What are six key events from Easter Island history create a timeline?
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)
What events happened on Easter Island?
In this story, made popular by geographer Jared Diamond’s bestselling book Collapse, the Indigenous people of the island, the Rapanui, so destroyed their environment that, by around 1600, their society fell into a downward spiral of warfare, cannibalism, and population decline.
When did Easter Island start?
Linguists estimate Easter Island’s first inhabitants arrived around AD 400, and most agree that they came from East Polynesia. The archaeological record suggests a somewhat later date of settlement, between AD 700 and 800. As early as BC 5500 people in Melanesia were voyaging in boats and trading in obsidian.
What is the history of the statues on Easter Island?
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 caused the collapse of Easter Island?
It is likely the decline of the palm and the rapid deforestation that took place on the island caused societal collapse and population collapse.
Who first lived on Easter Island?
Austronesian Polynesians
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, and paper mulberry, as well as chickens and Polynesian rats. The island at one time supported a relatively advanced and complex civilization.
Who first discovered Easter Island?
explorer Jacob Roggeveen
Between 600 and 800 A.D., a group of colonists from an unidentified location in Eastern Polynesia settled on Easter Island after sailing in a southeasterly direction for many weeks. The name Easter Island originated with the European explorer Jacob Roggeveen, who first saw the island on Easter Sunday, 1722.
What is the mystery of Easter Island?
Rapa Nui (or Easter Island, as it is commonly known) is home to the enigmatic Moai, stone monoliths that have stood watch over the island landscape for hundreds of years. Their existence is a marvel of human ingenuity — and their meaning a source of some mystery.
Why did the islanders not realize what they were doing to their island?
Why did the islanders not realize what they were doing to their island? They didn’t know what they were doing. What can save us from the same fate as the Easter Islanders? We would learn the same fate from the past.
What is the mystery about Easter Island?
The Moai that Van Tilburg’s team excavated were discovered upright in place, one on a pedestal and the other in a deep hole, indicating they were meant to remain there. “This study radically alters the idea that all standing statues in Rano Raraku were simply awaiting transport out of the quarry,” Van Tilburg said.
What is the story behind Easter Island?
An annual event. Did you know that the inhabitants of Rapa Nui,or Easter Island as it is commonly known,used to take part in an annual event?
What is the history of Easter Island?
Easter Island is more than 2000 miles from the closest populations on Tahiti and Chile—even more remote than astronauts orbiting at 210 nautical miles above the Earth. Archaeologists believe the island was discovered and colonized by Polynesians at about 400 AD. Subsequently, a unique culture developed.
What are facts about Easter Island?
Historical summary. A thousand years ago,a small group of polynesians paddled the worlds greatest ocean in search of a new land.
Who discovered Easter Island in 1722?
The name “Easter Island” was given by the island’s first recorded European visitor, the Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen, who encountered it on Easter Sunday (5 April) in 1722, while searching for “Davis Land”.