Located in the eastern vertex of the gigantic Polynesian archipelago, Rapa Nui Island -also known as Easter Island- has a very particular history. Since its initial colonization by Polynesian immigrants, its extreme isolation favored the development of a culture with unique features in the world, which has only been reconstructed thanks to the contribution of archeology and ethnology.

About three thousand years ago, sailors from Southeast Asia settled in the Tonga and Samoa islands, and over the next thousand years began a process of colonization of Polynesia. Moving in successive waves, they occupied the extensive area between Hawaii, to the north, New Zealand, to the southwest, and Rapa Nui, to the southeast. Around the year 600, a group of settlers arrived on the island from the Marquesas Islands, who introduced a great variety of vegetable crops such as sweet potato, taro, yam, banana and sugar cane, as well as the Polynesian rat and the chicken, which was of great importance for trade. According to oral tradition, the group would have been headed by the Ariki Hotu Matu’a, who founded the dominant lineage that in the future would control access to priestly and political positions. The sons of Hotu Matu’a became the ancestors of the various tribes with a paramount chief, the Ariki Mau.

Around the year 1,000, the Rapa Nui society reached its peak and experienced a strong demographic increase, initiating the construction of ceremonial centers of worship to the ancestors, represented through gigantic stone statues: the moais. In the context of a strongly stratified society, ordered through extensive lineages that controlled a certain territory, the construction of altars to the ancestors and the erection of the enormous moais, fulfilled the function of reflecting the power and internal cohesion of each clan. The political power was concentrated in the Ariki Mau, supreme authority of hereditary character, and in the priestly caste, in charge of maintaining the religious traditions and the cult to the ancestors.

The growth of the population, estimated to have reached 10,000 people, made the pressure on resources and the competition between the different lineages more intense. The situation reached its limit when the almost total deforestation of the island prevented the construction of boats that could have relieved the demographic pressure on insufficient food. The requirements of the priestly class became increasingly difficult to meet, and the power of the ancestors was no longer sufficient to sustain the internal cohesion of the lineages and the delicate social balance.

In the mid-17th century, or perhaps earlier, the situation became a crisis, and a fierce internal conflict broke out in which the great majority of the moais were destroyed by rival clans. The readjustment to the new environmental situation was slow and difficult, and crystallized in the cult of Make Make -the creator God- and in the ceremony of the tangata manu -bird-man, in which the different lineages competed annually for political power. The winner assumed a sacred character, having to live alone and isolated; meanwhile, his group acquired a despotic power over the rest of the population, which included human sacrifices to the gods to ensure the well-being for the year. These practices constantly renewed hostilities between the groups, producing a climate of permanent violence and social crisis.

During the 18th century, the first European navigators visited the island and made Rapa Nui known to the world. In the 19th century, a series of slavery expeditions and the arrival of unscrupulous Europeans reduced the population to a minimum, victims of slave hunting and smallpox. Traditional hierarchies crumbled and the arrival of Catholic missionaries to the island reinforced the growing acculturation. In 1888, Chilean sailor Policarpo Toro took official possession of the island, incorporating it into Chilean territory. The Chilean government leased the island to a company that turned it into a large sheep ranch, reducing the indigenous people to mere employees. In 1966, Rapa Nui returned to the Chilean State after the end of the lease, and since then, the development of tourism and the revaluation of its archaeological heritage have made new challenges between its inhabitants and the Chilean State.

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