Rapa Nui - Easter Island



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Length: 21 minutes
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Rapa Nui, otherwise known as Easter Island is a mere 64 square miles and home to the most isolated people on Earth. The nearest neighboring island is Pitcairn Island over 1200 miles Northeast. The current population on the island is 2000 with only one small town of Hanga Roa. They are still recovering from years of Peruvian slave raids and foreign disease that cut the population down to 111 in 1877.


This video includes an exclusive interview with Thor Heyerdahl, a reknowned ethnographer and adventurer who set out to prove that Rapa Nui was actually inhabited by South Americans originating in Peru as opposed to Polynesians. He intended to prove this by sailing across the Pacifc on a primitive raft named the Kon-Tiki.

The most famous feature of the island are the ancient Moais. Built from volcanic rock quarried from Rano Raraku crater on the east side of the island, these statues weigh up to 82 tons. Mana was thought to be transmitted from ancestors through the moais. In the 1860's, Rapa Nui experienced a collapse of its ecosystem from over exploitation of the island's resources.