60 Fun Facts About Easter Island

Easter Island is a special territory of which country?

It sits about 3,500 km west of the mainland and belongs to the Valparaíso Region.

What are the giant stone statues of Easter Island called?

Nearly 1,000 survive; they were carved by the Rapa Nui roughly between 1250 and 1500.

What is the island's own name in the local language?

It means 'Big Rapa' and was only coined after the slave raids of the 1860s, after a smaller island in the Australs.

Which Dutch explorer gave Easter Island its name after sighting it on Easter Sunday 1722?

He was searching for the phantom 'Davis Land' and called it Paasch-Eyland; his visit left about a dozen islanders dead.

What is the island's official name in the language of Chile?

It simply means 'Easter Island'; a 1770 expedition briefly named it Isla de San Carlos.

The romantic name 'Te pito o te henua' is often translated as what?

A 1912 inquiry found the phrase probably just meant 'land's end' and referred to the island's three capes.

According to a 2007 study, when did the first settlers most likely reach Easter Island?

Earlier estimates said 800; radiocarbon dates from Anakena pushed the arrival much later.

Which legendary chief led the two-canoe expedition that oral tradition says first settled the island?

His captain Tu'u ko Iho is credited with bringing the statues and making them 'walk'.

Which introduced animal is blamed for helping strip the island of its trees by eating palm seeds?

Recovered seed shells show gnaw marks; the island once had giant palms, possibly the largest in the world.

The island's population fell to a low of how many native inhabitants in 1877?

Only 36 of them had children; over 97% of the population had died or gone in under a decade.

Slave raiders from which country abducted about 1,500 islanders, half the population, in 1862-63?

The few who returned brought smallpox, and the island's rongorongo readers were among those lost.

In which year was Easter Island annexed?

A naval captain signed the Agreement of Wills with the island's chiefs on 9 September.

Which Chilean naval officer negotiated the annexation, buying island land partly himself?

The chiefs ceded sovereignty without giving up their titles, lands or traditions.

The Rapa Nui were only granted Chilean citizenship in which year?

Until then the islanders were confined to the one town and the rest of the island was leased as a sheep ranch.

What was Easter Island outside the main village used for in the early 20th century?

Williamson-Balfour's lease was cancelled in 1953 and the navy then ran the island for over a decade.

Easter Island's nearest inhabited neighbour, about 2,000 km away, is where?

Pitcairn had about 50 residents in 2013; the nearest town of over 500 people is Rikitea on Mangareva.

What is the rough shape of Easter Island?

Three coalesced extinct volcanoes form its corners.

Which volcano forms the bulk of the island and is its highest point at 507 m?

Poike was once a separate island until Terevaka's lava joined the two.

Where were about 95% of the moai carved?

The volcanic crater's tuff was quarried for some 500 years, and 394 statues remain there in every state of completion.

What is the tallest moai ever erected, at almost 10 metres, called?

It weighed 82 tonnes; one unfinished statue in the quarry would have stood 21 m and weighed up to 165 tonnes.

Roughly what fraction of a moai's height is taken up by its head?

The oversized head reflects the Polynesian belief in the sanctity of the chief's head; the statues have no legs.

What are the stone platforms on which the moai were set called?

Most line the coast and face inland, so the statues watch over the settlements with their backs to the sea.

The red 'topknots' placed on some moai heads are called what?

They were carved from red scoria quarried at a single site, Puna Pau, and were a later addition in the 15th-16th centuries.

What were the moai's eye sockets designed to hold, as discovered in 1979?

Sergio Rapu Haoa's team pieced together fragments of white coral found at various sites.

On average, how much does a moai weigh?

The average statue stands about 4 m tall with a base 1.6 m wide.

Which restored ahu has fifteen moai, including the heaviest ever erected at 86 tonnes?

A 1960 tsunami swept the platform inland; a Japanese crane maker helped restore it over five years.

What natural disaster swept the fifteen-statue platform on the south coast inland in 1960?

Its statues had already been toppled during the island's civil wars.

What is unusual about the seven moai of Ahu Akivi?

They face exactly where the sun sets at the spring equinox and are all the same size and shape.

What was the period when rival groups toppled moai statues to destroy their power called?

Not one moai was left standing when French missionaries arrived in the 1860s.

The moai are described in Rapa Nui as 'aringa ora', meaning what?

They are believed to embody deified ancestors charged with mana, spiritual power.

What was the moai Hoa Hakananai'a's fate in 1868?

The crew of HMS Topaze removed it from a ceremonial house at Orongo; its name is sometimes translated 'stolen friend'.

In Rapa Nui's Birdman competition, champions had to fetch the season's first egg of which bird from an offshore islet?

They swam back and climbed the sea cliffs of Rano Kau to the clifftop village of Orongo.

Which creator god was the chief deity of the Birdman cult?

A dwarf planet discovered just after Easter 2005 was later named after him.

The Birdman competitions began around 1760 and ended in which year, when the first church was built?

An English archaeologist collected the traditions in her 1914-15 expedition.

What is rongorongo?

Only a handful of inscribed wooden objects survive, and it remains undeciphered.

Roughly how many wooden objects bearing rongorongo inscriptions are known to survive?

Most are tablets, but the set includes a chieftain's staff, a birdman statuette and two ornaments.

Which Norwegian adventurer led a 1955-56 Easter Island expedition and wrote Aku-Aku?

He argued the island's original name was simply Rapa and that South Americans had reached it.

Which English archaeologist made the first true survey of Easter Island in 1914, arriving on the Mana?

She recorded the island's oral traditions just in time, from elders who remembered the Birdman rites.

Which author argued in Collapse that the islanders committed 'ecocide' by deforesting their home?

Later researchers such as Hunt and Lipo dispute the collapse story, blaming disease, slavery and rats instead.

Which South American crop's presence in Polynesia is cited as evidence of pre-European contact?

The Rapa Nui word kumara closely resembles the Quechua cumar.

Which British explorer visited Easter Island in 1774 and learned the statues honoured former chiefs?

He reported that some statues had already been toppled.

What is the name of the island's only town, where almost all its people live?

The 2017 census found 45% of islanders identifying as Rapa Nui.

What is Anakena?

Oral tradition places the founding chief's first landing there, though other sites are older.

Mataveri airport's runway was extended by NASA in the 1980s so it could serve as what?

The polar-orbit shuttle flights from Vandenberg it was meant to back up were never launched.

In which year did UNESCO name Easter Island a World Heritage Site?

Much of the island is protected within Rapa Nui National Park.

Which language, unusually for Polynesia, is official on Easter Island?

Only Spanish was taught in the island's schools for decades; fluent Rapa Nui speakers numbered as few as 800 in 2008.

Which Hollywood star co-produced the 1994 film Rapa-Nui, which its director later called his worst?

Reynolds had just directed Costner in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves; the film starred Jason Scott Lee.

How long may tourists stay on Easter Island under a limit imposed in 2018?

The cap was cut from 90 days over social and environmental pressures.

What happened in October 2022, two months after the island reopened to tourists after COVID-19?

Some 60 hectares burned and arson was suspected.

Which islet off Rano Kau was the destination of the Birdman egg-hunt swimmers?

Sponsors waited for the swimmers' return at the stone village of Orongo on the crater rim.

Which French ethnologist published the romantic 1877 translation of 'Te pito o te henua' that stuck?

William Churchill later found the phrase probably referred to the island's three capes.

Which Frenchman bought up most of Easter Island in the 1860s-70s and shipped Rapa Nui to Tahiti as labourers?

The missionaries fell out with him and evacuated all but 171 islanders to the Gambiers in 1871.

The 2017 census recorded how many people living on Easter Island?

About 45% identified as Rapa Nui.

What is the total land area of Easter Island?

It is only 24.6 km long and 12.3 km at its widest, with three crater lakes but no permanent rivers.

Both the 1955-56 Norwegian expedition and Collapse claim statue-toppling continued into which decade?

By 1838 the only standing moai were on the quarry slopes, at Orongo and one at Ahu Te Pito Kura.

The Tapati Rapa Nui festival ends with the winning clan's candidate being crowned what?

Two families compete for a fortnight in cooking, jewellery-making, woodcarving and canoeing to keep traditional skills alive.

What are the traditional Rapa Nui 'boat houses' with upturned-hull roofs called?

Some stretched 45 metres, housing extended families, while hare moa were stone chicken coops and tupa housed astronomer-priests near the coast.

The ancient stone trumpet on Easter Island's north coast was blown in fertility rites to invoke the god of what?

The 1.25-metre stone is covered in komari fertility petroglyphs and gives a deep trumpeting note when wind is blown into its top hole.

Which crescent-shaped wooden breast ornament, carried on the Rapa Nui flag, has a head at one or both tips?

Two examples in the British Museum are inscribed with rongorongo; the moko miro is a lizard-headed club and the ao a dancing paddle.

Which extreme-sport world series has held its Chilean leg on Easter Island?

The island's isolated position keeps its climate mild and cyclone-free, sitting outside the Intertropical Convergence Zone.