What is Easter Island culture?
i]) are the Polynesian peoples indigenous to 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.
Which culture created the Easter Island?
The island is most famous for its nearly 1,000 extant monumental statues, called moai, which were created by the early Rapa Nui people.
What are 3 cultural facts about Easter Island?
6 incredible facts you never knew about Easter Island
- Easter Island has a few different names.
- Easter Island is the world’s most secluded inhabited island.
- A Polynesian chief first settled the island hundreds of years ago.
- The moai are believed to represent Rapa Nui ancestors.
What is the meaning of Easter Island?
Easter Island. noun. an isolated volcanic island in the Pacific, 3700 km (2300 miles) west of Chile, of which it is a dependency: discovered on Easter Sunday, 1722; annexed by Chile in 1888; noted for the remains of an aboriginal culture, which includes gigantic stone figures.
What is the Rapa Nui culture like?
Traditional dress includes feather headdresses and simple loincloths, while carvings are composed of stone or wood and jewelry from coral or seashells. Music comprises chanting and choral singing accompanied by conch shell trumpets, and the Rapa Nui people typically perform it during ceremonies with plenty of dancing.
Why is Easter Island important to history?
Easter Island is famous for its stone statues of human figures, known as moai (meaning “statue”). The island is known to its inhabitants as Rapa Nui. The moai were probably carved to commemorate important ancestors and were made from around 1000 C.E. until the second half of the seventeenth century.
What are 5 interesting facts about Easter Island?
Here are 5 interesting facts about this mystifying corner of the world.
- It was the first Pacific island to be registered as a UNESCO World Heritage Site..
- None of the statues were standing when scientists arrived!
- Easter Island lies 3,700km to the west of Chile!
- It is one of the most remote islands in the world!
What happened at Easter Island?
Destruction of society and population. A series of devastating events killed almost the entire population of Easter Island. Jared Diamond suggested that Easter Island’s society so destroyed their environment that, by around 1600, their society fell into a downward spiral of warfare, cannibalism, and population decline.
Why was Easter Island built?
The moai were probably carved to commemorate important ancestors and were made from around 1000 C.E. until the second half of the seventeenth century. Over a few hundred years the inhabitants of this remote island quarried, carved and erected around 887 moai.
What are six key events from Easter Island history?
Timeline
- 2013 Tourism levels of about 70,000 people visit annually (cited in Hamilton)
- 1960s First commercial airplanes land on the island (Hamilton)
- 1853 Easter Island made a Chilean National Park (Hamilton)
- 1903-1953 Entire island used extensively to raise sheep, people moved into the only town (Hamilton)
