Bears Get Around: Easter Island

“Whoa there, teddy bear – there are no bears on Easter Island!”

Oh, all right. There really aren’t. But my chum Bromeliad and I share a great interest in this lovely Polynesian island.

In fact, Bromeliad is so keen on learning about Polynesia that she dresses up like a Hawaiian pineapple, for pete’s sake.

Ouch! Those things are prickly, too!

Leis (traditional necklaces made of flowers) feel much nicer.

By the way, pineapples belong to a family of plants called bromeliads. Though we think of pineapples as typical of Hawaii, they originally came from South America. They’ve been grown in Hawaii as a commercial crop since the late 1800s.

People, crops, and animals have been moving around Polynesia for a very long time. Polynesia is a vast region of islands and archipelagoes in the southern and central Pacific Ocean. “Polynesia” comes from the Greek words for “many islands.”

Polynesian people have been outstanding mariners and navigators since ancient times. In their sturdy sea-going canoes, they explored huge distances between Pacific islands with great courage and skill.

Last winter, I wrote several stories for you about my own visit to New Zealand. New Zealand was settled by a Polynesian people named the Maori over a thousand years ago. The Hawaiian islands were settled by Polynesian ancestors as much as 1,700 years ago.

One of the most remote islands Polynesian people ever colonised is called Easter Island, or Rapa Nui.

Rapa Nui means “big Rapa.” The island is also called Easter Island because it was visited by a Dutch explorer, Jacob Roggeveen, on Easter Sunday in 1722 (hey, Easter in 2012 falls next Sunday, April 8^th).

Another name for the island is Te Pito o Te Henua. That means, “the navel of the world.”

I know that we each have belly buttons, or “navels.” So, it seems, does the Earth – and the belly button is in Polynesia!

Rapa Nui was created by volcanoes. It is so very far away from any other land: the nearest inhabited island (called Pitcairn) is over 2,000 kilometres west, while South America lies over 3,500 kilometres to the east. 

Can you imagine being so far away from anything else? I think it would be like living on a spaceship in the middle of vast interstellar space, with only your own spaceship’s supplies and crew to rely on.

Once Rapa Nui was settled – about 1,500 years ago – people built a unique life here pretty much all on their own.

This beach is called Anakena. It’s also called Hanga Rau o Te Ariki, or “bay to disembark.” It’s said to be where Hotu Matu’a, leader of the original Polynesian settlers, first landed on the island.

Archaeologists say that the first settlers probably voyaged to Rapa Nui from the Marquesas, a group of islands about 3,500 kilometres to the northwest.

  The 160-square-kilometre island has one town now, called Hanga Roa. That means “long bay.” About 4,200 people live there. There were once many villages on Rapa Nui, but warfare, oppression, and disease took an awful toll on the island’s people before about 1900.

 

Some of the most famous creations of Rapa Nui are the stone moai, or statues of ancestors. There are 887 moai known. Moai were carved, and set up all over the island, between about 900 and 300 years ago.

These fine souvenirs are just my size. The original moai are huge, as much as ten metres high. One unfinished moai would have been 21 metres tall if it had ever been erected, and weighed about 270 tons!

Many moai were erected on ahu, or stone platforms. 

 

The ahu below, called Vinapu, is famous because it looks like stonework from South America.

There are many reasons to think that Polynesians may have visited South America centuries ago! They apparently brought things like chickens and earth ovens (called currandos) to South America. They then sailed back home to Rapa Nui with goodies like sweet potatoes, reeds, and white bottle gourds.

 

Some of the moai were built with hats (or maybe topknots) called pukau. 

The pukau come from a quarry in a volcano called Puna Pau.

 

The great statues were quarried at another volcano, called Rano Raraku.

All of the moai were knocked over in warfare that began in the seventeenth century.

 

Many moai have now been set upright again. Doing that is still hard work! There’s lots of debate about how people moved moai around hundreds of years ago, using only their own muscles and ingenuity.

There are many caves on Rapa Nui. Some, like Ana Te Pahu (“ana” means cave), were used for shelter during warfare.

  These little islets are called Motu Nui, Motu Iti, and Motu Kau Kau.

You can see them from a cliff-top ceremonial site called Orongo.

A sacred race to collect the first bird’s egg each year from Motu Nui started at Orongo. The winner was called the Tangata manu, or bird-man.

The most important god of the bird-man religion was named Make-Make. There are many carvings on rock (or petroglyphs) of Make-Make and of bird-men at Orongo.

 

And here, my friends, is the navel of the Earth’s navel, as it were: a magnetic “healing stone” at a place called Ahu Te Pito Kura. The stone actually makes the needle of a compass turn.

Visiting Rapa Nui, and meeting the people who make their home there, is an awesome experience.

Bromeliad, our new Polynesian friends, and I hope that you’ll continue learning more about the island on your own!

Story and photos © S. Clouthier

Map of Polynesia courtesy Wikipedia