When this island is mentioned, an association usually arises with huge stone idols, installed by someone unknown, how, when and why. However, on a small piece of land in the middle of the endless Pacific Ocean, so many different mysteries are concentrated that it would be more than enough for the whole continent.
Dutch Admiral Jacob Roggeven, who set out from Amsterdam in search of the mysterious South Land, was perhaps not the first European to discover Easter Island. But he was the first to describe it and determine the coordinates. And the European name for the island was given by Roggeven, whose ships docked at it on April 5, 1722. It was Easter Sunday.
The sailors were met by blacks, reds, and finally completely white people who had unusually long earlobes. In the logbook it is noted that local residents "lit fires in front of very tall stone statues with ….>, which amazed us, because we could not understand how these people, having neither a drill tree nor strong ropes, were able to erect them."
The famous captain James Cook landed on the island half a century later, in 1774, and was struck no less than Roggeven, noting the incredible contrast between the giant statues and the squalid life of the indigenous population: “It was difficult for us to imagine how the islanders, devoid of technology, were able to establish these amazing figures and, in addition, to plant huge cylindrical stones on their heads,”he wrote.
According to estimates by both Cook and Roggeven, about 3,000 natives lived there, who called their island either Mata-ki-te-Ragi, which means “eyes looking at the sky,” or Te-Pito-o-te-henua, that is, “navel Earth . Thanks to the Tahitian sailors, the island is often called Rapa Nui (translated as “Big Rapa”) to distinguish it from Rapa Iti Island, which lies 650 km south of Tahiti.
It is currently a treeless island with barren volcanic soil and a population of less than 5,000. However, earlier dense forests grew on it and life was seething, witnessed by giant stone statues - moai, as the aborigines called them. According to local beliefs, the moai contains the supernatural power of the ancestors of the first king of Easter Island - Hotu-Matu'a.
Promotional video:
Strange, similar to each other, with the same facial expression and implausibly elongated ears, they are scattered throughout the island. Once the statues stood on pedestals, turning their gaze to the center of the island - this was seen by the first Europeans who visited the island. But then all the idols, and there are 997 of them, turned out to be lying on the ground.
Everything that exists on the island today was restored in the last century. The last restoration of 15 moai located between the Rano Raraku volcano and the Poike peninsula was carried out by the Japanese in 1992-1995.
There is a quarry on the slopes of this volcano, where ancient craftsmen used basalt cutters and heavy stone picks to cut moai from soft volcanic tuff. The height of most of the statues is 5-7 m, the height of later statues reached 10-12 m. The average mass of moai is about 10 tons, but there are also much heavier ones. The quarry is full of unfinished statues, the work on which was interrupted for some unknown reason.
Moai are located on massive ahu pedestals along the coast of the island at a distance of 10-15 km from the quarries. Ahu reached 150 m in length and 3 m in height and consisted of pieces weighing up to 10 tons. It is not surprising that these giants struck European sailors, and then the world community. How did the ancient inhabitants of the island manage to do this, whose descendants eked out a miserable existence and did not give the impression of heroes?
How did you drag the fully finished, finished and polished statues across mountains and valleys without damaging them during the journey? How were they perched on ahu? How did they put stone "hats" weighing from 2 to 10 tons on their heads after that? And finally, how did these sculptors appear on the furthest inhabited islands in the world?
But this is far from all the secrets of Rapa Nui. In 1770, they decided to annex an abandoned piece of land called San Carlos to the possessions of the Spanish crown. When the head of the Spanish expedition, Captain Felipe Gonzalez de Aedo, drew up an act on the annexation of the island and signed it, the leaders of the local tribes put their signatures under the text - they carefully put some strange signs on paper. As intricate as tattoos on their bodies or drawings on coastal cliffs. So there was a written language on the island ?!
It turns out that it existed. In every aboriginal dwelling there were wooden tablets with signs carved on them. The inhabitants of Rapa Nui called their written language cohau rongo-rongo. Now in the museums of the world there are 25 plaques, their fragments, as well as stone figurines, covered with the same mysterious signs.
Alas, this is all that remains after the educational activities of Christian missionaries. And even the oldest inhabitants of the island cannot explain the meaning of even one sign, let alone read the text.
In 1914-1915. The head of the English expedition to Rapa Nui, Mrs. Catherine Scorsby Raugledge, found an old man named Tomenica who was able to write some signs. But he did not want to initiate the stranger into the secret of rongo-rongo, saying that the ancestors will punish anyone who reveals the secret of the letter to the aliens. As soon as the diaries of Catherine Routledge were published, she herself suddenly died, and the materials of the expedition were lost …
Forty years after the death of Tomenica, the Chilean scholar Jorge Silva Olivares met his grandson, Pedro Pate, who inherited the rongo-rongo dictionary from his grandfather. Olivares managed to photograph a notebook with the words of the ancient language, but, as he himself writes, “the reel with the film turned out to be either lost or stolen. The notebook itself also disappeared."
In 1956, the Norwegian ethnographer and traveler Thor Heyerdahl learned that the islander Esteban Athan had a notebook with all the signs of ancient writing and their meaning in Latin letters. But when the famous traveler tried to examine the notebook, Esteban immediately hid it. Soon after the meeting, the aborigine sailed in a small homemade boat to Tahiti, and no one else heard of him or the notebook.
Scientists from many countries have tried to decipher the mysterious signs, but they have not succeeded so far. However, a similarity was found between the writing of Easter Island with the hieroglyphics of Ancient Egypt, the ancient Chinese figurative writing and the letters of Mohenjo-Aaro and Harappa.
Another mystery of the island is connected with … its regular disappearance. Only in the XX century. several surprising cases are documented when he rather cleverly "hid" from the navigators. So, in August 1908 the Chilean steamer "Gloria" after a long voyage was going to replenish the supply of fresh water there. But when the steamer left at the point marked by the navigator, there was no island there!
The calculation showed that the steamer had passed straight through the island and was now moving away from it. The captain ordered to turn back, but calculations showed that the Gloria is right in the center of the island!
After 20 years, the tourist liner was supposed to pass a few miles from Easter Island, but it was nowhere to be seen, even with the most powerful binoculars. The captain immediately transmitted a sensational radiogram to Chile. The Chilean authorities reacted quickly: the gunboat left the port of Valparaiso to a mysterious place, but the island was back in its usual place.
During World War II, two German submarines headed for Easter Island, where a tanker was waiting for them. But there was no tanker or island at the meeting place. For several hours, the boats plowed the ocean in fruitless searches. Finally, the commander of one of the submarines decided to break the radio silence and got in touch with the tanker. They met only 200 miles from Easter Island, and the second submarine disappeared without a trace …
Many researchers assumed that the local population comes from India, from Egypt, from the Caucasus, from Scandinavia and, of course, from Atlantis. Heyerdahl hypothesized that the island was inhabited by settlers from Ancient Peru. Indeed, the stone sculptures are very reminiscent of the figurines found in the Andes. The island grows sweet potatoes, which are common in Peru. And Peruvian legends spoke of the battle of the Incas with the people of the northern white gods.
After defeat in battle, their leader Kon-Tiki led his people west across the ocean. On the island, there are legends about a powerful leader named Tupa who arrived from the east (perhaps this was the tenth Sapa Inca Tupac Yupanqui). According to the Spanish traveler and scientist of the 16th century. Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa, at that time the Incas had a fleet of balsa rafts, on which they could reach Easter Island.
Using folklore descriptions, Heyerdahl built the Kon-Tiki raft from 9 balsa logs and proved that it was possible to cover the distance between South America and Polynesia in ancient times. Nevertheless, the theory of the Peruvian origin of the ancient population of Easter Island has not convinced the scientific world. Genetic analysis indicates rather its Polynesian origin, and Rapanui belongs to the Polynesian family. Scientists also argue about the date of settlement, calling the time from 400 to 1200.
A possible history of Easter Island (according to later reconstructions) looks like this.
The first settlers erected statues of small sizes, without "hats" made of stone on their heads, erected ceremonial buildings and organized festivities in honor of the god Make-Mak. Then strangers arrived on the island. Because of the artificially elongated ears, they were nicknamed hanau-eepe - "long-eared" (Heyerdahl argued that the long-eared are the Peruvian Indians who settled on the island around 475, and the aborigines are Polynesians).
Having settled on the Poike Peninsula, they initially lived peacefully, differing in their peculiar culture, the presence of writing and other skills. Having sailed to Rapa Nui without women, the newcomers married the representatives of the indigenous tribe, whom they began to call Hanau-Momoko - "short-eared". Gradually, the Hanau-Eepe settled the entire eastern part of the island, and then subdued the Hanau-Momoko, which caused hatred from the latter.
From this time, the construction of stone giants with rough faces, far from the previous realistic manner, began. Ahu platforms are being built with less care, but now statues are erected on them, with their backs facing the sea. Perhaps they were transported to the coast on a wooden sled greased with fish oil. In those days, most of the island was covered with palm trees, so there were no problems with wooden skating rinks.
But the locals, to whom Thor Heyerdahl addressed the question of how giant stone figures were transported in ancient times, answered him that they walked on their own. Heyerdahl and other enthusiasts have found several ways to transport stone idols upright.
For example, with the help of ropes, the moai were tilted, leaning on one of the corners of the base, and turned around this axis using wooden levers. At the same time, groups of riggers with the help of ropes kept the block from excessive inclination.
From the outside, it really seemed that the moai themselves were moving along the paved roads that were actually laid on the island. The problem is that the relief of the volcanic island is literally indented, and it is not clear how to move the multi-ton giants up and down the hills surrounding Rano Raraku.
Be that as it may, moai were created, moved and erected on the hanau-momoko pedestals under the leadership of hanau-epe. Such hard labor could not do without casualties, and the population of the island, even in the best times, according to scientists, did not exceed 10-15 thousand people. In addition, cannibalism was practiced on Rapa Nui.
The Rapanui were a warlike people, as evidenced by the numerous clashes between the locals described in the legends. And the defeated often became the main dish during the celebration of victory. Given the dominance of the long-eared, it is not difficult to figure out whose fate was worse. And the short-eared eventually rebelled.
The few long-eared ones fled to the Poike Peninsula, where they took refuge behind a wide ditch 2 km long. So that the enemy could not overcome the obstacle, they cut down the surrounding palm trees and dumped them into the moat to set them on fire in case of danger. But the short-eared in the darkness bypassed the enemies from the rear and threw them themselves into the burning ditch.
All hanau-eepe were exterminated. The symbols of their power - moai - were thrown from their pedestals, and work in the quarries stopped. This epoch-making event for the island took place, probably just after the discovery of the island by Europeans, for at the end of the 18th century. the sailors did not see the idols standing on the pedestals.
However, by that time, the degradation of the community had become irreversible. Most of the forests have been destroyed. With their disappearance, people lost the building materials for making huts and boats. And since with the extermination of the long-eared the best craftsmen and agronomists were destroyed, life on Easter Island soon turned into an everyday struggle for existence, a companion of which was cannibalism, which again began to gain momentum.
However, the missionaries fought the latter quite successfully, converting the natives to Christianity. But in 1862 the island was invaded by Peruvian slave traders, who captured and took away 900 people, including the last king. They also destroyed some of the statues, after which many aborigines and missionaries who lived there fled from the island.
And diseases brought by pirates - smallpox, tuberculosis, leprosy - reduced the size of the island's already small population to a hundred people. Most of the priests of the island died, who buried all the secrets of Rapa Nui with them. The following year, the missionaries who landed on the island found no sign of a newly-existing unique civilization that the locals placed at the center of the world.