How did the first inhabitants of Easter Island arrive? It is the most remote inhabited island on Earth. The coast of Chile lies 2,300 miles to the east, Tahiti 2,500 miles to the northwest, and the nearest island, with a total population of 54 people, is tiny Pitcairn, 1,400 miles to the west. The answer lies in the deeply rooted traditions of Polynesian culture.
Photo credit: © Grafissimo/iStockphoto
For the ancient Polynesians, finding Easter Island, a small
64-square-mile speck in this vast ocean, must have been like finding a
needle in a haystack; but the Polynesian community today is convinced
their navigators intuitively discovered and settled this island. "At the
backbone of the maritime tradition lies the outrigger canoe," explains
archeologist and Easter Island specialist Jo Anne Van Tilburg, "the
quintessential symbol of Polynesian mastery of the sea. The outrigger
canoe is today part of every Polynesian island child's upbringing,
except on Easter Island. There, the outrigger canoe was lost sometime in
the mid-1800s." Van Tilburg has been instrumental in reintroducing
three outrigger canoes to the island. The islanders' loss of their
seafaring past, according to Van Tilburg, "took away the traditional
link people had with the sea."
For Van Tilburg, the Polynesian canoe is a metaphor in her theories of
how the Easter Islanders transported and erected their 15-ton moai.
"It's not much different from erecting a mast on a very large canoe.
It's a transfer of technology from one industry to another. The people
who built these structures were both sailors and farmers, and they used
their seafaring technology to help them in moving and erecting their
moai....Erecting a mast on a ship or a statue on a platform requires
similar abilities, skills, and tools."
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