Imagine living in a place so remote that the nearest inhabited land is over two thousand kilometres away. No neighbours. No easy escape. Just ocean in every direction. And across the island are hundreds of giant stone heads, carved by hand.
This place existsโฆ and people have lived there for centuries.
This episode will look at Easter Island, or Rapa Nui as it is known locally. Easter Island is in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, one of the most isolated inhabited islands on Earth, and home to hundreds of giant stone heads.
So how did humans even get here? How did people cross vast oceans, reach this tiny volcanic island, and then decide to stay? And how did they organise a society capable of carving and moving some of the largest stone statues ever created?
In todayโs episode of Thinking in English, weโre travelling to the edge of the world to explore one of the most fascinating human stories ever told. And weโll learn some English vocabulary along the way!
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Vocabulary
- Remote (adjective): Far away from other places, especially cities or populated areas.
- Easter Island is so remote that the nearest inhabited land is thousands of kilometres away.
- Polynesian (adjective / noun): Related to the people who settled many Pacific islands, including Easter Island.
- The Polynesian settlers reached Easter Island using advanced navigation skills.
- Navigator (noun): A person skilled at finding routes across land or sea, especially over long distances.
- Polynesian navigators crossed the Pacific Ocean without maps or compasses.
- Ancestor (noun): A person from whom one is descended, often honoured in traditional societies.
- The moai were built to represent important ancestors.
- Clan (noun): A large family group sharing common ancestors.
- Each clan on the island built moai to show power and honour its ancestors.
- Collapse (noun): The breakdown or failure of a society or system.
- European disease and slavery played a major role in the population collapse.
- Heritage (noun): Cultural traditions, objects, and history passed down through generations.
- The moai are a central part of Rapa Nui cultural heritage.
Where Is Easter Island
Where exactly is Easter Island?
Geographically, Easter Island sits in the Southeastern Pacific Ocean. On a map, it almost looks like a mistake. It is a tiny triangle of land floating alone in a massive blue space.
Today, [00:04:00] it’s officially a territory of Chile, but that doesn’t mean it’s close to Chile. In fact, mainland Chile is over 3,500 kilometers away. To put that into perspective, if you traveled from London to Moscow, you’d still be closer to home than Easter Island is to Chile.
The closest inhabited island to Easter Island is Pitcairn Island, which is more than 2000 kilometers away. And Pitcairn Island is also one of the most isolated places on earth, with a tiny population. I actually have an old episode about Pitcairn Island.
Everywhere you look around Easter Island, there is ocean. There are no nearby islands. There’s just water.
When a group of people or a community lives in a place so remote, everything becomes important. Trees and [00:05:00] food, fresh water, and the survival of people are vital. There’s no easy way to leave. And there’s no simple way to recover from an emergency or a disaster.
I should also talk a little bit about the name. In most European languages, the island is called “Easter Island“. It is now part of Chile, a Spanish speaking country, so commonly called Isla de Pascua, which probably I’ve mispronounced, but means “Easter Island” in Spanish.
However, the Polynesian name for the island is Rapa Nui, which means “Big Nui.” And the term Rapa Nui is also used to refer to the people of the island as well.
So in this episode, I will use Easter Island and Rapa Nui to describe the island.
Polynesian Expansion
The people of Easter Island are Polynesian. Polynesians were a group of seafaring people whose ancestors originally came from [00:06:00] Southeast Asia.
Over thousands of years, they gradually moved eastwards into the Pacific Ocean. They settled on islands that were separated by vast distances of open water.
This was a long process of migration and expansion. From their early centers in Taiwan, and then the Philippines, the Polynesian people spread through Melanesia and into the Central Pacific.
By around the year 1000, Polynesians had settled islands across what is called the Polynesian Triangle. This includes Hawaii in the north, New Zealand in the south, and Easter Island in the east. Along the way, they settled and developed cultures in places like Tahiti, Samoa, Tonga, and the Cook Islands.
Polynesians were among the greatest navigators the world has ever known. They crossed thousands of [00:07:00] kilometers of open ocean in a large double-hulled canoes without compasses, maps, or modern instruments. They often carried plants with them and animals, tools, and took their entire families.
Sailors memorized the positions of stars and used them as maps. They followed ocean currents and wave patterns that reflected off distant islands. They observed birds knowing that some species only fly a certain distance from shore.
This knowledge was passed orally, by word, from generation to generation.
Around the year 1,200, Polynesian sailors reached and settled Easter Island. By that time, they had almost reached every habitable island in the Pacific, and Easter Island sat at the far eastern edge of the [00:08:00] ocean.
Why Settle So Remote
Why did these sailors choose to settle somewhere so remote?
Well, there was nowhere else nearby. There were no nearby islands. There were limited resources on Easter Island. And no easy way back to where they came from.
Some historians suggest population pressure pushed Polynesian people to keep moving. That’s why people kept moving from Tonga to Samoa, to Hawaii, to New Zealand, to Easter Island.
Other historians argue that exploration itself was a central part of Polynesian culture. Discovering new land, brought status, brought power. Whatever the reason, the people who reached Easter Island were not lost or accidental survivors. They didn’t accidentally appear on Easter Island.
They were skilled seafarers and they deliberately chose to settle on one of the most remote islands in the [00:09:00] world.
Did They Reach America
Before we move on to talk more about Easter Island, I think it would be interesting to take a slight detour here.
Easter Island, is in the Southeast Pacific Ocean, far from anywhere else. The Polynesians who settled there must have been extremely skilled navigators. Easter Island is traditionally seen as the last stop the Polynesians made on their journey across the Pacific.
But was it? Did they go further? More specifically, did Polynesians reach South America centuries before Europeans arrived?
This idea has been debated for decades and for a long time it was dismissed as impossible. But in recent years, some new evidence has forced historians to take the question seriously. It’s still a very uncertain topic, but I find it fascinating.
One of the most interesting clues is the sweet [00:10:00] potato. Sweet potatoes are native to South America, but when Europeans first arrived in Polynesia, they found sweet potatoes already being grown on islands across the Pacific.
One explanation is that Polynesians themselves reached the coast of South America, collected the plant, and brought it back with them.
Some scientific research also suggests genetic contact between Polynesian populations and indigenous peoples of South America, dating to around the 13th century. Basically, when people do DNA tests of indigenous South Americans, they have a tiny amount of Polynesian DNA as well.
While this doesn’t prove large-scale migration, it does point to the fact there may have been some Polynesian people in South America.
There are also similarities in tools and fishing techniques, and some of the design patterns found on both [00:11:00] sides of the Pacific.
On their own, these similarities are not evidence. But taken together, it suggests there may have been some interaction or contact.
But as I said, this is a very controversial and conspiracy-theory-laden topic, but I find it really interesting to think that these Polynesian sailors may have been in contact with South America hundreds of years before Europe.
Moai Statues Explained
So let’s go back to Easter Island.
When people think of Easter Island, they usually think of the giant stone heads. These statues are known as Moai. I think I’m pronouncing that correctly.
The Moai are one of the most recognizable monuments in the world. They were carved between the years 1250 and 1500, and there are more than 900 of them scattered across the island. Most were carved from volcanic rock using only stone [00:12:00] tools.
Despite how they’re often described, Moai are not just heads. Many of them have bodies buried beneath the ground. And some once had large red stone hats that were placed on top.
They were positioned on stone platforms near villages, and most of them faced inland, not out to sea. This is because the Moai were believed to represent ancestors or powerful leaders. They were watching over the people.
Rapa Nui society was organized around families and clans. Daily life involved fishing and farming, tool making, and religious rituals. With very limited land and very limited resources, cooperation across the island was essential.
But there was also competition. Building Moai became a way for clans to demonstrate their power and honor their ancestors.
There are lots of mysteries around the [00:13:00] Moai. How were these enormous statues moved across the island without wheels, tools, or animals? Some Moai weigh more than 70 tons.
One theory suggests that they were laid flat and dragged on wooden sleds. Another argues that they were walked upright using ropes, rocking them forward step by step. And experiments have shown that that might be possible.
Collapse and New Research
For many years, the story of Easter Island has been told as a warning. It was described as a society that destroyed its own environment and collapsed as a result.
According to this idea, the island’s forests were destroyed to move the Moai, leading to soil erosion, food shortages, and eventually social breakdown.
More recent research, however, suggests a much more complex picture.
Life on Easter Island was always [00:14:00] fragile. The island was small, isolated, and very limited in resources.
Over time, deforestation did reduce the number of trees available for building and farming and fuel. As a result, soil quality did decline and food became harder to produce.
When resources are scarce, tensions grow. Competition between clans increased. Some archeologists believe this period saw rising internal conflict.
Europeans Disease and Slavery
In 1722, Dutch ships became the first Europeans to reach Easter Island. The Europeans first spotted the island on Easter Sunday and gave it the name Easter Island.
This is very similar to Christmas Island, which I recorded an episode on a few months ago, which was named on Christmas Day.
Over the next century, more European ships arrived. They brought with them [00:15:00] diseases to which the Rapa Nui had no immunity. Things like smallpox and tuberculosis, and influenza. These diseases spread rapidly and killed a large number of the population.
Even worse was the impact of slavery. In the 19th century, slave traders kidnapped hundreds of Rapa Nui people and forced them to work in mines and plantations in South America. Very few of these people ever returned. Those who did brought diseases back with them causing further devastation.
By the late 1800s, the population of Easter Island had collapsed to just a few hundred people.
This wasn’t just the result of poor decisions. This was also the result of violence and exploitation, and neglect. After disease, slavery and population collapse, the Rapa Nui people were left with little power to resist outside [00:16:00] control.
Chile Annexation and Identity
In 1888, Chile officially annexed Easter Island. This means they turned it into a Chilean territory.
Most of the island’s land was leased to foreign companies, mainly for sheep farming. And the local population were restricted to a small area of the island.
For many years, the Rapa Nui language was discouraged or banned in schools. Traditional practices were ignored or replaced, and decisions about the island were made in Chile, not on Easter Island.
While Easter Island is legally part of Chile, many of the Rapa Nui people see themselves not as Chilean, but as Rapa Nui. They have their own history, their own identity, and their own rights.
Tourism and Cultural Revival
Today, Rapa Nui is home to around 8,000 people, many of whom are descendants of the original inhabitants.
Tourism is now the main source of income. Visitors come from all [00:17:00] over the world to see the Moai or walk in the beautiful landscapes or experience the traditional culture. This brings opportunities and pressure.
Too many visitors can cause damage.
At the same time, Easter Island has experienced somewhat of a cultural revival. The Rapa Nui language is now taught in schools. Traditional music and dance and tattooing have returned to the island. And environmental protection is the priority. The island faces massive challenges from climate change, plastic pollution, and limited resources.
Museums and Repatriation Debate
After all of this history, I think I’d like to end this episode with a little bit of a debate.
Across the world museums display artifacts taken from colonized or occupied societies. Easter Island is no exception.
Several Moai and important Rapa Nui objects are held in foreign [00:18:00] museums, including the famous Moai statue in the British Museum.
The first time I visited the British Museum in London as a child, my favorite exhibit was the Moai. In fact, it was the only photo I took at the museum on my old Nokia phone.
From the British Museum’s perspective, their Moai statue is an important part of global heritage. They argue that displaying it allows people from around the world to learn about different cultures.
Museums like the British Museum often present themselves as protectors. They claim to be protecting or preserving artifacts that might be damaged or forgotten in other places.
But for the people of Rapa Nui, the story is different. On Easter Island, the Moai are ancestors. They’re not art. They are the ancestors of the people. Removing them from the island is removing something very [00:19:00] important.
For many Rapa Nui, seeing their heritage displayed thousands of kilometers away is a reminder of a time when their voices were ignored.
Should museums have the right to keep objects taken during periods of inequality or colonial rule?
Similar debates surround the Parthenon marbles in London, or the Benin bronzes also in London and in Europe, and countless other artifacts around the world. I have recorded previous episodes on this topic before as well.โ
Final Thought
Easter Island is one of the smallest and most isolated places on earth, but I find its story fascinating.
By discussing the history of Easter Island, we have also talked about Polynesian expansion, potential Polynesian contact in South America, the mystery of the Moai, colonialism, [00:20:00] and the debate over the ownership of history.
But what do you think? Have you heard of Easter Island before?
Do you think it’s right for the British Museum to keep a Moai in its collection?
What is your opinion about museums holding important cultural artifacts from other cultures?
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