EASTER ISLAND FACTS AND HISTORY | TadkaBright.Com

EASTER ISLAND 

Easter Island, Spanish Isla Delaware Pascua, conjointly called Rapa Nui, Chilean dependency in the eastern Pacific Ocean. it's the east outpost of the Polynesian island world. it's notable for its big stone statues.The island is located 1,900 miles east of Pitcairn Island and 200 miles (3,540 km) west of Chile. Fourteen square miles (23 km) long and seven miles (11 km) wide to form a triangle, half sixty-three square miles (163 sq km); Its highest point, Mount Terevaka, is 1,969 m (600 m) above sea level.

To its early inhabitants the island is known as Rapa Nui ("Great Rapa") or Te Pito Te Henua ("Center of the Earth"). of their arrival.Its mixed population is preponderantly of Polynesian descent; most sleep in the village of Hanga Roa on the protected  geographical region. Pop. (2002) 3,304; (2017) seven,750.

Easter Island civilization

Relief

The small and unsmooth island isn't a part of a sunken dry land however may be a typical oceanic high island fashioned by volcanoes rising from the seafloor. earth science and oceanographic proof shows that no perceptible emergence or submersion of the island’s outline has taken place since the last fall in water level, that occurred but ten,000 years past. However, within the early twenty first century Easter Island older increasing coastal erosion thanks to rising ocean levels, that conjointly vulnerable varied anthropology sites.

3 extinct volcanoes mainly composed of tuff (a porous rock fashioned of compacted volcanic fragments) and joined by their own lava flows offer the island its characteristic triangular form. Parasitic volcanic rock craters and cones (i.e., craters and cones fashioned on the facet of, or near, volcanoes when the first vent has become obstructed up) ar interspersed within the landscape, that is otherwise dominated by scoured volcanic rock fields in which obsidian is ordinarily foundMost of those fields ar thickly full of each giant and little lumps of cellular and tuffaceous volcanic rock that's either black or rusty in color.

Seedless surface soil is sparse; it's appropriate for in depth cultivation principally within the Hanga Roa and Mataveri space in the southwest, at Vaihu and on the plain southwest of the volcano Rano Raraku, and on the prehistorically cleared Poike land within the jap corner of the island.Precipitation is deposited between the relatively small lakes of the volcanoes Rano Kao, Rano Raraku and Rano Aroi.

Water from the unusually deep Rano Kao well, about 900 meters wide, is piped into Hunga Roa.

The coast is made by soft, eroded, ash-grey cliffs, with a vertical drop of concerning five hundred to one,000 feet (150 to three hundred metres); the cliffs ar intercepted by long stretches of low, hard, and rugged volcanic rock formations.

There is no natural harbour, however anchorage is found off Hanga Roa on the west coast; off Vinapu and Hotu-Iti on the south coast; and off Anakena and within the Bahía la Perouse on the north coast.

Notable among the few tiny offshore islets ar Motu-Nui, Motu-Iti, and Motu-Kaokao (which patterned in a very native bird cult) close to the southwest cape. the sole true sand beach is at Anakena; most alternative beaches ar of gravel. Caves abound, several consisting of subterranean rooms joined by slim tunnels extending so much into the volcanic rock beds.

CLIMATE

The climate is subtropical: i.e., sunny and dry. The warmest months ar Jan through March, once the common temperature is seventy three °F (23 °C), and therefore the coolest months ar June through August, once the common temperature is sixty four °F (18 °C). Average annual precipitation is concerning forty nine inches (1,250 mm) however with sizeable annual variation. 

Gregorian calendar month is that the driest month, and therefore the heaviest rain happens in June and July in accordance with the passage of austral winter fronts. Winds are rare in June and August; For the rest of the year the trade winds are strong from the east and southeast. From Gregorian calendar month through March the Peru (or Humboldt) Current, that has a median temperature of concerning seventy °F (21 °C), flows against the island.

PLANT AND ANIMAL LIFE

Indigenous plants and animals ar few. At the time of European arrival the toromiro tree, endemic to the island, was the sole wild tree and therefore the geographical region wolfberry the sole wild woody plant, the vegetation being preponderantly nonwoody.The toromiro tree was heavily exploited by the island's carpenters, so the last traditional sculpture died in the mid-fifties.

The species was saved from extinction, however; The Norwegian Archaeological Expedition collected the seeds and planted them in the Göteborg Grove, and plantings from the garden were reintroduced to Easter Island in 1988. Analysis of pollen deposits has unconcealed that alternative trees and shrubs, among them the enormous Chile palm (Jubaea spectabilis), were erst gift on the island till annihilated by in depth fires occurring at the time of aboriginal human settlement.

Today solely thirty one wild flowering plants, 14 ferns, and fourteen mosses are rumored. Grass and little ferns dominate the barren landscape, whereas the marshy crater lakes ar thickly coated by 2 foreign yank species, the totora reed (an necessary building material) and Polygonum acuminatum (a healthful plant).

Variety of cultivated species of plants were conjointly introduced partially from America and partially from Polynesia before the arrival of Europeans; of those the principal species was the sweet potato, that was cultivated in in depth plantations and fashioned the staple diet. Bottle gourds, sugarcane, bananas, taro, yams, and 2 helpful trees (i.e., the Asiatic paper mulberry, with bark used for material manufacture, and therefore the American Triumfetta semitriloba, with bark used for rope making) were of aboriginal importation, as conjointly in all probability were the husk-tomato, atiny low sort of pineapple, and therefore the coconut.

PEOPLE OF EASTER ISLAND

The island’s population represents the easternmost settlement of a primarily Polynesian subgroup that in all probability derived from the Marquesas group.The original Rapa Nui vocabulary was lost, except for Polynesian and Polynesian vernacular words written before the Tahitian dialect was introduced to missionaries in 1864. nowadays Spanish is usually spoken. In their traditions, the islanders systematically divide themselves into descendants of 2 distinct ethnic teams, the “Long-Ears” and therefore the “Short-Ears” (see below). Intermarriage is common, ANd an flow of foreign blood has become progressively dominant in recent years.

ECONOMY

Although the indigenous economy was supported by the cultivation of sweet potatoes, poultry, and coastal fishing, the island has shifted to an economically viable economy. The gap of AN airdrome at Mataveri near Hanga Roa has permissible AN increasing flow of tourists since the Nineteen Sixties, and a number of little hotels are in-built the village space, wherever several islanders and settlers from continental Chile also have accommodations in their homes. 

The ties to continental Chile area unit strong through twice-weekly flights from Santiago and the building of colleges, hospitals, and a large community hall for sports and performances.The well-planned planning of the Chilean National Park provides for guided tours and protection of unique archeological monuments. renewal comes are with success initiated, together with eucalyptus plantations at Vaitea and coconut groves in Anakena Bay.

HISTORY

The first European to land on Easter Island was the Dutch admiral Jacob Roggeveen, WHO paid it one day’s visit in 1722. He and his crew found a population that they delineate as being of mixed physical sorts WHO worshiped vast standing statues with fires whereas they prostrated themselves to the rising sun. a number of them, aforesaid to be “white men,” had their earlobes slit and hanging to their shoulders, a clearly non-Polynesian custom.

An expedition sent by the Spanish viceroy of Peru rediscovered the island in 1770. The Spaniards spent four days in the world and were the first to report that the aborigines had their own traditional type of writing. He numbered about 3,000 people.

War seems to have broken out on the island before the arrival of the British sailor Captain James Cook in 1774; Reducing to only 600 or 700 men, the poor Polynesian population and less than 30 girls were received by the British, the WHO also ruled that these large statues were no longer remembered, most of them deliberately eliminated. .

In 1786 the French navigator Jean-François DE Galaup, Auguste Comte DE La Pérouse, arrived and located some a pair of,000 individuals on the island; he tried vainly to introduce livestock. variety of sailing vessels, together with whalers, visited the island from 1792 onward.By 1860 the population was estimated to be 3,000, but a major slave invasion of South America in 1862, followed by an epidemic of smallpox, reduced the population to 111 in 1877.

At the tip of the nineteenth century it began to extend yet again.In 1864, a French Catholic missionary, Brother Eugne Airaud, became the chief foreigner to decide on the island; As a result, numbers of people returned to Christianity in 1868. Tahiti immigrants began raising sheep in 1870.

In 1888 the island was annexed by Chile, that hired nearly all its territory for sheep raising; in 1954 the Chilean navy administration took over the sheep vary. In 1965 a civilian governor was appointed by the Chilean government, and therefore the islanders became full Chilean voters. at intervals one generation the Easter Islanders with success knowledgeable a complete acculturation to continental standards while not losing their pride in their own ancestors and their skills and customs. Annually in Gregorian calendar month previous and young of each sexes meet in contests to revive the humanities and practices of the island’s past, together with carving, tattooing, reed-boat building, and ancient singing and dance. The Rapa Nui Marine Protected Area, as of 2018, covers 286,000 square kilometres. Miles (740,000 sq km) of the Pacific Ocean was established around Easter Island.

ARCHAEOLOGY OF EASTER ISLAND

The island is known for its large stone arches, circa 600, and the ruins of large stone platforms (ahus) with open courtyards on the lower sides, many of which depict architectural art. archaeologic surveys were distributed in 1886, 1914, and 1934; archaeologic excavations were initiated in 1955. The excavations discovered that 3 distinct cultural periods area unit classifiable on the island.

The first numbers are represented by ahus in Taihai, Vinapu and Anakena, which were composed of carbon around 700–850 CE. The first two were loved and described by Captain Cook; Anakena was kept underground until excavations in 1987.

TRADITIONAL CULTURE

Late Easter Islanders lived in hay huts or caves. this era was marked by internal wars, general destruction, and cultural degeneracy. 

The mataa, or obsidian spearpoint, that was factory-made, is that the characteristic artifact of this era. Wood carving and tiny crude stone figurines replaced monumental art. Written wood tablets lined with incised signs (called rongo-rongo) placed in boustrophedon (a technique of writing within which the lines run alternately from right to left and from left to right) were derived from earlier specimens simply for ritual purposes; their correct reading was forgotten, and—despite several claims—modern tries at deciphering them have unsuccessful. throughout this era art treasures were hidden on the Q.T. family caves, whereas the upright ahu images were in turn overthrown. The mud from abandoned mines to the chests of blind people and unfinished buses parked at the bottom of the volcano, makes it impossible to uproot it.

Tradition maintains that destruction began once a amount of peaceful existence between 2 individuals of different culture and language—the Long-Ears and therefore the Short-Ears. The latter, bored with drudging for the previous, most destroyed them funeral pyre on an ancient ditch at Poike on the way northeastern coast. carbon-14 dating and genealogies concur in putting this event and therefore the starting of the late amount at concerning 1680. the first construction of the bogus Poike ditch, in keeping with carbon-14 dating, about 380 CE.

Written by - Wajida Tabassum

Posted by - Tarun Mahawar | TadkaBright.Com