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Easter Island and the Mysterious Moai

© Jennifer Overhulse-King

As with other powerful or influential civilizations throughout the ages, the rise of the Rapa Nui led to the fall of the Rapa Nui. At the peak of the Rapa Nui civilization around 1000 - 1600 AD, archaeologists estimate the island's seams were bulging with a population of between 9,000 and 10,000 people. That's roughly 217 people per square mile! This gross overpopulation combined with the cutting of the palm forest caused ecological destruction of the highest order to occur on the island. Centuries of raising crops and the loss of topsoil in runoff left a severely depleted land with little resources. The lack of food and resources prompted periods of intertribal warfare and, some say, cannibalism.

"Cannibalism among the Rapa Nui has been bandied about, but there is very little hard evidence," said Lee. "I think someone found a bone with cut marks, but that doesn't make it a case of cannibalism. Yet, the island legends abound with tales of who ate whom. In the rest of Polynesia, in the very early times, cannibalism was ritual. That is, the chief would eat the eyeball of a victim in order to gain his power/mana. Later on, there are documented cases of cannibalism in the Marquesas, which seem to go beyond the ritual aspect. But we have nothing firm from Easter Island, only rumors."

The year 1722 saw Rapa Nui's first encounter with Europeans. Jacob Roggeveen, a Dutch sailor landed on the island on Easter Day of that year and named the island Easter Island in honor of the event. By that time, the population on the island had already begun a steady decline. In 1722, it is estimated that there were only about 4,000 native Rapa Nui living on the island.

Some would say those that perished in the bloody civil wars before the Europeans came were the lucky ones. The next century brought raiding Spanish slavers and new diseases, like smallpox, to wipe out the rest of the Rapa Nui. By 1887, only 111 Rapa Nui remained. Their great culture was destroyed, lost forever. They had little written history and much about their ways of life and religion are still a mystery today.

Chile stopped the inevitable from happening in 1888, when they formally annexed Easter Island, leading to a stabilization of the Rapa Nui way of life. Today, the Rapa Nui of Easter Island are regarded as citizens of Chile. The population is growing and the people farm a land that is once again fertile. The Rapa Nui are governed by a mayor and council of elders who are supervised by a Chilean governor. Several movements have been made to try to gain Easter Island's independence, but none have succeeded.