The Mysteries of Easter Island

Summary

Episode Summary: The Mysteries of Easter Island

Podcast: Dan Snow's History Hit
Episode: The Mysteries of Easter Island
Release Date: June 19, 2025

In this enthralling episode of Dan Snow's History Hit, historian James Grant Peterkin delves deep into the enigmatic history of Easter Island (Rapa Nui) alongside Naomi Ekparigan, a seasoned cultural historian who has dedicated over two decades to studying and living on the island. Together, they unravel the island's extraordinary past, exploring its remote isolation, remarkable Polynesian voyaging, the iconic Moai statues, societal collapse theories, and the profound impact of European contact.

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1. Introduction to Easter Island

Easter Island, or Rapa Nui, stands as one of the most isolated inhabited islands on Earth, situated over 2,000 miles from the nearest continental landmass. Naomi Ekparigan emphasizes its geographical significance:

"Easter Island is really the culmination of this incredible human settlement that took place over at least 5,000 years." (04:56)

James Grant Peterkin highlights the island's position as the easternmost point of the Polynesian Triangle, marking the endpoint of a vast maritime expansion.

2. Polynesian Voyaging and Settlement

The episode explores the remarkable maritime skills of the Polynesian people, who navigated thousands of miles of open ocean to settle uninhabited islands. Naomi discusses the technological prowess that enabled these voyages:

"They introduced the outrigger, this idea of stabilizing these large canoes... using the stars... to mark routes down which they could navigate." (07:09)

James adds:

"Their navigation, their technology... they could really carve these almost sort of highways down the ocean." (07:20)

This advanced understanding of astronomy and environmental cues allowed the Polynesians to sustain long-distance travel and establish new communities like Rapa Nui around A.D. 1000.

3. Life and Culture on Rapa Nui Before European Contact

Upon settling, the Rapa Nui developed a rich culture centered around ancestor worship, astronomy, and elaborate rituals. Naomi recounts her own experience:

"I spent four months there... I was absolutely captivated." (05:53)

They constructed the Moai statues, monumental representations of their ancestors, which became central to their spiritual and social structure. These statues were not mere art; they embodied spiritual power (mana) and served as physical embodiments of important individuals.

4. The Moai Statues: Creation and Significance

The Moai are perhaps the most iconic symbols of Easter Island. Naomi provides vivid descriptions:

"You can follow the whole process from start to finish... half-finished carvings... literally as if someone pulled the plug out of the factory floor." (18:01)

With approximately a thousand Moai carved, their transportation across the island remains a subject of fascination and debate. Naomi explains the possible methods:

"Placing it onto some kind of sled and then dragging it over rollers... or rocking it side to side." (19:30)

These statues were carved from volcanic rock and required immense community effort, highlighting the islanders' dedication and organizational skills.

5. Societal Collapse: Theories and Evidence

A central theme of the episode is the mysterious collapse of Rapa Nui society. Naomi addresses the debate:

"Was it an ecological catastrophe... or a more nuanced story of resilience and adaptation?" (02:38)

Evidence pointing towards societal decline includes deforestation, resource depletion, and increased violence. Naomi cites studies showing a decline in population and signs of internal conflict:

"Studies of skulls... sudden deaths from blunt instruments... suggests a collapse." (30:22)

James and Naomi discuss Jared Diamond's "ecological suicide" theory, which posits that overexploitation of resources led to the society's downfall. However, Naomi cautions against attributing the collapse solely to external factors like European contact:

"I find it difficult to believe... that the blame can be entirely on Europeans." (31:06)

6. European Contact and Its Aftermath

European explorers first arrived in 1722, led by Jacob Roggeveen. Their brief and infrequent visits had lasting impacts:

"Roggeveen... his cook laments the fact that there's no wood on the island." (28:16)

Subsequent contacts introduced diseases and led to slave raids, drastically reducing the population. Naomi narrates the tragic events:

"Peruvians... took thousands away, returning only 15 who inadvertently brought smallpox." (38:56)

The arrival of Catholic missionaries in the 19th century brought cultural and religious upheaval, replacing traditional beliefs with Christianity and further destabilizing the island's social fabric.

7. Modern Day Easter Island: Preservation and Challenges

Today, Easter Island balances its rich heritage with modern challenges. Naomi observes:

"Tourism is dictated by the number of flights... the island doesn’t feel overrun, but they have to be careful." (43:55)

Efforts are underway to preserve the Moai and protect the island's fragile ecosystem. Additionally, there's a growing movement of islanders pursuing higher education in archaeology and history, ensuring that the preservation and interpretation of Rapa Nui's legacy remain in local hands.

8. Conclusion: Lessons from Rapa Nui

The episode concludes by reflecting on the resilience and ingenuity of the Rapa Nui people. Despite facing environmental challenges and external threats, their ability to adapt and preserve their culture offers valuable lessons on sustainability and community cohesion.

Dan Snow invites listeners to further explore the mysteries of Easter Island, highlighting it as a testament to human curiosity and the enduring quest to understand our past.

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Notable Quotes:

• Naomi Ekparigan:
  "Easter Island is really the culmination of this incredible human settlement that took place over at least 5,000 years." (04:56)
  "They introduced the outrigger... using the stars to mark routes." (07:09)
  "You can follow the whole process from start to finish... literally as if someone pulled the plug out of the factory floor." (18:01)
  "I find it difficult to believe... that the blame can be entirely on Europeans." (31:06)

• James Grant Peterkin:
  "Their navigation, their technology... they could really carve these almost sort of highways down the ocean." (07:20)
  "It's like the Protestant Reformation." (41:12)

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This comprehensive exploration of Easter Island offers listeners a vivid portrayal of its historical complexities, the mysteries surrounding its societal changes, and the enduring legacy of its remarkable inhabitants.

Transcript

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[James Grant Peterkin]

In the heart of the of the Pacific Ocean, over 2,000 miles from the nearest continental land mass, lies one of the world's most iconic archaeological treasure troves. They're on Rapa Nui, known to the outside world as Easter Island. Now, most of us are familiar with the towering stone faces of the Moai that gaze inland across that windswept volcanic landscape. These giant monolithic figures are the last sentinels of a once thriving society. Rapa Nui was first settled by Polynesians about a thousand years ago after one of the greatest voyages of discovery in history. But then became isolated from the rest of the world. And in isolation, those settlers built a rich and complex culture. It was rooted in ancestor worship, astronomy and ritual. But then something happened. The forests vanished. The Moai were toppled. And for centuries, the collapse of the society has been the subject of really fierce debate. Was it an ecological catastrophe brought on by the people by deforestation, by overpopulation? Or is there a more nuanced story of resilience and adaptation in the face of outside interference, contact with the rest of the world? Joining me today on Dan Snows History Hit, to explore the island's extraordinary past, we've got James Grant Peterkin. He's a cultural historian, someone who's lived and worked on the island for over 20 years. You can watch this episode on our YouTube channel. Every Friday we release a new filmed episode. You can find the link in our show notes. But for those of you sticking with audio only, this is a story of discovery and human ingenuity and survival. Adaptation in one of the most remote places on Earth. Enjoy.

[Naomi Ekparigan]

T minus 2 atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima.

[James Grant Peterkin]

God save the King.

[Naomi Ekparigan]

No black white unity till there is first some black unity. Never to go to war with one another again. And liftoff. And the shuttle has cleared the tower.

[James Grant Peterkin]

James, thanks so much for coming on.

[Naomi Ekparigan]

Thank you for having me.

[James Grant Peterkin]

Shockingly, given this a history podcast, we're going to start with some geography, give us a sense of just how remote this island is.

[Naomi Ekparigan]

So Easter island, or Rapa Nui, to give it its Polynesian name, it's one of the most isolated inhabited islands anywhere on the planet. Two and a half thousand miles off the west coast of South America, halfway between Chile and French Polynesia. But perhaps to put it in real terms, it takes five and a half hours to fly there from the nearest international level.

[James Grant Peterkin]

Okay, and. And is it significant? Apart from the statues, but is it significant because it's sort of at the end. People might think about the Pacific as this long spray of islands going right across, but Easter island is right at the end of that. Is it?

[Naomi Ekparigan]

It is. So it's the easternmost point of the Polynesian triangle. Okay, so Easter island is really the. The culmination of this incredible human settlement that took place over at least 5,000 years. That meant that humans ultimately settled pretty much every habitable island in the Pacific.

[James Grant Peterkin]

Okay, we're going to come onto that voyaging. But does that mean they habitat it sort of last? Did it take the longest time to get there?

[Naomi Ekparigan]

Yes. So the generally accepted theory is that New Zealand was the very last one, Aotearoa, when the Maori eventually arrived in about 1200. But it seems that prior to that, and just shortly before then, humans also reached Easter island as well.

[James Grant Peterkin]

Okay, so you spent a long Time there.

[Naomi Ekparigan]

I spent more than 20 years living there.

[James Grant Peterkin]

I love it. I love. Just tell me the story of how you arrived there in the first place.

[Naomi Ekparigan]

So I was on a year between school and university. I needed to learn Spanish, so I went to Chile. People took one look at me and spoke to me in English, so I couldn't get any.

[James Grant Peterkin]

Can't imagine why. I thought it was like a local.

[Naomi Ekparigan]

I know. And then suddenly this opportunity came to go to Easter island to work, and I thought, this is it. It was a place I'd been fascinated by as a child, and I suddenly thought, this is the opportunity to actually go and not just live there. And so I spent four months there, I think, and I was absolutely captivated.

[James Grant Peterkin]

And when you were there, I'm not suggesting you're very old, but was it perhaps not super developed for tourism and visiting?

[Naomi Ekparigan]

It wasn't. I mean, this was 1996, so it was a while back. And no, I couldn't believe it. The island was surprisingly underdeveloped for tourism, and it just seemed there was this absolute gold mine in terms of archaeology, history, culture, and no one was coming to see it. I couldn't believe it.

[James Grant Peterkin]

Okay, we're going to get onto the island itself and say. One of my favorite topics in world history is the maritime expansion of the Polynesian people.

[Naomi Ekparigan]

Really?

[James Grant Peterkin]

Yeah. Their navigation, their technology. These people spread across these islands are uninhabited until fairly recently. Where did the Polynesians come from?

[Naomi Ekparigan]

So the general consensus is that they came from Taiwan.

[James Grant Peterkin]

Interesting, isn't it?

[Naomi Ekparigan]

And that about 6,000 years ago, a seafaring people embarked from Taiwan on their canoes and slowly, gradually began exploring the islands to the east of their.

[James Grant Peterkin]

So 6,000 years, that's when passage tombs are being built around Britain, for example. Stonehenge is not far off. And yet, until that point, there's no human settlement on these islands at all?

[Naomi Ekparigan]

No. The entire Pacific, as far as we know, is uninhabited. And therefore they had an absolutely blank canvas to go out there and explore and settle.

[James Grant Peterkin]

And what were the technological hacks that they had? The boat building, the astronomy, how did they do that?

[Naomi Ekparigan]

So it seems to be obviously, a mix of enormous number of factors. They introduced the outrigger, this idea of stabilizing these large canoes.

[James Grant Peterkin]

Right. So canoe with outrigger is like a bit that sort of sticks off the.

[Naomi Ekparigan]

Side on one side, or sometimes on both sides. And so that gives you greater stability.

[James Grant Peterkin]

With a sort of almost like a mini canoe at either side.

[Naomi Ekparigan]

Exactly. So if you think of a trimaran today, but it's actually much smaller on either side.

[James Grant Peterkin]

It's where you stick your young kids when you're on holiday and they cling on.

[Naomi Ekparigan]

Okay, exactly. But it was more than that. It was the understanding of the constellations, of the environment around them that enabled them to really carve these almost sort of highways down the ocean. That meant that by using the stars, by using certain particular constellations, or the sun and the moon, they were able to actually mark routes down which they could navigate down, but also come home as well.

[James Grant Peterkin]

And they had these techniques. They could tell when a wave had hit a seashore and then was, like, reflecting back. So even if you couldn't see the shore, you sort of went, hang on a second. I think we're near an island. All these little things that they were able to notice.

[Naomi Ekparigan]

So it's the ability to sense changes in swell and in current and things like that. So if you think if you've got an obstacle in the water far ahead of you, but long before you can see it, that obstacle will actually create the way in which the water moves around it. And to an experienced Polynesian navigator, he or she will be able to actually sense that they couldn't see it, but they could apparently feel it. So that they would lie in the middle of the canoe and actually, with their body, feel the motion of the ocean.

[James Grant Peterkin]

See, that is just.

[Naomi Ekparigan]

And by that, they would know that there was something, or possibly something up ahead that was changing the shape of that swell. I mean, that's just one example of the dozens of techniques that they had that helped them to therefore find these islands.

[James Grant Peterkin]

And what I love about it is because of the relative lateness of European exploitation into that world, we've actually been able to save some of those oral traditions and those stories. We sort of modern scholarships, be able to write them down. So we do have that connection with the past we actually know. Which isn't, say, true of the Vikings. We actually really do know how they were able to use the stars well.

[Naomi Ekparigan]

Exactly. So having had this prolonged period of isolation from the rest of the world, you ended up with this incredibly robust oral history. It meant that when the Europeans did arrive from sort of 17th, 18th century onwards, that they had already found very established societies, established communities, who had these traditions very much inherent in their practice and their upbringing.

[James Grant Peterkin]

Okay, talk to me about some of these distances. Once they'd gone to these places, did they then become sort of isolated, or were they cruising about between Hawaii and Papua New Guinea? Is this a real trading and exchange system in this Pacific?

[Naomi Ekparigan]

I think To a certain degree, yes. I mean, unlikely to have been from one corner of the Polynesian triangle to the other. But if you think of, for example, the Hawaiian islands, of which you've got at least half a dozen sizable islands, they, of course, would all be trading with each other. And so if you were missing, say, obsidian or wood or gene pool or something you needed to acquire, then, of course, you could do it from a neighboring island. And that's why, when you look at the map of the Pacific, you can actually almost kind of group it together into these clusters of islands. The big exception to all of this is Easter island, where there is nothing else around it. And that's why it becomes this exception even in Polynesia.

[James Grant Peterkin]

So it takes five hours to fly there, even today, if there are human beings there. So someone got on a boat and just took off into the horizon and arrived at Easter Island. I mean, extraordinarily, does that imply that lots of people went off in all sorts of different directions and never came back?

[Naomi Ekparigan]

I think we have to assume that this was needle in a haystack stuff. And, of course, you never hear about the ones that failed. Yes, they had a system where they would sail up to the halfway point, it's believed, of their food and water and things like that. If they hadn't then found land by then, they could turn around. And by having gone against the prevailing winds and currents, generally in this easterly direction, they could turn around and then get home. As long as their map reading was fine, they could get home in a faster time.

[James Grant Peterkin]

So they're sending out these Scouting parties exactly over hundreds of miles of ocean.

[Naomi Ekparigan]

Because I think common sense says you wouldn't load up an enormous great canoe with women and children and plants and animals and everything you need to begin a new society. If you don't already know that, there is definitely an island that you're going to, that you've pinpointed and marked. And so these Scouts, and these are the unsung heroes of Polynesia, if you like, because these were the people that were going out and having to try and find these remote islands.

[James Grant Peterkin]

How did their culture. How does their religion, music, culture, sort of underpin the sort of bravery and professionalism needed to sustain those expeditions?

[Naomi Ekparigan]

Well, certainly on Easter Island, I mean, they still have, certainly in the songs that they sing, vivid accounts of that first voyage of the first king that set foot on the island. And so there is certainly a recognition that these voyages were absolutely pioneering in their nature. I think the Scouts are the one group that perhaps don't get the recognition that they deserve, because like a lot of things, you only remember the winners.

[James Grant Peterkin]

And we talk about this drive to discover new islands is that because population grows, everything just gets a bit young, bored. Men and women go, let's go and start our own thing somewhere else. And is there just a culture of expansion or are they being forced off by shortages of food and resource?

[Naomi Ekparigan]

I think it's a real mix. So I think in some cases, yes, you've got overpopulation on small islands, lack of resources. You need to move on to a new island. Inter tribal warfare features a lot in Polynesian oral history. So if two factions are fighting, clearly the losing faction probably has to find a new home to live in. But what's amazing is that even on islands where seemingly they were living in relative harmony and lack of diseases, things like that, there is still this human drive, which is wonderful because we see it even today, this human drive to get out there and discover what's over the horizon and the fact that you could be living happily on your island. But many people have this inherent curiosity to get out there and see whether it's to go and travel to another country, as we're fortunate enough to do today, or in the case of the Polynesians, to get out there and literally go and discover what was beyond what they could see.

[James Grant Peterkin]

It's just wild. So on Rapa Nui, Easter island, it's the furthest end of the chain. So what date do we think people arrive there?

[Naomi Ekparigan]

About a thousand A.D. so about a thousand years ago.

[James Grant Peterkin]

Okay. And other traditions of names, people that.

[Naomi Ekparigan]

Arrived, they know the first king, Hotu Matu' a, he was the first king to apparently lead this party of people to the island. But what's so interesting about Easter island is you don't then hear about subsequent voyages. And so it seems to be almost this closing of the door behind them when this first group arrived.

[James Grant Peterkin]

So they do get quite isolated after that.

[Naomi Ekparigan]

Yes. And that's why, if we take it to the extreme, it's perhaps 700 years of isolation until the Europeans arrive and discover for Europe this particular island in the South Pacific.

[James Grant Peterkin]

And so it must be so fascinating for you as a historian to look at how Easter island culture, Rapa Nui culture, differs from the Mori in New Zealand or other islands. Do they branch away quite rapidly?

[Naomi Ekparigan]

Well, it's one of these things where you've got this common ancestor and so you've got. The culture has a center to it in modern day, say, French Polynesia. And then as you go to the other islands in the region, you start to see bits that of course look identical and then you see bits that are completely different. And I was always interested in the language. I mean, my studies were in the linguistics of the island, island. And so it was fascinating to go to, say, New Zealand and work out that if you changed certain letters, the Rapa Nui that you speak on Easter island was still remarkably similar to New Zealand. Mori.

[James Grant Peterkin]

And just how far away is that?

[Naomi Ekparigan]

We're talking 6,000 miles away or something. So, I mean, it's distances that are just unfathomable in any other part of the world. If it wasn't the Pacific Ocean, where the scale is just, you know, everything is off the scale.

[James Grant Peterkin]

You mentioned earlier that they're taking women, children, that this is a community on the move. How about plants? And are they stocking ponds with fish? I mean, is there a whole suite of tools and resources they need to sustain themselves?

[Naomi Ekparigan]

So it seems that much of the expertise of the Scout wasn't solely in finding these islands. It was working out what was there and what was missing. And so with this information, they would come back to the homeland, wherever that was, and then load up these large double hulled ocean voyaging canoes with not just a genetically viable human population, but also actually then plants that they felt they would need, and also species of animals that they thought would be beneficial for their survival on this new virgin land because it's untouched.

[James Grant Peterkin]

Speaking of genetics and things, have they done the DNA and worked out how many mating pairs of humans arrived on that island?

[Naomi Ekparigan]

Was it, the oral history says two large ocean going canoes and that's possibly maybe a maximum of 80 people on each one.

[James Grant Peterkin]

It's enough to get us started.

[Naomi Ekparigan]

It's enough to start, clearly. And this is where again, other islands had the benefit that if your gene pool is starting to get a bit thin, you can then go on date nights to other islands. One of the many amazing success stories of Easter island is the fact that they seemingly didn't have this contact with any other island. And therefore just how strict they had to be in keeping families separate, first cousins from, you know.

[James Grant Peterkin]

Oh, there were protocols.

[Naomi Ekparigan]

I'm sure there were, because there are, even to this day you have sometimes have young couples that will get together and then suddenly a grandparent will come along and say, actually you can' go out with that person because. Yeah, so on a small island you can control these things. In a larger community, it would be much more difficult.

[James Grant Peterkin]

Grandparents always go to grandparents.

[Naomi Ekparigan]

Exactly.

[James Grant Peterkin]

So what's the Soil like on the.

[Naomi Ekparigan]

Island, it's surprisingly good because it's volcanic soil, but it's volcanic soil that, I mean, the island, parts of it are 3 million years old. So it's this great eruption from the sea floor. The island is therefore just the top of a volcano, really. And so once that soil, as long as it's not overused, that soil is relatively good. The problem, of course, is if you use it too intensively in a short period of time, then, of course, then.

[James Grant Peterkin]

And they had the fishing, they could sustain themselves with the sea as well.

[Naomi Ekparigan]

Yes. So, I mean, that's really why it's believed that the first Polynesians that arrived there would have seen this island as almost a kind of Polynesian Garden of Eden, and for that reason perhaps raised the drawbridge behind them because they thought, you know, we've got everything we need here and in a way we almost don't therefore either need to go home again or, or we don't want others arriving here. So it was this almost well kept secret in the corner of the Pacific.

[James Grant Peterkin]

And did it remain homogenous? I mean, there was a king, was there a succession? Do you see different tribes and groups? Does it become fractured?

[Naomi Ekparigan]

So it fractures off into family groups, which I think is normal. So they divide the island up into 10, the equivalent of pieces of cake, so that everyone gets a bit of coastline. Everyone has perhaps the agricultural land in the center of the island. And by that system, over generations and over centuries, they maintain this idea of different, different tribes. But of course it's highly cooperative. They're all working with each other. They share the one quarry where the iconic statues were carved. So it's not certainly at that point in the history, this idea of sort of tribes, it sometimes sounds a bit. It was really distinct family groups.

[James Grant Peterkin]

Is this a good time to come onto the statues?

[Naomi Ekparigan]

There's never a better time to come onto the statues.

[James Grant Peterkin]

So these, these Rapa Nui statues, Easter and statues that are so iconic, first of all, I've never seen them. What are they like in the flesh?

[Naomi Ekparigan]

They're amazing. I mean, it sounds a bit cliched, but there's an incredible energy when you wander around, particularly the quarry where they were all carved. Because the treat on Easter island, it's not just the end product that you get to see. So you don't just get to see the, the sort of end of production. You can still to this day go to the quarry and see literally etchings onto the rock, half finished carvings. Some. Moai is the name of the Statues, some moai that have been completed but haven't yet been transported. And so you can really follow the whole process from start to fin.

[James Grant Peterkin]

They just put their tools down and walked away.

[Naomi Ekparigan]

So it's literally as if someone pulled the plug out of the factory floor and everything stopped at that point, actually.

[James Grant Peterkin]

So you got the quarry with all these moai and different levels of completeness. How many other of these giants actually are there around the island?

[Naomi Ekparigan]

So there's about a thousand.

[James Grant Peterkin]

A thousand.

[Naomi Ekparigan]

So people often underestimate the scale that the moai production took on Easter island because it's easy to think that it might have just been a few slightly crazed carvers who wanted to do something different. But in fact, you realize that this was an island wide obsession and the entire community would have been involved either directly in the carving or in being the backup to actually making sure that the, the carvers had stone and food and everything else.

[James Grant Peterkin]

And you got to move them around.

[Naomi Ekparigan]

And the transportation becomes an enormous undertaking as well.

[James Grant Peterkin]

And how far do they move? What distance are we talking? How far?

[Naomi Ekparigan]

So, I mean, the island isn't particularly large. It takes about one hour to drive around the island today. But to transport a moai, you're probably looking at maximum of 20 miles, which is not insignificant because they weigh up to 100 tons.

[James Grant Peterkin]

What are you talking about?

[Naomi Ekparigan]

The ones that have been moved?

[James Grant Peterkin]

Yeah, 100 tons?

[Naomi Ekparigan]

Yeah. And no horses or elephants. I mean, this was all done by human power. Human power. And this is why you get the UFO stuff coming in, because people can't bear the fact that humans might at one day have been capable of doing this.

[James Grant Peterkin]

And did they roll them on logs? Do they know about wheels and logs and things?

[Naomi Ekparigan]

So there's really, there's two schools of thought. One is basically the rolling, which is the idea of placing it onto some kind of sled and then dragging it over over rollers to therefore reduce the friction, or that they might have been rocked in a way that if you think of, you know, at home, if you're moving a heavy piece of furniture, you might get it onto its corners and kind of waddle it from side to side. And it probably was a combination of both techniques, if not others as well, that archaeologists still haven't quite worked out. But this is one of the many mysteries on Easter island that's still very much being argued about by archaeologists.

[James Grant Peterkin]

And why?

[Naomi Ekparigan]

Well, because this was the deep rooted belief in Polynesia, and it's not just in Easter island, but it's across the entire Polynesian triangle. That important People possessed mana, so this was a spiritual power that was bestowed on them by the gods. And that therefore, when an important person like that died, what you wanted was a physical representation of them in order that this manna would still exist after their death. So it's actually a fairly human idea. But the idea was that because on Easter island there was this incredible stone quarry, they had all of the raw materials needed. This culture of carving representations or idols to represent these important ancestors developed in a way that it couldn't possibly have developed anywhere else in the Pacific.

[James Grant Peterkin]

So do you think they are all of actual individuals or are they all a reflection of those mythical founders?

[Naomi Ekparigan]

No, no, I think real people. Because when, for example, when cook came in 1774, people actually told him the names of some of the statues that he was standing in front of. In the same way that you or I might, in our homes or in our offices have the portrait of an ancestor.

[James Grant Peterkin]

The founding, you know, even statue of Nelson, which I do have in my home.

[Naomi Ekparigan]

Right. But okay, so, you know, we'll have prominent figures whether it's in our family or on our history. But there was this belief that these statues were more than just a representation. They actually were the spiritual embodiment of, of this person.

[James Grant Peterkin]

Wow.

[Naomi Ekparigan]

And so that's why. This is really why. And this is going off on a bit of a tangent, but this is why the whole repatriation of Moai that has been in the news recently, particularly with the British Museum and things like that, this is why for the Rapa Nui, the people of Easter island today, this is much more than just a statue. This is much more than just part of their history. For them, this is a living ancestor. And so this is why it's always been quite difficult acting as kind of intermediary between sometimes the island and organizations such as the British Museum to sometimes convey this idea that what we might see as simply a piece of rock that is an important part of one island's history, that for the islanders, that might have a much more significant meaning to them.

[James Grant Peterkin]

Listen to Dan Snow's history talking about Rapanui, Easter Island. More coming up.

[Dan Snow]

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[James Grant Peterkin]

Now, there's been a really interesting, quite exciting sort of historical debate, historical graphical debate about Rapanui, about whether that it was sort of torn apart by civil wars, that it'll topple all the statues, and whether that was when the Europeans arrived or after or before. Try and give me a timeline here. What do you think was going on in the culture of Rapa nui in say, 1700, before Europeans were even dreaming dreamed of.

[Naomi Ekparigan]

So I think we have probably in 700 years of complete isolation, which is why it's such an interesting experiment really, in the way in which humans behave in such an unusual set of circumstances. So by 1700 it seems that you've had this enormous rise in production of statues. Population has grown no Threats or attacks from outside, no diseases brought in from any outsiders. So you've got a population that's thriving, if not getting almost too large for the island. But of course, when they've had the wood to build canoes, they've carried on searching for new islands around Easter Island. It's just that we know today from looking at a map that there aren't any. But they would have believed that over the horizon there would have been other islands for them to settle. So they wouldn't have therefore been perhaps overly concerned by this rising population, lack of resources? They clearly weren't stupid, they weren't ignorant of what was going on on their island, but they must have always thought there was going to be this escape route, if you like.

[James Grant Peterkin]

You think scouts were going out and coming?

[Naomi Ekparigan]

I'm sure they were, because there's no reason for them to believe they'd reached the end of what today we call the Polynesian Triangle.

[James Grant Peterkin]

And was there enough wood for those canoes? Do you start to get deforestation?

[Naomi Ekparigan]

Well, deforestation clearly happens, yes, at the beginning when they need to clear land to plant on, and subsequently with the moving of statues that weigh upwards of 100 tons, you need some kind of wood, you need fiber for ropes. Carving a statue was incredibly resource heavy, if you like. And so this was not something that unless you had a very active management of the resources, this was clearly something that was going to put pressure on those finite resources.

[James Grant Peterkin]

And so there is a school of thought that says the whole thing sort of collapses because of that overpopulation. Where are we now? Where's scholarship now on this?

[Naomi Ekparigan]

The jury is still very much out over this, but clearly, at one time, the population was notably higher than then when the Europeans found it, from 1722 onwards, which is the first contact with any outsiders, seemingly, that the Rapa Nui have in the best part of 700 years.

[James Grant Peterkin]

So we think that even before the Europeans arrived, there had been some sort of population crash, but the population got smaller.

[Naomi Ekparigan]

I think so, because it depends who you read. But we have to therefore go by the accounts of the first Europeans who describe an impoverished island, a deforested island. And we know that that couldn't have been the case in a society that several hundred years prior, had created up to a thousand statues of enormous proportions.

[James Grant Peterkin]

So your impression is that that quarry, for example, that's abandoned seemingly sort of overnight, that's probably not the European topsails appearing over their eyes, and that was probably some event on the island.

[Naomi Ekparigan]

The dating suggests that the abandonment of the quarry took place at least 50 years before the Europeans arrived. This is an internal strife. This is an internal problem. And for some reason, someone's come along and said, we're not carving a single another moai statue out of this quarry. Tools are downed, they walk out of there and never come back. And that's why it's this incredible vestige of, you know, human achievement.

[James Grant Peterkin]

And when the Europeans arrive, they. I mean, are you sure that's not just Europeans just being dismissive of every culture they come across, but they're saying it's impoverished, that they specifically aren't seeing evidence of healthy, thriving sort of agricultural communities?

[Naomi Ekparigan]

I mean, Captain Cook, who was, I think we can generally accept, had understood the Pacific, he understood Polynesia, he wrote that it was the. The least attractive island and the least beneficial island to ships that he'd ever come across in that part of the world. Roggeveen, who's the Dutch captain who arrives on easter Sunday in 1722, hence the naming of the island. His cook laments the fact that there's no wood on the island for him to even light a fire with. So, I mean, these are snippets of details that as long as we trust the authorship of them, we have to accept that the island that they came across was not this thriving island that had been the case 1, 200 years prior to that.

[James Grant Peterkin]

It's a reasonable assumption is that it had been denuded by just over farming, over grazing trees being cut down. Too many humans.

[Naomi Ekparigan]

Yes. It becomes this classic case of what Jared diamond would then call the collapse, this idea that societies will reach a breaking point, after which, if there hasn't been successful management of resources, if populations aren't controlled, then it's simply the entire society descends into ecocide. So this ecological suicide, where you basically destroy the one environment that you have to live in.

[James Grant Peterkin]

And do you see any more evidence of this talk about the moai being toppled over and things? Is there any other clues on the island about what might have happened around that time?

[Naomi Ekparigan]

Studies of skulls, in particular bone studies, have shown that people were suddenly dying from blunt instruments instead of natural causes. The obsidian, which is the volcanic glass that used to be a key component in carving the statues, suddenly becomes shaped in spearheads and arrowheads and things like that. So again, that would suggest a collapse of this very organized, quite suggestive, quite possib things might have got and mentions in the oral history of cannibalism. So, I mean, clearly there's been a shift, and no one denies that that shift took place on Easter Island. I think what's interesting to study today is the exact timescale and the causes. And that's really where archaeologists are arguing.

[James Grant Peterkin]

About is the suggestion that the first European ships, they might have brought disease.

[Naomi Ekparigan]

Or there could be other they would have done. I mean, they would have brought sailors, will bring certain things with them. And that would have been the case on Easter Island. You wouldn't have had any defenses against those kinds of diseases. I mean, even on Easter Island 50 years ago, there used to be such limited contact with the outside world that when a ship would come to the island, people would say that everyone got a cold for the next week or so, because that was just germs from outside that they didn't have any exposure to and any defenses against. And so the arrival of Roggeveen in 1722, but then there's 50 years until the next Europeans arrive. So it's incredibly spread out. And therefore I find it difficult to believe people who think put the blame entirely on Europeans, who say that everything was perfect, the Europeans arrived and then everything just collapsed. And I think that in that you've got three visitors in the first 60 years there, that sounds slightly far fetched.

[James Grant Peterkin]

Although in the 18th century it appears to be a slightly more impoverished island, people are still living there, even without wood. So how were they surviving?

[Naomi Ekparigan]

Well, so this is one of the great success stories that the human population on Easter island never disappears, as sometimes the slightly lazier literature about the island will say. And so what they did was they made these dramatic changes in their lifestyle really to ensure first of all that humans survived. And the most notable of that is that they stopped carving the statues. And that's why they abandoned that quarry overnight and never came back to it. And so they replaced their religious beliefs with a competition that focuses on collecting birds eggs. You can see that it would taken a period of perhaps people not all being convinced by this, but on a small island, changes can happen quickly. And so suddenly, if the elders and the priests are all suddenly saying no mana now comes in the form of these migratory birds that arrive once a year and lay an egg. And therefore we'll have a competition between all the tribes. You'll each put your greatest sort of Olympian forward and he will compete against the other tribes to become the person to obtain that first egg by swimming across, you know, a mile and a half of open ocean, probably waiting in caves on that islet.

[James Grant Peterkin]

What's your little offline islet?

[Naomi Ekparigan]

Yes. And then as soon as everyone gets the first sooty turn egg that person's chief becomes what we call the birdman and he becomes the spiritual political leader of the island for the next 12 months. And then we'll come back again next spring and we'll do the whole thing again. And for about 150 years, this system that is the dominant leadership election system. It's fascinating.

[James Grant Peterkin]

That's amazing. So they start foraging, I guess there's still fish in the sea, thank goodness for them. But it's focused less on crops and, and more on, on what they can find on the seashore in the ocean.

[Naomi Ekparigan]

Yeah. So you've got now a diminished population in terms of its number. You've got one perhaps much more conscious of the fact that they now need to survive entirely by themselves, that they can't rely on neighboring islands or the arrival of outsiders. Yes, when you get the arrival of Europeans, you're going to get some trading and things like that. So it's really why the island has always maintained this resilience, but also this ability to look after itself. And that's why even in something as recently as Covid, you know, where the island closed down for two and a half years, it was almost like the islanders went back to 100 years ago where they suddenly had to be entirely self sufficient.

[James Grant Peterkin]

More on Easter island, more on Rapa Nui coming up after this.

[Naomi Ekparigan]

Foreign hey.

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[Unknown]

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[James Grant Peterkin]

Let's talk more about those European arrivals. A Dutch expedition in the 1720s you mentioned.

[Naomi Ekparigan]

Yep. So 1722, Jacob Roggeveen and they psyched the island on Easter Sunday.

[James Grant Peterkin]

Right. Hence the name Easter Island. Stay for a while or get going.

[Naomi Ekparigan]

No bad conditions in the sea. Stay for the best part of a day, really. So, and this is why these first contacts were so they were so brief that again, to believe that they might have had an inherent. They would of course affected the islanders in a profound way. But to say that it would have really totally collapsed.

[James Grant Peterkin]

Exactly.

[Naomi Ekparigan]

I think is far fetched.

[James Grant Peterkin]

Okay, then we get a Spanish expedition.

[Naomi Ekparigan]

In 1770 and then Captain Cook off the in 1774 and do things start.

[James Grant Peterkin]

To get more regular after that? Is it on the map?

[Naomi Ekparigan]

So it's now on the map because of course these drawings and paintings of these colossal statues find their way back to Europe.

[James Grant Peterkin]

People are very struck with those straight away, are they? That this is something unusual, the equivalent.

[Naomi Ekparigan]

Of a viral photograph today, I think, you know, people are. What on earth is it? They first of all don't expect there to be an island there in the first place. When they find the island, they're amazed that it's inhabited. And of course then when they get up close to the coastline and see these enormous statues dotted all around the coastline, then Europeans don't know what to make of Easter island. And hence therefore a few more visitors come. But again, it's so isolated that unless you're in that part of the Pacific, it's not that you're going to make a side trip from New Zealand to go there.

[James Grant Peterkin]

So after Captain Cook, do we have a clear sense of the ships that passed, how much contact they were having with Europeans?

[Naomi Ekparigan]

Well, so it seems to be a noteworthy stop for people that are crossing the Pacific if they do call in. And that's why we're able to, at least in terms of population numbers, have an idea. The number of inhabitants on Easter island continues to decrease.

[James Grant Peterkin]

It continues to fall.

[Naomi Ekparigan]

Yes.

[James Grant Peterkin]

Well, now they've got a whole influx of European diseases to cope with as well.

[Naomi Ekparigan]

They've got diseases to deal with. The culture's changing rapidly as well. Perhaps the very structured family tribal organization is breaking down as well. Missionaries come along, move everyone into one place because that makes conversion much easier. So they break up this idea of tribal lands. So things are in flux and things are changing fast.

[James Grant Peterkin]

So you've got quite radical reorganization. You've got disease, you've got trade with the outside world. Must have been quite tumultuous decades. The early part of the 19th century.

[Naomi Ekparigan]

No, they were. And sadly, perhaps less scrupulous. Outsiders also see the island as an easy target, easy pickings. And so Peruvians in particular realize that the island is unprotected. It doesn't come under the, the colonial protection of anyone. And see that here's this Polynesian island, relatively close to South America. Peruvians suddenly start needing slaves or certainly workers. And so they start these incredibly damaging raids on islands in the Pacific, but particularly to Easter island, where several thousand islanders get lured onto ships, taken away to go and work on guano mines and things like that in Peru, in the mainland. Many of them don't survive the journey there, but of course, very few of them ever make their way back to the island. And when eventually international outcry says, you've got to repatriate these Rapa Nui back to their island, they return just 15 having taken thousands away.

[James Grant Peterkin]

What?

[Naomi Ekparigan]

And these 15 sadly bring smallpox with them. And so that smallpox then decimates much of the remaining population. So it's very easy to malign the work of missionaries in the Pacific at that time. But if it hadn't been perhaps for the Catholic missionaries on Easter island, then the population might have disappeared altogether. So it's they that really raised the alarm and say, look, this island needs outside help.

[James Grant Peterkin]

So by the mid 19th century, the numbers are really down to very low.

[Naomi Ekparigan]

They say that it got as low as 110 people at once.

[James Grant Peterkin]

And there had been thousands of people living there.

[Naomi Ekparigan]

Yeah, I mean, no one knows the exact high number, but possibly 12, 14,000 people would have been required to have the kind of society that was clearly living there at one point to create this culture that Easter island has become so famous for today.

[James Grant Peterkin]

Well, it does eventually fall under some sort of European yoke, does it?

[Naomi Ekparigan]

Catholic missionaries arrive and so when they come, they actually become the first people to almost raise the alarm about what's happening on Easter island and how the population continues to decrease. And so it's they that actually request someone to take ownership of the island. And through geographical, I suppose, proximity, it becomes a chilean possession in 1888.

[James Grant Peterkin]

Really. So before those missionaries, there weren't any really Europeans living on there or.

[Naomi Ekparigan]

No, because there was nothing for them. If there had been resources, if there had been precious metals, or if there had been been something, then Cook and others, the message would have got back that this is somewhere we need to colonize. But no one was interested in Easter Island. It didn't offer anything, except at this stage, hundreds of fallen over statues There wasn't even a single statue standing up at this point.

[James Grant Peterkin]

Okay, now why is that? Why have the statues all fallen over?

[Naomi Ekparigan]

So something has happened on the island that has caused a complete rejection of that former culture. And people aren't quite sure whether it's this inter tribal warfare that if you know that your neighboring tribe has their ancestors watching over them and protecting them, which is what those statues used to do, then perhaps the first thing you do is when you take their land because you want their land and their resources, perhaps at the same time you also then throw over their statues to nullify the power of their ancestors. Or alternatively, it's an island wide rejection of a religious belief that you and your ancestors have put hundreds of years of work into.

[James Grant Peterkin]

It's like the Protestant Reformation.

[Naomi Ekparigan]

You're told that larger and larger statues, suddenly life will get better for you and you're breaking your back building these things and nothing's getting better and life's getting worse on this island. And so it might be that there comes a point where everyone just goes, do you know what? We're done with this.

[James Grant Peterkin]

And Birdman, Birdman's what we need.

[Naomi Ekparigan]

Yep, Birdman comes to the fore.

[James Grant Peterkin]

And did the Catholic missionaries succeed in getting rid of the Birdman theory and replacing it with Christianity?

[Naomi Ekparigan]

They did. So they obviously didn't like the idea of a people who were worshiping birds eggs. And so sadly they came along and replaced it and found actually the island is fairly easy to convert to Christianity. And so. So whether by that point the Birdman competition wasn't quite so deep rooted as it had once been, who knows. But there seems to have been a relatively smooth transition into Christianity.

[James Grant Peterkin]

And as a result of the Chilean takeover, does Easter island and its people get focused more towards Spanish speaking Latin America and away from their hereditary customary links? Well, what would have been links with the rest of the Pacific world?

[Naomi Ekparigan]

So to a certain degree, yes. Except that Chile was fortunately today. But Chile was so useless as a colonizing power that instead of imposing their culture heavily on it, they sent one cargo ship a year to the island and that was really their commitment. So what you don't get, which of course you get in other parts of the Pacific, you don't get this dominance of an outside culture or language. So today everyone, most people are bilingual. People speak Spanish on the island because it's the official language, but people also speak rapa nuke. Whereas perhaps if another nation had come in and taken possession and control of Easter island, you might have had that rapa nui. Ultimately being Replaced entirely. So it's something that we're very grateful for today, the fact that Chile has been, perhaps, I mean, but again, you're dealing with something that's two and a half thousand miles away and has no.

[James Grant Peterkin]

Economic value in the minds of politicians.

[Naomi Ekparigan]

No, what it does actually have is quite important strategic value to Chile today because it gives them an enormous part of the Pacific that they wouldn't otherwise have. And so, in terms of things like shipping routes, air routes, and particularly now with marine protected areas and things like that, the island is suddenly becoming quite relevant. But this is all in the last 20 years or so.

[James Grant Peterkin]

When you went there, did you fly?

[Naomi Ekparigan]

So I flew there. There were two flights a week, I remember, and it was really just a refueling stop between flights from Chile to Tahiti in French Polynesia. But given the distances and the fact there's no other airstrip anywhere in that part of the Pacific, they used to refuel on Easter island and then carry on. But I remember the time I first went, I think there were about 30 of us that got off the plane and were actually staying on the island. So I couldn't believe it. Given what I thought was the attractions of Easter Island, I just couldn't believe that no one else was.

[James Grant Peterkin]

And it's still just as remote. If you go there now, are there lots of tourists?

[Naomi Ekparigan]

Well, so, I mean, there's now a minimum of one flight a day. So, I mean, really, tourism is dictated by the amount of flights to the island, occasional cruise ships, but very few. So I think then the nice thing about the island today is it doesn't feel overrun. But I think it's something that the island does have to be careful of, because, of course, as places grow in popularity, and we've all been to places, say, 20 years apart, where you go once and it feels very untouched. You go back and it feels completely overrun, because these places can change quickly. So hopefully, and I think they are very aware of it, it will be protected because you can give out a certain amount of passes to the island per year and things like that, and therefore keep a cap on tourism.

[James Grant Peterkin]

And it sounds like a very exciting place to be a historian or archaeologist, because there's so much at stake. There's still some really big questions that we're trying to answer.

[Naomi Ekparigan]

It is the frustrating part is that the islanders themselves, there's a slight reluctance towards outside archaeologists, historians coming in and particularly digging around and things like that. So I think 20, 30 years ago, speaking to archaeologists who were digging then, they say this was absolute nirvana for them. I mean, this was an untouched gold mine where they could come in and really make significant finds and come away from each expedition believing they'd understood more. Now, I gather the paperwork and the bureaucracy is so difficult that sadly it's becoming less the case. But on the good side, more islanders themselves are now going to university to study archaeology and study history. And so you've got this sudden emergence of a younger generation of island born experts who will hopefully take that forward. And so we won't therefore need to rely quite so much on sort of outside input.

[James Grant Peterkin]

And how many Rapanuins are there today?

[Naomi Ekparigan]

So the island population is about, I think it's about 9,000 at the moment, of which just over 50% are considered Rapanui. So they're of Polynesian descent. The remainder are mainly mainland Chileans that have settled there and then a few odd outsiders like myself.

[James Grant Peterkin]

Like you in your tent.

[Naomi Ekparigan]

Yeah, well, yes. So it was incredible experience and obviously I went there. No notion of that I was going to live there at all, but it became obviously a life changing decision when I did.

[James Grant Peterkin]

James, it's a pleasure to have you with us.

[Naomi Ekparigan]

Thanks Dan. Thanks for having me here.

[James Grant Peterkin]

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Dan Snow's history hit. You know, you could have watched this episode and others on YouTube. That's right. You can peek behind the curtain of how we record this podcast on our YouTube channel. Very exciting new development here. Just click the link in the show notes and head over to subscribe. New YouTube releases every Friday, friends. Don't miss out.

[Dan Snow]

Now at Verizon, we have some big news for your peace of mind. For all our customers existing and new, we're locking in low prices for three years guaranteed on my plan and my home. That's future you peace of mind and everyone can save on a brand new phone on myplay plan. When you trade in any phone from one of our top brands, that's new phone peace of mind. Because at Verizon, whether you're already a customer or you're just joining us, we got you. Visit Verizon today. Price guarantee applies to then current base monthly rate. Additional terms and conditions apply for all offers.

[Naomi Ekparigan]

When you're a forward thinker, the only thing you're afraid of is business as usual.

[Ryan Seacrest]

Workday is the AI platform that transforms the way you manage your people and money today so you can transform tomorrow. Workday moving business forever forward.