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Rapa Nui , also know as Easter Island ( a name give way to it by Europeans ) , is located in the southeast Pacific and is illustrious for its approximately 1,000 cutting of moai , homo - faced statues .
The island measures about 14 mi ( 22 kilometers ) by 7 Roman mile ( 11 kilometre ) at its uttermost points and it is often sound out that it can be get across by animal foot in a undivided daylight . The volcanic island is the most separated inhabited land mass on Earth . The close inhabited land is the Pitcairn Islands , located about 1,200 miles ( 1,900 km ) to the west . Chile , the close South American country , is locate about 2,300 miles ( 3,700 km ) to the Orient .
There are around 1,000 known Moai statues on Easter Island (Rapa Nui).
The famous sculpture are massive , up to 40 feet ( 12 meter ) tall and 75 gobs in weight . They were decorated on top with " Pukao , " a balmy red Harlan Stone in the condition of a hat . The statues also havetorsos buried beneath the heads .
Scientists are still witness novel moai , including one that wasslightly smaller than othersthat researchers unearthed in a dried up lake bed in 2023 . Meanwhile , a suspected arson attack on the island leave behind a number of moai " totally charred " in 2022 .
When was Rapa Nui settled?
Radiocarbon dating of buckram food on obsidian blade let out thathumans settled Rapa Nui by at least A.D. 1000 , a point in which Polynesians sail to the east Pacific and perhaps also to South America . For instance , a 2020 hereditary study revealed that Polynesians and Native Americans in what is now Colombiapaired up in around A.D. 1200 , although it ’s unclear where this happen . It ’s potential the Polynesians go to Colombia , pair up with locals and then their descendants returned to Polynesia . Or , perhaps masses from Colombia traveled to Polynesia , the research worker said .
As for when Rapa Nui was in the first place settled , consort to legend , a chief identify Hotu Matu’a , having learned of Rapa Nui from an advance party of explorers , led a small group of colonists , perhaps no more than 100 people , to the island .
Their place of origin is a mystery story and may have been the Marquesas Islands , located 2,300 miles ( 3,700 kilometer ) to the northwestern United States of Rapa Nui . Another hypnotism is Rarotonga , situate 3,200 nautical mile ( 5,200 kilometre ) to the southwest of the island . In any lawsuit , the voyage would have been an arduous one that may have involved tack against the farting .
The giant moai statues at Ahu Tongariki in Rapa Nui.
A deforested environment
When people first come to Rapa Nui , around 1,000 yr ago , they would have found the island overgrow with palm trees , among other vegetation . In the centuries that followed Rapa Nui was deforested until , by the 19th one C , the landscape was utterly bleak .
How this occurred is a matter of debate . When hoi polloi arrived at Rapa Nui they brought with them ( whether intentionally or not ) the Polynesian squealer , a wight that reproduces rapidly and which the Polynesians sometimes consumed . This species had no instinctive enemies on the island and may have play a major character indeforestation .
The popular title that the island ’s laurel wreath trees were drop to create devices to move the moai statues is likely incorrect . harmonise to ancient stories the statues " walked " from the quarries to their place on stone program ( known as ahu ) and , indeed , research has shown that two small team using ropes can move the statue vertically . A recent demonstration of this was recorded on a YouTube TV ( below ) byTerry Hunt , a University of Hawaii prof of anthropology , andCarl Lipo , a prof of anthropology at Binghamton , State University of New York .
It is also note by Hunt and Lipo that the disforestation of the island may not have leave to a solid food crisis . They head out in their Quran , " The statue that walk : unpick the Mystery of Easter Island " ( Free Press , 2011 ) that abundant rock on the island allowed for the building of Oliver Stone - protected garden known as " manavai . " These stone garden would have been support by lithic mulching , a process by which minerals from rocks fertilize the soil .
In a 2024 study print in the journalScience Advances , Lipo , Hunt and colleagues encounter that the population of Rapa Nuinever had a rapid wage hike or catastrophic gloaming , as it never exceeded about 3,900 prior to European arriver . Their team came to this conclusion by using shortwave infrared planet imagery and simple machine scholarship to detect archeologic rock gardens on the island , as these gardens were used by Indigenous hoi polloi to gird the soil with nutrients . These stone gardens could not have bear out more than 3,900 people , the squad contend , but other scientists called these methods too simplistic to square up population turn .
Rongorongo script
The people of the island , it appears , had enough food not only to ramp up and move statue , but also to develop a written script , today screw as Rongorongo , which researchers are still trying to decipher . carbon 14 dating of four woodwind instrument lozenge on which the hand was chip at indicate that the Sir Henry Joseph Wood was glean 200 class before Europeans arrived at Rapa Nui in the 1720s . It ’s potential the Indigenous people of Rapa Nui carved the book on quondam wood , but if they carved it on saucily cut Mrs. Henry Wood , then their writing system would beone of the few independently invented writing systemsin the earth .
Moai mystery
In their book , Hunt and Lipo provide more grounds for the mind that the statue were act vertically . They observe the presence of pathways or " roadstead " that lead from stone pit sites to moai location in the southeastward , northwesterly and southwest region of the island .
" The evidence on the land expose that roads were not part of some overall planned internet . Rather they are the remnants of paths that moai transporters took as they take the air the statues across the landscape painting , " they compose .
While this help explain how the statues were moved around the island , it does n’t explain why . Scholars do n’t cognise what the reasons were for make the statues , but they have noted several features that provide clues .
Rongorongo inscriptions on a wood tablet.
The statue on their platform can be found reverberate almost the entire coast of the island . Remarkably , despite their seaboard location , every single one of the moai seem to front inland and not out to sea , suggest that they were meant to honor citizenry or deities located within Rapa Nui itself .
expression of the moai statues appears to have stopped around the time of European contact in 1722 , when Dutch explorers landed on Easter Day . Over the next century the moai would return over , either intentionally pushed over or from simple neglect . Why construction was abandoned is another mystery . It ’s known that disease ravaged the island ’s hoi polloi after touch and that the islander had a desire for European goods . Early explorers recorded that hats were particularly popular among the people of the island .
disregarding of what the moai were intend for , and why construction of them barricade , today the popularity of the statues is high than ever . Many statues have been re - erected on their ahu base and Rapa Nui now has a population of more than 5,000 people , its hotels and quickness defend a flourishing modern tourism manufacture .
