The Austronesian Polynesians, who first settled the island, are likely to have arrived from the Marquesas Islands from the west. These settlers brought bananas, taro, sugarcane, and paper mulberry, as well as chickens and Polynesian rats.
How did the Polynesians travel to Easter Island?
Thousands of miles were traversed, without the aid of sextants or compasses. The ancient Polynesians navigated their canoes by the stars and other signs that came from the ocean and sky. Navigation was a precise science, a learned art that was passed on verbally from one navigator to another for countless generations.
When did the Polynesians discover Easter Island?
The first human inhabitants of Rapa Nui (the Polynesian name for Easter Island; its Spanish name is Isla de Pascua) are believed to have arrived in an organized party of emigrants. Archaeology dates their arrival at between 700-800 A.D., while linguists estimate it was around the year 400.
Why did the Polynesians on Easter Island resort to cannibalism?
With no trees to anchor the soil, fertile land eroded away resulting in poor crop yields, while a lack of wood meant islanders couldn’t build canoes to access fish or move statues. This led to internecine warfare and, ultimately, cannibalism.
How did Easter Island get populated?
The island was populated by Polynesians who most likely navigated in canoes or catamarans from the Gambier Islands (Mangareva, 2,600 km (1,600 mi) away) or the Marquesas Islands, 3,200 km (2,000 mi) away.
Why did the Polynesians migrate to Easter Island?
Early Polynesian settlers had many motivations for seeking new islands across perilous oceans. It’s clear that they were willing to risk their lives to find undiscovered lands. Hotu Matu’a and his family landed on Easter Island at Anakena Beach.
What did the Polynesians do on Easter Island?
The Austronesian Polynesians, who first settled the island, are likely to have arrived from the Marquesas Islands from the west. These settlers brought bananas, taro, sugarcane, and paper mulberry, as well as chickens and Polynesian rats.
Why did Polynesians migrate?
(Phys.org) —Two teams of researchers describe new developments in understanding early Polynesian migration. One group suggests early Polynesians may have been able to make their way southwest to New Zealand and northeast to Easter Island because of a temporary shift in wind patterns.
Who built Easter Island?
Rapa Nui people
The Easter Island is located at the southeastern Pacific Ocean, 3512 kilometers away from the nearest continental point in Chile. It is inhabited by the Rapa Nui people, whose ancestors in around 1250-1500 AD built the famous Easter Island Moai–large stone statues averagely weighed 14 tons and measured 4 meters high.
What really happened on Easter Island?
In this story, made popular by geographer Jared Diamond’s bestselling book Collapse, the Indigenous people of the island, the Rapanui, so destroyed their environment that, by around 1600, their society fell into a downward spiral of warfare, cannibalism, and population decline.
Why did Polynesians cut down trees?
One theory posits that the early Polynesians who settled on the island, also known as Rapa Nui, cut down trees for logs to roll the statues from their quarries to their overlook positions. Competition among clans led to ever bigger moai and, ultimately, to the destruction of the forest.
Do the Easter Island heads have bodies?
As a part of the Easter Island Statue Project, the team excavated two moai and discovered that each one had a body, proving, as the team excitedly explained in a letter, “that the ‘heads’ on the slope here are, in fact, full but incomplete statues.”
Where are Easter Island cannibals?
They Actually Got Along. In popular science literature, much ink has been spilled on the supposed collapse of Easter Island, or Rapa Nui, as it’s known in the local language.
What are Polynesians called?
Polynesians, including Samoans, Tongans, Niueans, Cook Islands Māori, Tahitian Mā’ohi, Hawaiian Māoli, Marquesans and New Zealand Māori, are a subset of the Austronesian peoples.
Why did Easter Island civilization collapse?
Around 1200 A.D., their growing numbers and an obsession with building moai led to increased pressure on the environment. By the end of the 17th century, the Rapanui had deforested the island, triggering war, famine and cultural collapse.
Do natives still live on Easter Island?
The easternmost Polynesian culture, the descendants of the original people of Easter Island make up about 60% of the current Easter Island population and have a significant portion of their population residing in mainland Chile.
Who discovered the Easter Island statues?
explorer Jacob Roggeveen
When Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen first discovered Easter Island in 1722, all the Moai on the island stood proudly upright. Sadly, over the next 150 odd years most had toppled over.
Polynesian navigators used wayfinding techniques such as the navigation by the stars, and observations of birds, ocean swells, and wind patterns, and relied on a large body of knowledge from oral tradition.
How were the moai moved?
Even specialized priests were known to move moai at the request of those who wanted them on their family land or ahu. Method: Tied statue on its back to a sledge (sled) made from a tree fork. 180 islanders pulled the statue using two parallel ropes tied to each side.
Did Easter Island have trees?
Easter Island was covered with palm trees for over 30,000 years, but is treeless today. There is good evidence that the trees largely disappeared between 1200 and 1650.
How did Polynesians get fresh water?
Apart from stores of water in gourds, coconuts and fish or seabirds, they were also able to catch and store rain water as replenishment.
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