THE RAPA NUI
The Rapa Nui
In this paper I will discuss the Rapa Nui and their arrival on Easter Island. I will cover the basic history of the Rapa Nui and their discovery and habitation of Easter Island. Further, I will review topics such as culture, marriage and family, religion, traditions and more.
Rapa Nui is more commonly known as Easter Island, a province of Chile. Its official Spanish name is Isla de Pascua. It is one of the most isolated inhabited islands on earth, located in the southeastern Pacific Ocean. The island is triangular in shape, with three volcanic peaks, each one found at one corner of the island. Covered mostly in barren rock or grass and shrubs, the island was once heavily forested. The only indigenous animals are flocks of sea birds and the Polynesian rat. Cattle, sheep, pigs, chickens, and dogs were introduced from other islands or from European visitors. The island is in a tropical climate zone, with water obtained from one of three springs, or by collecting rain water.
The first settlers, also known as the Rapa Nui, arrived around A.D. 300 – 400, and are believed to be of Polynesian descent. According to legend, these first settlers were a small colony of men, women and children who braved the ocean in nothing more than a catamaran. Their chief, Hotu Matu’a, led them to the island after fleeing their native homeland of Marae Renga following a defeat in war. The population on Easter Island has varied from 7 up to 17,000 before settlers from Europe arrived. Years of famine, introduced diseases from visitors, internal tribal warfare and slave raids led to severe population fluctuations.
Easter Island is world-famous for its giant statues known as moai. There are a to...
... middle of paper ...
...world, yet many of their customs are similar to others around the world, from marriage and family, to gender roles and religion. They have many differences as well, some still based on a more primitive scope like still believing in curses.
Sources
• William H. Swatos, Jr., ed. Twentieth-Century World Religious Movements in Neo-Weberian Perspective. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1992.
• Dr. Grant McCall, “RapaNui (Easter Island)”, ALS Independence 2003-11. 15 March 2012
• Deborah Underwood, “The Easter Island Statues”, KidHaven Press, c2005
• "Easter Island." Encyclopedia of World Cultures. 1996. Encyclopedia.com. 11 Mar. 2012
• Peggy Mann, “Easter Island: land of mysteries”, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, c1976
• J. Douglas Porteus, “The Modernization of Easter Island”, Dept. of Geography, University of Victoria, 1981
The island is about 4 square miles and is today a place for tourism in the great lakes. Many thousands of years ago though this was a little piece of land with bluffs reaching high above its surroundings and was a merely a small piece of land surrounded by water. It was because of these bluffs the appearance of the island resembled a turtle and led to it being named “The Great Turtle” (Piljac, 1998). Currently the island reaches several hundred feet above the lake and it’s because of this geography that many nations saw this as a perfect military post and would be used over and over again throughout its history as such.
Molloy, Michael. Experiencing the World's Religions. 5th Edition. New York, NY: McGraw Hill, 2010. 320-322. Print.
The way of the Ju/‘hoansi life has changed dramatically in many ways throughout the years. However, it is still possible to reflect upon their original way of life and compare it with their present state of living. Most of the changes occurred due to environmental, economical, developmental, social and cultural changes. All of which play a vital role in determining a Ju’s way of life. Although the land of the Dobe and !Kangwa have developed and changed in recent years, there are still some remnants of how the environment used to be. A significant shift in social and cultural aspects of the Ju/‘hoansi life can be observed in the new environment. However, some important aspects of their culture and belief system are still reflected in their everyday lives.
To begin with, the Lorax and Easter Island have many differences but the most obvious one is that in the Lorax one person/thing (the onceler) was responsible for the destruction and the depletion of a resource. Unlike the Lorax a whole generation of people led to the destruction and depletion of many resources, and not just one individual profited from the exploitation but a whole species of people did. In the Lorax you can see that the onceler used the truffula trees for economic purposes. He got filthy rich from the exploitation. Whereas, in Easter Island a whole group of people benefited from it, they build pyramids, cut down trees to build temples, and depleted the land of all its natural sources.
By far the biggest mystery are the Moai Statues that stand 20 to roughly 69 feet tall and weigh at least 20 tons obviously a feet for pre-modern man to produce. These statues were made as a way to show dominance by the multiple tribes found on the island. The tribes competed trying to make their Moai statue better and taller than the next tribes. The mysteries of the Moai statue and the island’s history that bring fame to Easter Island are not as enigmatic as the fame brought to the popular novel and film The Lorax. The film tells the story of a boy who meets the Onceler who knew of a time when truffula trees existed. The Onceler tells his story of cutting down all the truffula trees in the forest to make Thneed, a new trending product, which made the Onceler rich, but The Lorax warned him to stop cutting down the truffula trees however he didn 't listen. When all the truffula trees had been chopped down, all the animals left the forest and the Onceler became poor and regretted not listening to The Lorax. In the end the Onceler gives the last tree seed to the boy and the boy plants
In the chronological, descriptive ethnography Nest in the Wind, Martha Ward described her experience on the rainy, Micronesian island of Pohnpei using both the concepts of anthropological research and personal, underlying realities of participant observation to convey a genuine depiction of the people of Pohnpei. Ward’s objective in writing Nest in the Wind was to document the concrete, specific events of Pohnpeian everyday life and traditions through decades of change. While informing the reader of the rich beliefs, practices, and legends circulated among the people of Pohnpei, the ethnography also documents the effects of the change itself: the island’s adaptation to the age of globalization and the survival of pre-colonial culture.
Stony sentry’s, carved years ago by Polynesian craftsmen, gaze over one of the most remote places in the world. With their land enlarged by overuse, islanders now draw on a revival of their culture to attract visitors. I intend to tell about this small island off the coast of Chile named Easter Island.
Africa is the second-largest and most tropical continent in the world. Africa is a continent that has been broken down into many countries. Due to the large amount of countries established in Africa it causes this continent to be very diverse within peoples skin color, religion, and language. Throughout this paper, I will be focusing exclusively on the similarities that are found amongst the Maasai and Tuareg people. In the books, The World of a Maasai by Tepilit Ole Saitoti and A Nomad in Two Worlds by Ahmed Kemil, they both try to dissect the cultures between these two communities. Both of these authors execute this by looking at the herding practices, gender relations and childhood socialization founded between these two societies. Barbara Worley’s manuscript, Tuareg Nation, will better enable me to further point out the similarities founded between these two groups.
A serious rebirth in Polynesian culture and traditions arouse after the voyages by the Hokule'a. In 1975 a replica of a Polynesian voyaging can...
Eastman, Roger. The Ways of Religion: An Introduction to the Major Traditions. Third Edition. Oxford University Press. N.Y. 1999
Indigenous religions exist in every climate around the world and exhibit a wide range of differences in their stories, language, customs, and views of the afterlife. Within indigenous communities, religion, social behavior, art, and music are so intertwined that their religion is a significant part of their culture and virtually inseparable from it. These religions originally developed and thrived in isolation from one another and are some of the earliest examples of religious practice and belief. The modern world; however, has taken its toll on these groups and many of their stories, customs, and beliefs have been lost to, or replaced by, those brought in as a result of popular culture and the missionary work of Christians and Muslims.
The Polynesian peoples have a lifestyle quite different than that of any other culture, as living on an island requires a level of flexible adaptability in order to cope with such a different, sometimes difficult environment. We see the way diverse cultures build their lives around their circumstances and how they respect them in their cultural myths and stories. The Polynesian legends emphasize the physical environment that they live in. They are quite different than any other region in the world, but the beauty and individuality of the Polynesian culture is prominent as seen in their mythology.
Hopfe, L. M., & Woodward, M. R. (2007). Religions of the World (10th ed.) New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
In 1,850 A.D. the population was decimated to mere 111 sick and starving islanders, and for some reason all of the trees were gone. It is believed that the Rapa Nui cut all the islands trees down to aid in the sculpting and production of the massive Moai statues. The declination of trees and overall island life is what escalated the islanders to start fighting each other. The inhabitants had spread out and made clans around the production of Moai, trying to make the largest possible statues they could to please the gods (Henriksen 1-2). Then the islands first documented discovery was made by the Dutch explorer Admiral Roggeveen on Easter Sunday in 1722, ergo the name Easter Island (Judd 2). The dis-covery of the island by the Europeans wasn’t a good thing this is where all of the horrible diseases came from, which made the already high death count rise even more, and as if that wasn’t enough this discovery helped Peruvian slave ships find the island and kidnap the inhabitants to sell into slave