Easter Island/Rapa Nui

Rapa Nui Tours picked us up at 3:30 on the first afternoon for our first tour with two other couples. We drove southwest of town and up a hill to stop at the lip of Rano Kau, a volcanic crater 1500 meters in diameter which is filled with a 65-meter deep lake 300 meters below the top of the crater (Language note: rano is Rapanui for "lagoon," which is normally a seawater basin enclosed by coral reefs or rocks. Since there are no coral reefs or seawater lagoons around Rapanui, the word has been applied to crater lakes. The word clearly comes from another type of environment, but it is not related to Tahitian or Hawaiian. On the other hand, kau means "to swim" in Rapanui and it is related to the word 'au in Hawaiian with the same meaning. Victor told us that in former times swimmers trained in the crater lake). From here we had broad views of the whole island and the rich vegetation that grew in the crater around the lake. In addition to fruit trees there were also supposed to be unique medicinal herbs.

A short distance away from the crater edge we came to the former ceremonial village of Orongo, a word related to the Hawaiian "Lono." However, the god worshipped here was Makemake, represented by a phallic symbol arranged like a face. The village sits high on the edge of the crater, overlooking the ocean and three islets. The fifty-three huts follow a pattern used by nobles on other parts of the island - an oval foundation not more than two or three meters at its widest point with rock walls and a tiny (oops!) rectangular entrance hole. Inside are one or two rooms, and here the roofs are made of sod, whereas elsewhere they are made of thatch. Legend has it that the house design is boat-shaped because when the first chief, Hotu Matua, arrived on the island his wife was pregnant and he upturned his canoe so she would have shelter. However, since Rapanui cosmology symbolizes the sky as male and the earth as female, and since the culture is rife with sexual symbolism, the house shape might also represent the female aspect of the cosmos.

Orongo was the center of the "birdman" cult, involving religious, social and political aspects of Rapanui life. At least some researchers believe that this cult co-existed with the ancestral religion of the great statues, and that it became pre-eminent when the ancestral system broke down (more on that later). Essentially, the birdman cult - or religion - focused on a a very special ceremony that took place during the annual nesting of terns (manutara in Rapanui) on Motu Nui ("Big Islet"), the farthest of the three islets off the shores of Rano Kau. Men representing the various clan chiefs would train in the crater and then set off for Motu Nui on reed rafts before the arrival of the terns and wait in a cave. Then they would climb onto the rock and try to snatch a freshly-laid egg. The first man to swim back to the main island, climb the cliff, and hand an intact egg to his clan chief would be highly honored. Most of the honor, though, would go to the clan chief, who would be named Tangata Manu (Bird Man) for the coming year. He would live in near isolation for the whole year, and his clan would receive special privileges. According to Victor these privileges were usually abused, which led to lots of fighting between the clans. When I asked Victor about the movie, "Rapa Nui," he snorted in disgust. "Just a Hollywood production," he scoffed. What bothered him most were the scenes where the man who brought the egg smashed it against the forehead of the chief. "The egg was a symbol of life and power," said Victor. "It would never have been desecrated like that."

An unexplained oddity is that the Tangata Manu was symbolized by a drawing, petroglyph or sculpture of a naked human being with the head of a frigate bird, even though the egg came from a tern. Also, mixed in with the figures of Tangata Manu forms carved in abundance on the rocks around Orongo, are naked human figures with tern heads. I've read that some people think that terns replaced the frigates because the latter disappeared, but in reality the terns have stopped coming and frigate birds are still around (I saw some). Based on bird behavior, what I think is that the frigate bird was used as a symbol for the Bird Man because frigate birds normally take their food from other birds, rather than hunt their own (the Hawaiian word for frigates, 'iwa, means "thief"), and one of the privileges of the Bird Man was to take food from other clans. I also think the manutara or tern-headed figures on the rocks represent the swimmers, and not the Tangata Manu. Petroglyphs are normally carved as magical symbols to bring luck, not as historical records.

Another very interesting thing about Rapa Nui petroglyphs is that they are the most sophisticated rock carvings in the whole Pacific, with curves and forms and details and sheer beauty unlike anywhere else.

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