Easter Island, known to its inhabitants as Rapa Nui, sits isolated in the vast South Pacific, some 2,300 miles off Peru’s western shore. Born from a volcanic eruption on the ocean floor, it’s a speck of land—just 45 square miles—adrift amid endless waves, far from its Polynesian cousins. Three volcanic craters, now quiet lakes, dot the island, offering rare patches of fertile ground in an otherwise stark, windswept landscape. But it wasn’t always so desolate. Traces linger of a time when lush greenery and thriving wildlife blanketed the place.
The world first heard of this remote outpost on Easter Sunday, 1722, when Dutch admiral Jakob Roggeveen chanced upon it. What he found was a ragged bunch—people living in caves and rough huts, scraping by in a harsh existence that included cannibalism. However, the towering stone figures known as the moai, standing watch along the coast, halted his progress. Today, we know there are nearly a thousand of these giants, ranging from 12 to 25 feet tall and weighing as much as 20 tons. The largest one reaches 65 feet into the sky and weighs 90 tons. Back then, though, many lay toppled, felled by the islanders’ own hands in fits of rage or rebellion.
Where these people came from is a puzzle that’s sparked plenty of debate. Captain James Cook, who dropped anchor there decades after Roggeveen, brought along a Hawaiian sailor who could make sense of the locals’ speech. That hinted at Polynesian roots, a theory most folks still lean toward—likely a far-flung offshoot of some Polynesian tribe. But there’s another idea that’s gained traction: a South American connection. Sweet potatoes and bulrushes, plants tied to that continent, turned up on the island, and some see echoes of pre-Inca cultures in Rapa Nui’s ways. Maybe there was trade, long ago, linking Easter Island to both Polynesia and South America across the seas.
Most reckon the first settlers arrived around the middle of the first millennium AD, and they didn’t waste time getting to work on their stone guardians. Carving the moai from crater walls, they honed a craft that was part skill, part ritual. With logs and ropes, they hauled each one to an ahu—a platform where the bones of their elders rested—setting it upright as a protector, a sentinel for the clan. Some say it was more than duty; maybe they just loved the act of creation itself. Alongside the statues, they left behind wooden tablets, “talking boards,” etched with hints of forgotten rites and beliefs.
For a while, Rapa Nui was a paradise. Those early Polynesians stepped onto an island brimming with life—dense forests, sugar beets, exotic fruits, and game to hunt. They built good homes, raised families, and thrived. Then, around 1500 AD, something shifted. A new cult, Makemake or “the birdman,” took hold—perhaps tied to newcomers from afar. The population swelled, resources dwindled, and careless habits drained the land dry. Clans turned on each other, smashing rival statues in the chaos. Island tales whisper of a brutal clash between “long ears” and “short ears,” a war that left scars on the stone and the soil.
By the time Roggeveen arrived, that golden age was a distant memory, replaced by a bleak, barren place and a people hardened by survival. Things only got grimmer. The fighting dragged on until 1862, when Peruvian slavers swooped in, snatching a thousand strong men for the mines. Torn from their island, they sickened fast in foreign lands, and the few who limped back carried smallpox and leprosy. By 1877, just 111 souls remained. Missionaries from Europe stepped in, keeping the flicker of life alive, but the old ways—the stories behind those silent stone faces—slipped away into the shadows.