and their ethnic composition amazed the Dutch. Among them were Caucasians, Negroids and representatives of the Polynesian race. The Dutch were immediately struck by the primitiveness of the technical equipment of the islanders. Their boats were riveted from pieces of wood and leaked water so much that half the people in the canoe bailed it out, while the rest rowed. The landscape of the island was more than dull. Not a single tree towered on it - only rare bushes. Roggeveen wrote in his diary: “The desolate appearance of the island and the exhaustion of the natives suggest the barrenness of the land and extreme poverty.” But most of all the captain was shocked by the stone idols. With such a primitive civilization and meager resources, how did the natives have the strength to carve so many heavy statues from stone and bring them to the shore? The captain had no answer to this question. Since the island was discovered on the day of the Resurrection of Christ, it received the name Easter. But the natives themselves called it Rapa Nui.

Where did the first inhabitants of Easter Island come from?

This is the first riddle. Now over five thousand people live on the 24-kilometer-long island. But when the first Europeans landed on the shore, there were significantly fewer natives. And in 1774, the navigator Cook counted only seven hundred islanders on the island, emaciated from hunger. But at the same time, among the natives there were representatives of all three human races. Many theories have been put forward about the origin of the population of Rapa Nui: Egyptian, Mesoamerican and even completely mythical, that the islanders are survivors of the collapse of Atlantis. But modern DNA analysis shows that the first Rapanui people landed ashore around the year 400 and most likely came from Eastern Polynesia. This is evidenced by their language, which is close to the dialects of the inhabitants of the Marquesas and Hawaiian Islands.

Development and decline of civilization

The first thing that caught the eye of the discoverers were the stone idols of Easter Island. But the earliest sculpture dates back to 1250, and the latest (unfinished, remaining in the quarry) - to 1500. It is not clear how the native civilization developed from the fifth to the thirteenth centuries. Perhaps, at a certain stage, the islanders moved from a tribal society to clan military alliances. Legends (very contradictory and fragmentary) tell of the leader Hotu Matu'a, who was the first to set foot on Rapa Nui and brought all the inhabitants with him. He had six sons, who divided the island after his death. Thus, the clans began to have their own ancestor, whose statue they tried to make larger, more massive and more representative than that of the neighboring tribe. But what was the reason why the Rapa Nui stopped carving and erecting their monuments at the beginning of the sixteenth century? This was discovered only by modern research. And this story can become instructive for all humanity.

Ecological disaster on a small scale

Let's leave aside the idols of Easter Island for now. They were sculpted by the distant ancestors of those wild natives who were found by the expeditions of Roggeveen and Cook. But what influenced the decline of the once rich civilization? After all, the ancient Rapa Nui even had writing. By the way, the texts of the found tablets have not yet been deciphered. Scientists have only recently given an answer to what happened to this civilization. Her death was not quick due to a volcanic eruption, as Cook assumed. She agonized for centuries. Modern studies of soil layers have shown that the island was once covered with lush vegetation. The forests abounded in game. The ancient Rapa Nui people practiced agriculture, growing yams, taro, sugar cane, sweet potatoes and bananas. They went to sea in good boats made from a hollowed-out palm tree trunk and hunted dolphins. DNA analysis of food found on pottery shards indicates that the ancient islanders ate well. And this idyll was destroyed by people themselves. The forests were gradually cut down. The islanders were left without their fleet, and therefore without the meat of ocean fish and dolphins. They have already eaten all the animals and birds. The only food left for the Rapa Nui people was crabs and shellfish, which they collected in shallow waters.

Easter Island: Moai Statues

The natives could not really say anything about how the stone idols weighing several tons were made and, most importantly, how they were delivered to the shore. They called them “moai” and believed that they contained “mana” - the spirit of the ancestors of a certain clan. The more idols, the greater the concentration of supernatural power. And this leads to the prosperity of the clan. Therefore, when in 1875 the French removed one of the Easter Island moai statues to take it to a Paris museum, the Rapa Nui had to be restrained by force of arms. But, as research has shown, about 55% of all idols were not transported to special platforms - “ahu”, but remained standing (many in the stage of primary processing) in a quarry on the slope of the Rano Raraku volcano.

Art style

In total, there are more than 900 sculptures on the island. They are classified by scientists chronologically and by style. The early period is characterized by stone heads without a torso, with the face turned upward, as well as pillars where the torso is made in a very stylized manner. But there are also exceptions. Thus, a very realistic figure of a kneeling moai was found. But she remained standing in the ancient quarry. In the Middle Period, the idols of Easter Island became giants. Most likely, the clans competed with each other, trying to show that their mana was more powerful. Artistic decoration in the Middle period is more sophisticated. The bodies of the idols are covered with carvings depicting clothes and wings, and the moai often have huge cylindrical caps made of red tuff placed on their heads.

Transportation

No less a mystery than the Easter Island idols, the secret of their movement to the ahu platforms remained. The natives claimed that the moai themselves came there. The truth turned out to be more prosaic. In the lowest (more ancient) layers of the soil, scientists discovered the remains of an endemic tree that is related to the wine palm. It grew up to 26 meters, and its smooth trunks without branches reached a diameter of 1.8 m. The tree served as an excellent material for rolling sculptures from quarries to the shore, where they were installed on platforms. To hoist the idols, they used ropes that were woven from the bast of the hauhau tree. The environmental disaster also explains the fact why more than half of the sculptures ended up “stuck” in the quarries.

Short-eared and long-eared

Modern residents of Rapa Nui no longer have religious reverence for the moai, but consider them theirs cultural heritage. In the mid-50s of the last century, a researcher revealed the secret of who created the idols of Easter Island. He noticed that Rapa Nui was inhabited by two types of tribes. One of them had his earlobes lengthened since childhood by wearing heavy jewelry. The leader of this clan, Pedro Atana, told Thor Heyrdal that in their family, the ancestors passed on to their descendants the art of creating the status of moai and transporting them by dragging them to the installation site. This craft was kept secret from the “short-eared” and was passed on orally. At Heyerdahl's request, Atana and numerous assistants from his clan carved a 12-ton statue in a quarry and delivered it upright to the platform.