Rapa Nui

Rapa Nui (Easter Island)

Rapa Nui meas:
“Te Pito O Te Kainga A Hau Maka” means “The little piece of land of Hau Maka”
“Te Pito o te Kainga” means “the womb”
“Mata ki te rangi” means “eyes looking the sky”
“Rapa Nui” means “big Rapa”

Easter Island is located in South America. Easter Island is a special territory of Chile (Polynesian Islands). Nowadays the capital city is Hanga Roa. The main ancient cities was: Hanga Rea, Oroj, Orongo, Poike, Hatu Hi, etc. In this territory there are three volcanoes: Poike, Terevaka (altitude 507 metres) and Rano Kau, that is, the refief is mountainous. The climate in this region is subtropical maritime. In Easter Island rains mostly in April, occasionally, heavy rainfall and rainstroms and constantly it is exposed to winds. The lowest temperatures are registered in July and August (18° C) and the highest in February (maximum temperature 28°C)

Some scientistis say the Easter Island was settled as recently as 1200 CE.(In the movie said …1500 years ago…). Eastern Islanders claimed that a chief Hotu Matu’a and his sister, Ava Reipua (the queen), arrived on the island in the one or two large canoes with his wife and extended family. They are believed to have been Polynesian. The Austronesian Polynesians, who first settled the island, are likely to have arrived from the Marquesas Islands from the west. These settlers brought bananas, taro, sugarcane, paper mulberry, chickens and Polynesian Rats. They deforested the island and wiped out some trees. When Rapa Nui society reached their height level, they were about 10 mil inhabitants, they were twelve mata, but they deforested the island, the food was not enough because the population were increasing. These reasons provoke clan wars and the end of the civilization.



Chronology

o 1680. Rapa Nui society divided in two class: short ears and long ears (nobility).
o End of the moai period
o December 1862. Peruvian slave raiders struck Easter Island. Eventually capturing or killing about half of the island’s population (around 1500 persons).
o Autumn 1863.The slaves were freed, but most of them had already died of ill. The wise men died.
o Started and smallpox epidemic. It reduced the island’s population
o Start clan wars
o January 1864. Eugéne Eyraud, the first Christian missionary arrived.
o 1867. Tuberculosis epidemic raged over the island, taking a quarter of the island’s remaining population of 1200 includiing the last member of the island’s royal family, the 13 years old Manu Rangi.
o August 1868. Eyraud died of tuberculosis when the entire Rapa Nui population had become Roma Catholic
o April 5th 1722. Jacob Roggeven (Dutch) rediscover the Easter Island and give it that name.
o November 15, 1770. Spanishmen conquested the island and give it the name of the king of the Spain, Carlos III.
o September 9th, 1888. Annexation to Chile
o 1933. Rapa Nui become in a special territory of Chile



The most important people that lived in Easter Island were: Eugéne Eyraud, Hotu Matu, Jacob Roggeven, Haumaka, and Ava Reipua. Patriarchal society was the social organization for Easter Island. The society was divided into three classes: nobility (Ariki and the main priests), Huru Manu (fishermen and farmers, that is, ordinary settlers) and Kios (prisioners, that is, slaves and servants)


The greater part of the population lived near of the agriculture area. Near of the coastals they build the religious, politicial ceremonial centers (anakena and akahanga) and there they payed worship to the moais.
o Hare paenga: a house with an elliptical foundation, made with basalt slabs and covered with a thatched roof that resembled and overturned boat
o Hare oka: a round stone structure, similar to the Tupa
o Tupa: a round stone structre inhabited by astronomer-priest and located near the coast, where the movements of the stars can be easily observed.
o Hare moa (“chiken house”): oblong stone structures that were used to store chickens at night.
o Houses at the ceremonial village of Orongo: are shaped like hare paenga but are made enirely of flat basalt slabs found inside Rano Kao crater. The entrances to all the houses are very low, and entry requires crawling.

Families were part of a clan, they cannot got married with people who was of the others clans. It means monogame marriages. Women cannot participate in the Birdman contest and they never could be the Ariki. Women cannot build moais. Women cannot fish. Turtles could not be fished.

People wore rings, earrings, neck laces, with bones, bangles. To some rituals and ceremonies, they paint over their body with vegetal paint. Also they wear tattoos over their bodies. They wore loincloth.

People ate sweetpotatoes, sugarcanes, eggs, bananas, taro, yam, tune (only for nobility), fish and mollusks. They tamed polynesian rat, chikens, dogs, and pigs. Moreover they used the chickens as an exchange way, but they only can exchange with the other clans. People work maily doing ships, sculpturing moais or sowing, tree felling, fishing, building (The main monuments that they built were: Moais, Ahu, Manavini, Ahu Tongariki, Ahu Akivi), writing or devoted themself to medicine or astronomichal topics.

The government system was chiefdom, that is, Ariki was the leader and the priest helps him to make decitions. Ariki was engarge of distribute all the food and the properties. He was transportated in a special little throne moved by slaves and people moved using canoes or just walking throug the island. In order to know who was going to be the next Ariki was necessary do the Birdmen contest. The priest was the risht hand of the Ariki, he consulted the future and helped to the Ariki, and people obeyed his orders. Priest can made decisions about the organization. The Rapa Nui society was divided in ten clans (mata) with one territory (kainga) for each clan. Clans were subdivided into lineages (uru) They were dividen in two confederations governed by the Ariki: Ko Tu’u Aro, in the north and Ko tu’u Hotu Iti, in the south. Each Clan may participate in the Birdman contest for the political power of the Rapa Nui society. Each clan had their own leader but every clan had to do everything that Ariki wanted to.

The main gods of Rapa Nui people were: Make-Make, Tiki, Uote, Tane, Aku-Aku (the guardians of the sacred family caves). Priest had to have astronomichal knowledge, and write in the writing systems, supervise the rituals and ceremonies, and help to the Ariki to make decisions. They embalsam their dead people, and make a ritual for their dead people found their ancesors. They made canoes to the rituals. The main ceremonies and rituals made there were:
Birdman contest (Tangata Manu): contest to choose the next Ariki, each clan had their own contestant, and each contestant had their own proposal for the next Ariki. The contest was swimming, climbing, running and bring to the priest one egg.
Mana
Moais: build a moai for the birdman contest
Ritual of the cave of the virgins: it was a ritual to purify a girl, when she was get married with a boy who was to the different clan, she had to do this ritual.
Burying people in secret caves. They later started burying people in secret caves in order to save the bones from desecration by enemies.
Funerary canoes: people of Rapa Nui reportedly set the dead out to the sea in small funerary canoes
Possibly the rituals start when the child born cutting the umbilical cord
Ceremonies of the first hair cut
Ceremonies of the first loincloth
They made rituals of tattoos on their legs, when they were eight years.
Rituals to become in adults
Ceremonies of death: embalsam dead people
Cannibalism (the winner eat the loser’s body to have their strength)

About the ability of understand the writing, only a small part of the population was ever literate, rongorongo being a privilege of the ruling families and priests. Rapa nui had two differents manifestation of writing:

Petroglyphs: are pictures carved into rock for a variety of reasons: to create totems, to mark territory or to memorialize a person or event.

Rongo-Rongo: glyphs carved into rock with several insturments.
Scribes used obsidian flakes, small shark teeth, sharped bones, steel blade or steel knives (after the arrival of the Spanish) to write on Tablet N, using sharped bone and also obsidian flakes. Rapa Nui people wrote about differents themes among petroglyphs such as Birdmen, sea turtles, Komari (vulvas) and Make-Make, the chief god of the Tangata manu or Birdman cult. Rongorongo texts might contain a genealogy, their calendar and astronomic knowledge, their history (how they had arrived there), calendrical knowledge, lists with the names of enemy prisoners, rituals, prays, holy songs, fertility, death.

Rongorongo texts are:
Tahua
Small Santiago
Large Vienna
Small Washington
Angata manu
Aruku kurenga
Large Santiago
Small Vienna
Large Washington
Paris Snuffbox Mamari
Santiago Staff
Berlin
Fluted Honolulu
Poike palimpsest
Echancrée
Large reimiro
Large Saint Petersburg
Honolulu beam
Deciphement
Keiti
London
Small Saint Petersburg
Honolulu oar
Lunisolar calendar
Chauvet fragment
Small reimiro
Honolulu fragment


They made art using vegetal paint, obsidian, basalt, red scoria and the main topics were: humans, birds, Birdmens, double-headed birds, hands, foots, turtles, fish, centipedes, plants, tools, sun, stars, geometric shapes. The art mainly was cavered out into rocks
One of the classic elements of ahu design was a paved plaza before the ahu. This was called marae. Also fill the inside of the ahu with rubble. The whites of the eyes (of the moais)were made of coral, the iris was made of obsidian or red scoria. With the arrival of the Spanish they had metallurgical knowledge. People also used the vegetal paint to paint their bodies.

Rapa Nui made numerous inventions among them there are: ships, writing system, rongo-rongo writing system, nets, lunisolar calendar [very closed with agricultural issues, the natives reckoned their time, and in fact do so still by moons or months, commencing the year with August. Contains thirteen months (according to the Thomson records) or only twelve (according to other authors records).The month was dividen in two, beginning with the new and full moon. The new moon occurred on November 25 and again on the night of December 24 and the crescent was first visible on November 26], canoes, ropes, tramp for fish. They had many technological inventions among them are the following ones:
o Logs: were used to transport the moais
o Sweet potatoes: were used lubricate logs for make them (logs) last longer
o Nets: were used to fish
o Rope: were used to move the moais and to do other things.
o Writing instruments such as obsidian flakes: were used to caver out into rock
o Ships: to the small funerary
o Canoes: people of Rapa Nui reportedly set the dead out to the sea in small funerary canoes
o Stone tools (toki)
o Stone hook: were used to fish
o Bone hook: were used to fish
o Oka (wood handle for farm)
o Tramp for fish
o Aqueduct for water the crops
o Guano used as fertilizer
o Pumpkins were used as containers
o For counting they used their fingers, starting with the left hand.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

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Last date entered: 20/09/2010