The name Easter Island was given by the islands first recorded European visitor, the Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen, who encountered it on Easter Sunday (5 April) 1722, while searching for Davis or Davids island. Roggeveen named it Paasch-Eyland (18th century Dutch for Easter Island). The islands official Spanish name, Isla de Pascua, also means Easter Island. 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 islands topographic resemblance to the island of Rapa in the Bass Islands of the Austral Islands group. However Thor Heyerdahl argued that Rapa was the original name of Easter Island, and that Rapa Iti was named by refugees from there. The phrase Te pito o te henua has been said to be the original name of the island since William Churchill (1912) gave it the romantic translation Lands End in his Voyage à lÎle de Pâques, published in 1877. William inquired about the phrase and was told that there were three te pito o te henua, these being the three capes (lands ends) of the island. He was unable to elicit a Polynesian name for the island itself, and concluded that there may not have been one. According to Barthel (1974), oral tradition has it that the island was first named Te pito o te kainga a Hau Maka The little piece of land of Hau Maka. However, there are two words pronounced pito in Rapa Nui, one meaning end and one navel, and the phrase can thus also mean the Navel of the World. This was apparently its actual meaning: Alphonse Pinart gave it the actual translation the Navel of the World. Another name, Mata ki te rangi, means Eyes looking to the sky. Easter Island (Rapa Nui: Rapa Nui, Spanish: Isla de Pascua) is a Polynesian island in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, at the southeasternmost point of the Polynesian Triangle. Easter Island is famous for its 887 extant monumental statues, called moai, created by the early Rapa Nui people. In 1995, UNESCO named Easter Island a World Heritage Site, with much of the island protected within Rapa Nui National Park. Polynesian people settled on Easter Island in the first millennium AD, and created a thriving culture, as evidenced by the moai and other artifacts. However, human activity, the introduction of the Polynesian rat and overpopulation led to gradual deforestation and extinction of natural resources, which caused the demise of the Rapa Nui civilization. By the time of European arrival in 1722, the islands population had dropped to 2,000–3,000 from a high of approximately 15,000 just a century earlier. In recent times the island has served as a warning of the cultural and environmental dangers of exploitation. Diseases carried by European sailors and Peruvian slave raiding of the 1860s further reduced the Rapa Nui population, down to 111 in 1877. Easter Island is one of the most remote inhabited islands in the world. The nearest inhabited land (50 residents) is Pitcairn Island 2,075 kilometres (1,289 mi) away, and the nearest continental point lies in central Chile, 3,512 kilometres (2,182 mi) away. Easter Island is a special territory of Chile that was annexed in 1888. Administratively, it belongs to the Valparaíso Region and more specifically, is the only commune of the Province Isla de Pascua. According to the 2012 census, it has about 5,800 residents, of which some 60% are descendants of the aboriginal Rapa Nui. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_Island
Posted on: Fri, 18 Apr 2014 12:04:34 +0000
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