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The settlers on Easter Island brought only chickens and rats with them and because the climate was too severe for many plants grown elsewhere in Polynesia, they were restricted to a diet based mainly on sweet potatoes and chickens. The people who arrived in the fifth century*) probably numbered no more than twenty or thirty at most. There were thirty indigenous plants, no mammals, but many seabirds. Because of its remoteness the island had only a few species of plants and animals. The island was volcanic in origin, but its three volcanoes had been extinct for many centuries before the Polynesian settlers arrived. When the first people found Easter Island, they discovered a world with few resources. They made long voyages in double canoes, joined together by a broad central platform to transport and shelter people, plants, animals and food. The original Polynesians came from south-east Asia. Modern research has revealed a lot about their life during their golden age – and about the causes of the catastrophe.
![tree of life paradise island 2 tree of life paradise island 2](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/f6/48/31/f64831134c4b0576182c8c9827f3efeb.jpg)
They could not escape the island anymore, because every single tree had been cut. They had a highly developed civilisation for about 600 years, but neglected the environmental effect of their lifestyle and ended in catastrophe. The story of the Easterislanders is tragic, but at the same time a good lesson for all of us. How could people make and transport the huge sculptures they found everywhere on the island from the quarry at the mountainside to the coast without machines, even without trees? The island was completely treeless at the time of discovery.Įaster Island was given the name Rapa Nui (Great Rapa) by Tahitian sailors, in the 1860’s, as it reminded them of Rapa – a small island in French Polynesia (now commonly referred to as Rapa Iti). The Dutch discoverers found a primitive society with about 3,000 people living in squalid reed huts or caves, engaged in almost perpetual warfare and resorting to cannibalism in a desperate attempt to supplement the meagre food supplies available on the island. At the same time it is one of the most enchanting archaeological sites: the mysterious enormous heads dotting the island have amazed people since the discovery by Dutch sailors Easter 1722. Ecology, Human history and the environment, Population, thematic lessonsĮaster Island is one of the world’s most remote places inhabited by people: 2500 miles from the nearest continent (South America) and 1200 miles from the nearest island (Pitcairn).