The mysterious Easter Island has attracted the attention of researchers with its interesting riddles for many decades. At present, there are almost no secrets left on it – science has been able to explain everything, including the famous stone idols. Despite this, every year Easter Island is visited by a huge number of tourists eager to independently touch its ancient history.
The self-name of its inhabitants is rapanui. Actually, the island itself they call the same – Rapanui. The population density on Easter Island is three times higher than in Russia. Once there were almost 15 thousand people living on it, but at the end of the 19th century only a little more than 180 Rapanuans lived here. The last king of Easter Island went missing during a visit to Chile. It was announced his mysterious death from unknown causes. Since then there have been no kings on Rapanui. The island was officially taken under control of the Republic of Chile in 1888. There are more unfinished stone idols on Easter Island than finished ones. Archaeological excavations suggest that at some point the inhabitants of the island simply quit their jobs. All the idols of Easter Island weigh less than one would expect, looking at their size, because they are made of light mineral, which is a compacted volcanic ash.
Once on Easter Island two people lived. One of them owned the secret making of statues, and therefore the other respected and feared him. The islanders actually kept the sculptors, and those for it supplied them with statues. The first idols on Easter Island appeared about 1000 years ago. An experiment conducted by researchers showed that a couple of dozen men with the help of ropes and primitive wooden tools could easily move a massive statue from Easter Island. So the mystery about how they were delivered to the installation site, was solved.
Today, you can get to Easter Island relatively quickly. Planes fly from Chile here. Despite the tiny size of Easter Island, which now has about 6,000 people, the local airport is able to receive even large planes. That’s because in the 80s, NASA equipped it for a possible emergency landing of space shuttles. Now about 50% of the inhabitants of Easter Island are native Chileans. The remaining 50% are descendants of mixed marriages between Chileans and Rapanuits. Landscapes on Rapanui are quite scarce on vegetation. Only about 30 species of plants grow here. Flora is also not much, there are only 31 species of birds here. The hens that were once introduced to Easter Island by Europeans died out here in the middle of the last century. They did not import them again. Among all the inhabited islands of the world, it is Rapanui that is the most distant from the “mainland”.
There is internet on Easter Island. At least in the capital and generally the only local city, Anga Roa. The highest point of Easter Island lies at an altitude of 539 meters above sea level. This is the top of the volcano Terevak. The island has a nearly regular triangular shape, with three volcanoes rising in the corners. Fortunately, extinct. All the famous statues on Easter Island are carved from a single piece of stone. Some idols on Rapanui have eyes painted, and hats or hairs adorn their heads. Why only some, no one knows. Almost Easter Island statues were made of pumice, so even the largest of them weigh no more than 5 tons, despite their impressive size. But there are others – so, one of the unfinished idols weighs about 270 tons, and its growth should have been about 20 meters.
All statues on Easter Island, except seven of them, are turned into the depths of the island. Now there are 397 statues on the island. Almost all idols on Easter Island are located on the shore. But the above seven pieces are almost in the center. The locals themselves call these statues “moai”. When Europeans first arrived on Easter Island, they noted the strange custom of the locals – Rapanuy men cut their earlobes. Archaeologists have found on the Rapanui many plates with inscriptions, but could not decipher them. Apparently, on some of them the text goes from left to right, and on others – from right to left. There used to be forests on Easter Island, but the locals have exhausted almost all of them by putting wood on tools for making statues. Near Easter Island is a tiny island Motunui, with steep shores, completely lifeless. They found on it a platform on which the idols once stood, which were then dropped into the sea. How rapanuytsy could deliver them there, still no one knows.
