Easter Island

Attribution:

JC Richardson

Polynesia

Chile

Key Dates

Easter Island is thought to have first been settled between 800 BC and 300 BC, according to different scholars. Europeans first landed there in 1722, and it was annexed by Chile - of which it remains a part - in 1888. The Rapa Nui National Park - which covers most of the island - was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1995.

Key People

Dutch explorer Jakob Roggeveen named the island, after landing there on Easter day in 1722. At the time it was inhabited by several thousand Polynesians, but they were all but killed off by various factors in the decades that followed. Famous English explorer Captain Cook visited the island 1774.

Easter Island - also called Rapa Nui - is a small Polynesian Island in the southeastern Pacific Ocean (at the southernmost extremity of the Polynesian Triangle). It was discovered by Europeans in the early 18th century, and is a site of major archaeological importance since it bears the richest quantity of megalithic monuments (about 100 of which are still standing) in all of the Pacific island groups, not to mention the only examples of writing in Polynesia. Its history is mysterious and controversial, with its various enhabitants having indured warfare, famine, disease, enslavement and colonialism at different stages.

When Europeans arrived, the island was inhabited by thousands of Polynesian natives. Their ancestors were believed to have arrived there by canoe from the Marquesas Islands at some stage, and massacred the builders of the Megaliths - who had arrived from South America between the 8th and 3rd centuries BC - before making the island their own. They in turn were all but killed off by the Europeans, by combination of disease and enslavement. Today the island is part of Chile, and is protected as a World Heritage Site. It has a population of around 3,500 people, of mixed Polynesian and Chilean descent.

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Admission Free

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