World trivia | 60 interesting facts about Easter Island

One of the most popular islands in the world is the Easter Island, which is very famous because of the mysterious existence of some huge statues.

So, let’s find out more about the Easter Island!

1. Easter Island is an island and special territory of Chile.
2. Easter Island is located in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, at the southeasternmost point of the Polynesian Triangle in Oceania.
3. Easter Island is most famous for its nearly 1,000 extant monumental statues, called moai,
4. Moai were created by the early Rapa Nui people.
5. In 1995, UNESCO named Easter Island a World Heritage Site, with much of the island protected within Rapa Nui National Park.
6. It is believed that Easter Island’s Polynesian inhabitants arrived on Easter Island sometime near 1200 AD.
7. They created a thriving and industrious culture, as evidenced by the island’s numerous enormous stone moai and other artifacts.
8. However, land clearing for cultivation and the introduction of the Polynesian rat led to gradual deforestation.
9. By the time of European arrival in 1722, the island’s population was estimated to be 2,000 to 3,000.
10. European diseases, Peruvian slave raiding expeditions in the 1860s, and emigration to other islands, e.g. Tahiti, further depleted the population.
11. As a result of these thing the population reduced it to a low of 111 native inhabitants in 1877.
12. Chile annexed Easter Island in 1888.
13. In 1966, the Rapa Nui were granted Chilean citizenship.
14. In 2007 the island gained the constitutional status of “special territory”.
15. Administratively, it belongs to the Valparaíso Region, constituting a single commune of the Province Isla de Pascua.
16. The 2017 Chilean census registered 7,750 people on the island, of whom 3,512 (45%) considered themselves Rapa Nui.
17. Easter Island is one of the most remote inhabited islands in the world.
18. The nearest inhabited land (around 50 residents in 2013) is Pitcairn Island.
19. Pitcairn Island is 2,075 kilometres (1,289 mi) away.
20. The nearest town with a population over 500 is Rikitea, on the island of Mangareva, 2,606 km (1,619 mi) away.
21. The nearest continental point lies in central Chile, 3,512 kilometres (2,182 mi) away.
22. Easter Island is considered part of Insular Chile.
23. The name “Easter Island” was given by the island’s first recorded European visito.
24. He was Dutch, and his name was Jacob Roggeveen.
25. He encountered it on Easter Sunday (5 April) in 1722, while searching for “Davis Land”.
26. Roggeveen named it Paasch-Eyland (18th-century Dutch for “Easter Island”).
27. The island’s official Spanish name, Isla de Pascua, also means “Easter Island”.
28. The current Polynesian name of the island, Rapa Nui (“Big Rapa”), was coined after the slave raids of the early 1860s, and refers to the island’s topographic resemblance to the island of Rapa in the Bass Islands of the Austral Islands group.
29. However, Norwegian ethnographer Thor Heyerdahl argued that Rapa was the original name of Easter Island and that Rapa Iti was named by refugees from there.
30. Islanders are referred to in Spanish as pascuense.
31. However it is common to refer to members of the indigenous community as Rapa Nui.
32. Felipe González de Ahedo named it Isla de San Carlos (“Saint Charles’ Island”, the patron saint of Charles III of Spain) or Isla de David (probably the phantom island of Davis Land; sometimes translated as “Davis’s Island”) in 1770.
33. Oral tradition states the island was first settled by a two-canoe expedition, originating from Marae Renga (or Marae Toe Hau), and led by the chief Hotu Matu’a and his captain Tu’u ko Iho.
34. The island was first scouted after Haumaka dreamed of such a far-off country.
35. Hotu deemed it a worthwhile place to flee from a neighboring chief, one to whom he had already lost three battles.
36. At their time of arrival, the island had one lone settler, Nga Tavake ‘a Te Rona.
37. After a brief stay at Anakena, the colonists settled in different parts of the island.
38. Hotu’s heir, Tu’u ma Heke, was born on the island.
39. Tu’u ko Iho is viewed as the leader who brought the statues and caused them to walk
40. The average size of a Moai statue is 13 feet tall and 14 tons.
41. Built to honour a chieftain or important people the natives believed the spirit of the person would forever watch over the tribe and bring good fortune.
42. This is why the statues are called Moai: the word comes from Rapa Nui and means “so that he can exist”.
43. By the way Rapa Nui is the Polynesian language of Easter Island.
44. None of the Moai statues were standing when scientists first arrived. Those upright today have been re-erected.
45. Although commonly known as the ‘Easter Island heads’ this is a misconception.
46. As it was discovered in 2012 that all of the heads have full bodies which have become submerged.
47. Transportation of the statues is a huge mystery. Scientists have tested several theories most commonly concluding that islanders used a combination of log rollers, ropes and wooden sledges.
48. Yet nobody is 100% sure about what happened back then.
49. In 2011, however, Terry Hunt of the University of Hawaii and Carl Lipo of California State University Long Beach worked with National Geographic to prove that a mere 18 people could move a 3m (10ft) moai replica weighing 5 tonnes a few hundred metres with just three strong ropes and some practice.
50. It’s unclear if this method would have worked on Paro.
51. Paro is the tallest moai erected at almost 10m (33ft) in height and 82 tonnes in weight, or indeed the heaviest moai which weighs a whopping 86 tonnes.
52. In 2008, a Finnish tourist was found on Anakena beach hacking an ear off a moai.
53. An islander saw Marko Kulju, 26, fleeing from the scene with a piece of the statue in his hand.
54. She reported the incident to the Police who identified Kulju by the tattoos on his body found out he tried to steal a statue’s ear. Weird!
55. The Finn was placed under house arrest and fined nearly 17,000 USD.
56. It was a light punishment given that he was facing up to seven years in prison.
57. Kulju issued a public apology through a Chilean newspaper shortly after his capture.
58. Dr Anneliese Pontius, an associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, has a theory that islanders created the statues to counter the effects of leprosy.
59. One of the statues, Tukuturi, seems far more human. It is far smaller than the other moai and seems to be in a kneeling position with its hands on its legs.
60. More recent theories suggest that the wide-scale deforestation was the work of Polynesian rats that came over with the first canoes.