Easter Island

The presented book deals with a previously unknown manuscript found in the Jagiellonian Library in Cracow (Poland). Written in French, the document was composed by the Forsters, famous naturalists that travelled with Captain Cook. The manuscript is a complete essay on Easter Island, being at the same time a political, social and philosophical manifesto. For Rapa Nui, it includes descriptions and commentaries not present in other writings by both authors. Transcription and translation are offered, as well as the analysis of technical and meritorical aspects of the manuscript.

Explaining the processes underlying the emergence of monument construction is a major theme in contemporary anthropological archaeology, and recent studies have employed spatially-explicit modeling to explain these patterns. Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile) is famous for its elaborate ritual architecture, particularly numerous monumental platforms (ahu) and statuary (moai). To date, however, we lack explicit modeling to explain spatial and temporal aspects of monument construction. Here, we use spatially-explicit point-process modeling to explore the potential relations between ahu construction locations and subsistence resources, namely, rock mulch agricultural gardens, marine resources, and freshwater sources-the three most critical resources on Rapa Nui. Through these analyses, we demonstrate the central importance of coastal freshwater seeps for precontact populations. Our results suggest that ahu locations are most parsimoniously explained by distance from freshwater sources, in...

Abstract Traditional explanations of Rapa Nui history invoke environmental degradation and warfare to explain the ‘collapse’ of the island's social and economic structure. One element in these reconstructions are the stemmed obsidian points known as mata'a, which some have envisaged as spearheads produced in the context of endemic warfare. Morphometric analysis shows, however, that mata'a were not specifically designed for interpersonal violence but were general purpose tools that may have been used for peaceful tasks such as ritual scarification. This discovery provides further evidence against the theory of the violent collapse of Rapa Nui society.

The world has been suffering the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic
since the early months of 2020. This has resulted in catastrophic
effects globally, with Indigenous Peoples suffering serious impacts
not only on their health and the exercise of their right to health
but also in terms of the social inequality they have historically suffered,
and which has resulted in major consequences for the exercise of their
economic, social, cultural and environmental rights.
Against this backdrop, the Rapa Nui people last year set an example
of how to address the pandemic, through coordinated work on the
part of their leaders and use of their traditional knowledge.
Initially, on 17 March, 14 days after the first case of COVID-19 was
detected in Chile and in light of the Chilean government’s refusal to take
measures to protect the Rapa Nui territory, the people acted autonomously
and in unity with their administrative and political authorities,
such as the HONUI Clan Assembly, the Rapa Nui Parliament and the
Municipality of Rapa Nui, to close their borders. The airport was taken
over by protestors to prevent commercial flights from continuing to arrive
without any kind of checks. Air is the only way to enter Rapa Nui,
a small island located in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, 3,700 kilometres
from the coast of continental Chile, and which has neither the
health professionals nor the infrastructure necessary for the day-today
medical needs of the population let alone the capacity to face a
pandemic of this nature.

Rapa Nui (Easter Island) has become widely known as a case study of human-induced environmental catastrophe resulting in cultural collapse. The island's alleged "ecocide" is offered as a cautionary tale of our own environmental recklessness. The actual archaeological and historical record for the island reveals that while biodiver-sity loss unfolded, the ancient Polynesians persisted and succeeded. Demographic "collapse" came with epidemics of Old World diseases introduced by European visitors. In this paper, we outline the process of prehistoric landscape transformation that took place on Rapa Nui. This process includes the role of humans using fire to remove forest and convert to land for agricultural use as well as the impact of intro-duced rats (Rattus exulans) as agents that depressed recruitment of native vegeta-tion and contributed to the island's deforestation. For humans, the transformation of the landscape improved productivity. Burning of palms...

Artykuł przypomina o katastrofie ekologicznej, do której doprowadzili w średniowieczu mieszkańcy Wyspy Wielkanocnej, wycinając bez opamiętania rosnące na wyspie drzewa - aż ścięli ostatnie i wyspa stała się bezdrzewnym terenem, na którym bardzo trudno było o pożywienie. Artykuł sygnalizuje, że eksploatacja bez umiaru zasobów naszej planety może doprowadzić do podobnej katastrofy w skali globalnej.

Rjabchikov, Sergei V., 2020. The Beginning of the Record on the Santiago Staff from Rapanui has been Decoded: The Urgent Report. The paper. 3 pages.

The original was first delivered by Sergei V. Rjabchikov as the paper “The Beginning of the Record on the Santiago Staff from Rapanui has been Decoded: The Urgent Report” on the scientific session of the Sergei Rjabchikov Foundation – Research Centre for Studies of Ancient Civilisations and Cultures in Krasnodar on July 26, 2020.

Keywords: Easter Island, Rapanui, Rapa Nui, Polynesia, rongorongo, script, writing, hieroglyphic script, folklore, Austronesian

Rjabchikov, Sergei V., 2019. On the Colour Symbolism in the Rapanui Folklore: Additional Notes. The paper. 3 pages.

The original was first delivered by Sergei V. Rjabchikov as the paper “On the Colour Symbolism in the Rapanui Folklore: Additional Notes” on the scientific session of the Sergei Rjabchikov Foundation – Research Centre for Studies of Ancient Civilisations and Cultures in Krasnodar on July 3, 2019.

Keywords: Easter Island, Rapanui, Rapa Nui, Polynesia, rongorongo, script, writing, hieroglyphic script

Uskršnji otok jedan je od najizoliranijih komadića kopna na Zemlji. Njegovi prvi stanovnici su u nekoliko stoljeća razvili dobro organizirano društvo. Razvoj tog društva temeljio se na pretjeranom iscrpljivanju resursa, a ponajviše na intenzivnoj deforestaciji. Nakon dosega vrhunca, društvo se tek nekoliko desetljeća prije otkrića otoka od strane Europljana urušilo zbog neimaštine izazvane neodrživim razvojem. Ono što čini slučaj Uskršnjeg otoka zanimljivim jest to što se vrlo lako može tumačiti kao model Zemlje u malom, odnosno model današnjih globalnih okolišnih procesa i problema. Kako bi izbjegli scenarij Uskršnjeg otoka na globalnoj razini, potrebno je izvući pouke iz ovog primjera i spriječiti daljnju ekološku devastaciju planeta.
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Easter Island is one of the most isolated islands on Earth. It's first inhabitants developed a well organized society in a few centuries. Development of that society was based on the overconsumption of resources, especially on intense deforestation. After their peak, the society collapsed because of the scarcity of resources caused by the unsustainable development, just a few decades before the first Europeans discovered the island. What makes the case of Easter island so interesting is the fact that it can be interpreted as a model of Earth on a smaller scale, or a model of today's global environmental processes and problems. In order to avoid the scenario of Easter Island on a global scale, it is necessary to learn lessons from this example and to stop further ecological devastation of our planet.

For fifteen years, Terevaka Archaeological Outreach (TAO) has provided local students from Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile) with hands-on experience to: (1) offer experiential learning opportunities about the local cultural and natural resources; (2) promote awareness and expertise in conservation measures and sustainable development; and (3) document and study the modern and ancient natural and cultural resources of the island. Three-dimensional ortho-corrected photogrammetry (3D OCP) is a valuable technology within archaeology, which is relatively cheap and accessible. Digital and physical models produced through 3D OCP serve as powerful educational tools, making cultural heritage more accessible to a range of interested parties, especially the local community.
Students who participated in the 2016 and 2017 TAO seasons photographed hundreds of artifacts at the island’s only museum (Museo Antropológico Padre Sebastián Englert), as well as archaeological features and sites located across the landscape.  TAO students are now using 3D OCP to create a collection of digital and physical 3D replicas on the island—for educational, conservation, and research purposes—accessible to the local community members, the tourism industry, and archaeologists. This research conveys the potential for archaeologists to help empower local communities, as well as enhance archaeological research potential through non-destruction, cutting-edge technology.

For fifteen years, Terevaka Archaeological Outreach (TAO) has provided local students from Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile) with hands-on experience to: (1) offer experiential learning opportunities about the local cultural and natural resources; (2) promote awareness and expertise in conservation measures and sustainable development; and (3) document and study the modern and ancient natural and cultural resources of the island. Three-dimensional ortho-corrected photogrammetry (3D OCP) is a valuable technology within archaeology, which is relatively cheap and accessible. Digital and physical models produced through 3D OCP serve as powerful educational tools, making cultural heritage more accessible to a range of interested parties, especially the local community. Students who participated in the 2016 and 2017 TAO seasons photographed hundreds of artifacts at the island's only museum (Museo Antropológico Padre Sebastián Englert), as well as archaeological features and sites located across the landscape. TAO students are now using 3D OCP to create a collection of digital and physical 3D replicas on the island—for educational, conservation, and research purposes—accessible to the local community members, the tourism industry, and archaeologists. This research conveys the potential for archaeologists to help empower local communities, as well as enhance archaeological research potential through non-destruction, cutting-edge technology.

Rjabchikov, Sergei V., 2018. About the Proto-Polynesian Words *Ma'uga and *Maui. Polynesia Newsletter, 14, p. 6.

Keywords:  writing, rongorongo, folklore, rock art, string figure, string game, Rapanui, Rapa Nui, Easter Island, Polynesia, Maya, Proto-Polynesian, PPN, Austronesian

Rjabchikov, Sergei V., 1997. [A Letter to the Editor about Fedorova's Incorrect Rongorongo Studies]. Rapa Nui Journal, vol. 11(4), pp. 165-166.

Sergei V. Rjabchikov was the first who proved that the decipherment by Irina K. Fedorova of the rongorongo script was incorrect.

Keywords: Rjabchikov, writing, rongorongo, folklore, rock art, Rapanui, Rapa Nui, Easter Island, Polynesia

Rjabchikov, Sergei V., 2017. The Rapanui Petroglyphs Tell of Octopuses. Polynesia Newsletter, 10, pp. 6-14.

Keywords:  writing, folklore, rock art, Rapanui, Rapa Nui, Easter Island, Polynesia

In the same issue the following article is published:

Popova, Tatiana, 2017. The Old Andean God Paryaqaqa on Easter Island. Polynesia Newsletter, 10, pp. 2-5.

Rjabchikov, S.V., 2017. The Ancient Astronomy of Easter Island: The Mamari Tablet Tells (Part 3). arXiv:1705.01218 (the database of Cornell University Library). http://arxiv.org/abs/1705.01218 A paper on the archaeoastronomy of Easter Island.

One of main events on Rapanui before the cruel war (several wars) between the Hanau Momoko and Hanau Eepe was the annual election of the bird-man. Plainly, the local priest-astronomers, the descendants of immigrants from the Andean region of South America, could predict the day of the vernal equinox not only with the aid of the so-called "sun stones," but also counting the phases of the moon. The elements of the mathematical calculations of the astronomers have been deciphered. The astronomical basis of the Ahu Atanga (A Tanga) has been decoded, too.

Entre el 15 y 17 de febrero de 2017, la escuelita de verano de más de 30 niños y niñas, hijos de funcionarios municipales de Isla de Pascua, participó de un pequeño programa educativo teórico y práctico de Paleoecología, Geología y Arqueología (PGA).

Rjabchikov, S.V., 2016. The Ancient Astronomy of Easter Island: The Mamari Tablet Tells (Part 1). arXiv:1612.07779 (the database of Cornell University Library). http://arxiv.org/abs/1612.07779 A paper on the archaeoastronomy of Easter Island.

Young, Forrest Wade
      2016  Unsettling the Moral Economy of Tourism in Chile’s Easter Island. In The Political Ecology of Tourism: Communities, Power, and the Environment. Mary Mostafanezhad, Eric Shelton, Anna Carr, eds. Pp. 134-150. New York: Routledge Press.

This chapter analyzes the political ecology of tourism on Easter Island in the context of senses of place of the Indigenous Polynesian Rapa Nui people. The multi-scalar study challenges the moral economy of current state and global development projects for sustainable tourism in terms of buried epistemologies and ontologies of the Rapa Nui people. Political ecological inquiry is entangled in research from Indigenous Studies, Pacific Island anthropology, and poststructural critical theory, but is grounded in extended ethnographic research. Critical discourse analysis of community narratives articulated in the Indigenous language discloses how the management of the island as a tourist habitat undermines Rapa Nui sacred sites and subjectivities in their island home. Rapa Nui community voices are heard in disputes of land tenure systems and cultural heritage management. Sustainable tourism projects are shown to relay forces of transnational governmentality that disempower Rapa Nui social movements for self-determination of Easter Island, and perpetuate neoliberal processes of capital accumulation through indigenous control, dispossession, and marginalization. Thus, the case study illustrates how the promotion of sustainable tourism can often serve tourist imaginaries in terms of private and state interests at the expense of the human rights of Indigenous Peoples for sustainable self-determination.

Artículo escrito por Richard García para El Mercurio (22/09/2013). Incluye una reseña de el libro When the Universe Was an Island. Para más información visitar la página www.universoisla.com (en español) o www.universeisland.com (en inglés).

A new bivalve species of the genus Pinna Linnaeus, 1758, is described from shallow water off the coast of Easter Island, south eastern Pacific Ocean. Pinna rapanui sp. n. has a small, broad, slightly angulated shell with a sculpture of commarginal growth lines and prominent radial ribs decorated by al most tubular, perpendicularly erect spines. This species is the 249th marine molluscan species found in Easter Island waters, and it is, by far, the largest bivalve species living around the island. A Polynesian origin of this species is suggested; however, its definite affinities with Indo-Pacific or South American fauna are still unknown.

Through a UQ School of Social Science Strategic Planning Grant, the archaeology department hosted Professor Ian Hodder (Stanford) and facilitated a Masterclass entitled: Entangled – The relationship between humans and things. The objective of the class was to use Professor Hodder’s most recent book, Entangled (2012), and the archaeological theoretical perspective within, to better interpret sites, artifacts and material culture participants are working with or analyzing in their own studies. The class was open to the public, provided the best lunch, and was well attended by archaeologists, anthropologists, historians, and classicists.

The extended title of the present work is appropriate for such an innovative and multifaceted book. It alludes to the fundamental subject matter of the research which Zuzanna Jakubowska asserts concisely and in support of which she presents the first rate evidence.
The author’s aims appear di•fficult to fulfil. Her research questions the long established dogma, that all possible works of any literary or scientific value by the Polish-Royal-Prussia born Forsters (supernumeraries on James Cook’s Second Circumnavigation, 1772–1775) have been both identified and closely read, and that nothing new of any primary value could possibly be found in the documentation of the Voyage.
The aim of Zuzanna Jakubowska’s research is also of a rather sensitive nature. The literary heritage of the Forsters is claimed by six nations or states, namely by Poland, Germany, England, Scotland, France, and, last but not least, by Lithuania.
The present work is especially important with reference to Poland and Lithuania. The Forsters were contemporaries of Cook and King George III of Great Britain and Ireland, and Catherine, Empress of Russia, as well as of King Stanislas Augustus Poniatowski of the Polish/Lithuanian Commonwealth. All the above had a profound e•ffect on the lives of the Forsters.
As alluded above, the Forsters were born near the Free City of Gdańsk/Danzig in the territory of Royal Prussia. Royal Prussia was at the time part of the Crown of Poland, which itself constituted part of the abovementioned Polish/Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Forsters were partly forgotten in the countries which formed the monarchy. The work of Z. Jakubowska strives to bring them back to the pantheon of the old Commonwealth’s heritage.

from the Instroduction by K. K. Vorbrich


Rozbudowany tytuł niniejszej publikacji pasuje do tak nowatorskiej, wielowątkowej książki. Wskazuje na sedno badań, które autorka nie tylko klarownie przedstawiła, ale również poparła dowodami pierwszej klasy.
Cele, jakie przyświecają autorce, są niezmiernie trudne do realizacji, albowiem badania Zuzanny Jakubowskiej kwestionują powszechnie akceptowany dogmat, iż w przypadku Forsterów – pochodzących z Prus Królewskich, dodatkowych członków załogi Jamesa Cooka podczas jego drugiej wyprawy dookoła świata (1772–1775) – wszelkie możliwe pisma o jakiejkolwiek wartości literackiej i naukowej są znane i dokładnie przestudiowane, a zatem nie jest możliwe uzupełnienie dokumentacji z owej wyprawy o żaden nowy, cenny tekst.
Cele, jakie przyświecają badaniom autorki, są również dość delikatnej natury. Pretensje do spuścizny literackiej po Forsterach rości sobie bowiem sześć narodów i państw: Polska, Niemcy, Anglia, Szkocja, Francja, a wreszcie Litwa.
Niniejsza praca jest szczególnie ważna w odniesieniu do Polski i Litwy. Forsterowie żyli w czasach Cooka i Jerzego III, króla Wielkiej Brytanii i Irlandii, a także carycy Katarzyny oraz króla Stanisława Augusta Poniatowskiego – władcy Rzeczpospolitej Obojga Narodów. Monarchowie ci wywarli na podróżników przemożny wpływ.
Forsterowie urodzili się nieopodal Wolnego Miasta Gdańska, na terenie Prus Królewskich, należących do ówczesnej Korony Polskiej, która wchodziła w skład Unii Polsko-Litewskiej. Dawne kraje Unii po trosze o nich zapomniały. Praca Z. Jakubowskiej dąży do przywrócenia im należnego miejsca w panteonie dziedzictwa polsko-litewskiego.

ze wstępu (K. K. Vorbrich)

Although there is the tendency to identify Rapa Nui as the cause célèbre of a collapsed society, I rather disagree with this notion, and instead have presented the island as an exemplary case of diachronic cultural change, human organization, adaptation and survival (Simpson 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013). Thus, instead of focusing my doctoral research on the island’s collapse, I am focusing on the opposite, and highlighting the island’s prehistoric social complexity.

By chemically sourcing lava flows, stone quarries, fine- and coarse-grained basalt materials with inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry, I plan to demonstrate from where lithic material was procured, to compare these findings to what and where material was found in the archaeological record. With this evidence, Geographic Information Systems will help uncover
spatial patterning with regards to the distance of procurement from source quarries, and if acquisition and use reflect notions of ancient Rapanui socio-political organization and models of resource obtainment, distribution, and use.

My research design also includes 3D scanning of archaeological sites and artefacts, opportunities for public archaeology and educational outreach, and a platform for digital archaeology (RNgeochemPHD) to further disseminate my
research and results.

This paper relates to the study of the health and diet of ancient Easter Islanders. It is based on human skeletons discovered between 1934 and 2009. We studied skeletal markers that revealed poor living conditions during growth (stress indicators) and recorded the presence of infectious diseases. The dietary reconstitution is based on dental microwear and the analysis of carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes. Our study indicates relatively good health and food conditions during childhood. However, we found cases of infectious diseases that probably followed contact with Europeans or Americans. The dental microwear pattern is due to the dominant part of the tubers. The stable isotopes show that, on average, a little more than one third of their dietary proteins came from the sea.