Let’s start with a general recap and timeline of Easter Island. The culture, religion, and legends of the Rapa Nui people are directly linked to their history!
A prophet had a dream that the first chief Hotu Matu'a would follow a constellation to find a new island, Rapa Nui. The mythical island the people were living on, Hiva, was sinking back into the ocean. Chief Hotu Matu'a wanted to move his people away before their island was lost forever. They were extremely skilled seafarers. They set off to find their new promised land.
In about 1000 AD the first real Rapa Nui people came from what would be today’s french polynesia. Many people hear the words “ancient civilization” and assume that means it is thousands of years old. That may be the case for some parts of the world, but not Easter Island. The island was not inhabited until well into the modern centuries! That is really crazy to think about how young the island and the Rapa Nui culture is.
In 1200 AD, the island was divided into 13 clans. These clans kept the order and peace on the island. Each clan answered to the Rapa Nui island chief, but each clan also had their own leaders. Every clan had a certain job or trade that kept the balance of the island. For example, one clan would be the fishermen and banana growers. One clan would carve canoes and other wooden necessities. A different clan would be master stone carvers, and another would be stargazers who studied the skies to make seafaring easier. Each clan would barter and trade with each other as their form of currency. This was a very basic economy, but it worked for hundreds of years.
The construction of moais began shortly after the clans formed on the island. The master stone carvers lived in the clan that lived around Rano Raraku volcano. This became the quarry for the moais. The other clans paid for the moai by trading arts, food, and tools with the master craftsmen. The moai represented the spirits and energies of great ancestors. This energy, called mana, brought fertility, protection, and success to the Rapa Nui people and their island.
After a few centuries, the people would dig up the remains of the deceased men the moai represented and cremate them to set their spirits free. There was a time of “work” and a time of “retirement” for the passed ancestors. Their moai would then be torn down and a new moai of a recently deceased ancestor would be replaced on the ahu. An ahu is the platform that the moai sat on top of. It consists of a large rectangle base made from stone, often up to 5 meters (16.4 feet) high. This helped to keep the balance of the moai and made it easier to erect them to their final resting place.
In about 1500 AD, there was a crisis of overpopulation, deforestation, and famine. We know it was this time period from the artifacts and cave drawings found throughout the island. In 1600 AD, the clans began fighting amongst each other. This is when the old order crumbled. The last moai was carved sometime within the 17th century, probably at the beginning of the fighting. These fights were the results of the crises that happened just the few years before.
The island was doing so well as a whole, that overpopulation soon became a problem. The island is still small, so the effect was detrimental. Overpopulation led to deforestation. Canoes and homes could not be built because there were no trees to carve. Without canoes, the fishermen could not go out to sea to fish in mass quantities. Soon the only source of food came from fishing along the coast. Naturally, there are better places to fish than others. This lack of food for some and plethora of food for others started the fighting between the clans. This is the time when the islanders became warriors. The women began finding shelter among the caves of the island. Some clans bunkered in hidden caverns within the volcanoes on the island as entire tribes.
By the mid-1700s, a new religion and political system came to power. This is known as the Birdman period. The people who survived the crises knocked over all of the moai on the island. Not a single one was left standing. They did not want to see the faces of their ancestors looking down on them. They also no longer worshipped and depended on the energy the moai gave the people of the island. They believed it did not work and that is why the island came to have such a terrible time. The people did not knock down the moai out of resentment, they just had no use to them anymore and were a nuisance. They needed a new system of religion and power to work, so they removed the images of the old system.
The people of the Birdman period did not knock down the moai with full force. They had a system to bring down the statues quite carefully, actually. They could not spare losing any more lives and man power on the island. Great care and technicalities were taken to bring down the statues, and that is why many of them were able to be erected back up in modern times.
In 1867, Easter Island was annexed to Chile. Foreigners began arriving to the island in the end of the 1700s through the 1800s. It became such a popular place for foreign travelers due to the mystery and indigenous way of life that was still on the island. Missionaries came from all over the world to spread Catholicism to the Rapa Nui people. Easter Island did not belong to anyone, but it needed support of a bigger government to preserve their way of life. The closest continental government to them was Chile. Even today, Easter Island lives a life far different than continental Chile. The Chilean government understands that today’s Rapa Nui people want to be able to make their own rules for their precious government, and the Chilean government respects that. They have an unspoken agreement to stay out of each other’s way!
Starting in 1956, the layers of rubble were removed from the sacred areas and the moai were erected again. Many were able to be restored to almost their full glory. The people of the Birdman period laid all the moai face down so as not to see them, but this kept the statues nearly perfectly preserved for 300 years.
It is crucial to know that in order to understand the legends and religions of the island, you MUST know the history. Also, the Rapa Nui religion is quite complex. They had gods, but they more worshipped certain energies instead of gods. They had a few main gods that they used to explain their existence, phenomenons, and seasons. However, the energies that they gave to certain things and properties were really what drove their religion. This is very important to understand.
Also understand that the Rapa Nui people were not unintelligent people. Easter Island was an island of scientists and astrologers. They knew more about the stars, sailing, engineering, and the human body than most other pre-developed civilizations. They may have started their time well after most other “ancient” civilizations, some by even over a thousand years, but their starting paths were of higher intelligence than most others. The Rapa Nui people accomplished in 600 years what most civilizations accomplished in two thousand years, if they even accomplished such feats at all.
The Rapa Nui people were able to cross the Pacific Ocean with little to no fear. Many other civilizations wrote about the fears they had of the ocean. Many travelers never came back for other peoples. However, not the Rapa Nui. They were great astronomers and sailors. They even knew of other continents out there, no one civilization has record of doing that! Their lives were dedicated to marking the sea and finding what it had to offer. Their food resources and information about the weather and seasons all came from mapping the stars while they were traveling across the ocean.
Although the Rapa Nui people were able to move structures weighing up to 72 tons up to 20 miles, they never truly developed the wheel. They would roll round stones and the topknots of the moai, but they never put an axle through the objects, so they never knew the wheel. They did however know tools, ink, and seasonal journaling better than most ancient people. They began to share their information about trekking and stargazing when people began to come to the island in 1722. They were able to pinpoint patterns about the stars and equinoxes that the foreign travelers never knew about! That’s right, people many years after Christopher Columbus’ time never knew these things, even with all their “modern” equipment and schooling. The Rapa Nui people did know it, though.
Many young civilizations are seen as primitive and misguided. The Rapa Nui people were learning their instincts and schoolings for many generations, even well before coming to their Rapa Nui island. What is incredible is that NASA first had their eyes on this island not just because of its isolation, but because of the information it held. Yes, in the 1980s NASA was making discoveries with its telescopes and new technology that EXPLAINED what the Rapa Nui people wrote about and drew about in their cavern drawings. Many sailors from the 1880s to the 1900s were confused by the information the Rapa Nui people were sharing about the stars and the effects on earth. They began to wonder if it was lost in translation and they would never know. Just as they were putting away the Rapa Nui files, the new information being discovered by NASA scientists were shown. They finally knew what the people were talking about. Isn’t that crazy?! How did the Rapa Nui people, who did not even have a currency or the modern wheel, know things about the world and the universe that NASA could only explain with million dollar technology. Even today, that is not known. The seafaring tactics were lost with the people. They were drawn out by the modern technologies that we still rely on. The Rapa Nui people proved that we don’t need anything but our brains and some pools of water to look into! I always wonder what it must be like to have such vast knowledge, power, and confidence to go into the world with just yourself and your brain! We have truly lost touch. If only we could put together that raw intelligence and skill with the technologies we have today, I wonder what we would find.
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