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Orongo
Orongo is a stone village and ceremonial center at the southwestern tip of Rapa Nui (Easter Island). It consists of a collection of low, sod-covered, windowless, round-walled buildings with even lower doors positioned on the high south-westerly tip of the large volcanic caldera called Rano Kau. Below Orongo on one side a 300-meter barren cliff face drops down to the ocean; on the other, a more gentle but still very steep grassy slope leads down to a freshwater marsh inside the high caldera. The first half of the ceremonial village's 53 stone masonry houses was investigated and restored in 1974, with the remainder completed in 1976 and subsequently investigated in 1985 and again in 1995. Orongo now has World Heritage status as part of the Rapa Nui National Park. History Between the 18th and mid-19th centuries Orongo was the centre of a birdman cult whose defining ritual was an annual race to bring the first ''manutara'' (sooty tern) egg back undamaged from the nearby islet o ...
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Orongo Map
Orongo is a stone village and ceremonial center at the southwestern tip of Rapa Nui (Easter Island). It consists of a collection of low, sod-covered, windowless, round-walled buildings with even lower doors positioned on the high south-westerly tip of the large volcanic caldera called Rano Kau. Below Orongo on one side a 300-meter barren cliff face drops down to the ocean; on the other, a more gentle but still very steep grassy slope leads down to a freshwater marsh inside the high caldera. The first half of the ceremonial village's 53 stone masonry houses was investigated and restored in 1974, with the remainder completed in 1976 and subsequently investigated in 1985 and again in 1995. Orongo now has World Heritage status as part of the Rapa Nui National Park. History Between the 18th and mid-19th centuries Orongo was the centre of a birdman cult whose defining ritual was an annual race to bring the first ''manutara'' (sooty tern) egg back undamaged from the nearby islet o ...
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Hoa Hakananai'a
Hoa Hakananai'a is a moai, a statue from Easter Island. It was taken from Orongo, Easter Island (Rapa Nui) in 1868 by the crew of a British ship and is now in the British Museum in London. It has been described as a "masterpiece" and among the finest examples of Easter Island sculpture. Though relatively small, it is considered to be typical of the island's statue form, but distinguished by carvings added to the back, associated with the island's birdman cult. Etymology The statue was identified as Hoa Hakananai'a by islanders at the time it was removed; the British crew first recorded the name in the form 'Hoa-haka-nana-ia' or 'Hoa-haka-nama-ia'. It has been variously translated from the Rapa Nui language to mean 'breaking wave', 'surfriding', 'surfing fellow', 'master wave-breaker', 'lost or stolen friend', 'stolen friend', 'hidden friend' or 'doing robberies/mockeries friend'. Provenance In 1868, Hoa Hakananai'a was standing erect, part buried inside a freestone c ...
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Moai
Moai or moʻai ( ; es, moái; rap, moʻai, , statue) are monolithic human figures carved by the Rapa Nui people on Easter Island, Rapa Nui in eastern Polynesia between the years 1250 and 1500. Nearly half are still at Rano Raraku, the main moai quarry, but hundreds were transported from there and set on stone platforms called Ahu (Easter Island), ahu around the island's perimeter. Almost all moai have overly large heads, which comprise three-eighths the size of the whole statue - which has no legs. The moai are chiefly the living faces (''aringa ora'') of deified ancestors (''aringa ora ata tepuna''). The statues still gazed inland across their clan lands History of Easter Island#European contacts, when Europeans first visited the island in 1722, but all of them had fallen by the latter part of the 19th century. The moai were toppled in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, possibly as a result of European contact or endemic warfare, internecine tribal wars. The production a ...
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Rapa Nui
Easter Island ( rap, Rapa Nui; es, Isla de Pascua) is an island and special territory of Chile in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, at the southeasternmost point of the Polynesian Triangle in Oceania. The island is most famous for its nearly 1,000 extant monumental statues, called ''moai'', which were created by the early Rapa Nui people. In 1995, UNESCO named Easter Island a World Heritage Site, with much of the island protected within Rapa Nui National Park. Experts disagree on when the island's Polynesian inhabitants first reached the island. While many in the research community cited evidence that they arrived around the year 800, there is compelling evidence presented in a 2007 study that places their arrival closer to 1200. The inhabitants created a thriving and industrious culture, as evidenced by the island's numerous enormous stone ''moai'' and other artifacts. However, land clearing for cultivation and the introduction of the Polynesian rat led to gradual deforesta ...
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Rano Kau
Rano Kau is a tall dormant volcano that forms the southwestern headland of Easter Island, a Chilean island in the Pacific Ocean. It was formed of basaltic lava flows in the Pleistocene with its youngest rocks dated at between 150,000 and 210,000 years ago. The crater Rano Kau has a crater lake which is one of the island's only three natural bodies of fresh water. The lake is located approximately above sea level, but is more than below the highest of the crater's ridges. The volcanic cone is largely surrounded by water, and much of it has been eroded back to form high sea cliffs which at one point (''te kari kari'') have started to bite into the crater wall. The inside walls of the crater are sloped at an angle of between 65° (steepest, near the crest) and 45° (gentlest, at the lake shore). From the ruins of the ceremonial village of Orongo the cliff face drops to the southwest at an angle of 50° to the sea shore some below. On its northern side, the volcano s ...
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Rapa Nui National Park
Rapa Nui National Park ( es, Parque nacional Rapa Nui) is a national park and UNESCO World Heritage Site located on Easter Island, Chile. Rapa Nui is the Polynesian name of Easter Island; its Spanish name is Isla de Pascua. The island is located in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, at the southeastern extremity of the Polynesian Triangle. The island was taken over by Chile in 1888. Its fame and World Heritage status arise from the 887 extant stone statues known by the name "moai", whose creation is attributed to the early Rapa Nui people who inhabited the island starting between 300 and 1200 AD. Much of the island has been declared as Rapa Nui National Park which, on 22 March 1996, UNESCO designated a World Heritage Site under cultural criteria (i), (iii), & (v). Rapa Nui National Park is now under the administrative control of the Ma´u Henua Polynesian Indigenous Community, which is the first autonomous institute on the island. The indigenous Rapa Nui people have regained authori ...
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Tangata Manu
The ''Tangata manu'' ("bird-man," from "human beings" + "bird") was the winner of a traditional competition on Rapa Nui (Easter Island). The ritual was an annual competition to collect the first sooty tern () egg of the season from the islet of Motu Nui, swim back to Rapa Nui and climb the sea cliff of Rano Kau to the clifftop village of Orongo. Myth In the Rapa Nui mythology, the deity Make-make was the chief god of the birdman cult, and the other three deities associated with it were Hawa-tuu-take-take (the Chief of the eggs, a male god), his wife Vie Hoa, and another female deity named Vie Kenatea. Each of these four also had a servant god who was associated with them. The names of all eight would be chanted by contestants during the various rituals preceding the egg hunt. Birdman religion Contestants, all men of importance on the island, were revealed in dreams by ''ivi-attuas'' or prophets (who might be either men or women). Each contestant would then appoint one or ...
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Tangata Manu
The ''Tangata manu'' ("bird-man," from "human beings" + "bird") was the winner of a traditional competition on Rapa Nui (Easter Island). The ritual was an annual competition to collect the first sooty tern () egg of the season from the islet of Motu Nui, swim back to Rapa Nui and climb the sea cliff of Rano Kau to the clifftop village of Orongo. Myth In the Rapa Nui mythology, the deity Make-make was the chief god of the birdman cult, and the other three deities associated with it were Hawa-tuu-take-take (the Chief of the eggs, a male god), his wife Vie Hoa, and another female deity named Vie Kenatea. Each of these four also had a servant god who was associated with them. The names of all eight would be chanted by contestants during the various rituals preceding the egg hunt. Birdman religion Contestants, all men of importance on the island, were revealed in dreams by ''ivi-attuas'' or prophets (who might be either men or women). Each contestant would then appoint one or ...
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Motu Nui
Motu Nui (''large island'' in the Rapa Nui language) is the largest of three islets just south of Easter Island and is the List of extreme points of Chile, most westerly place in Chile and all of South America. All three islets have seabirds, but Motu Nui was also an essential location for the Tangata manu ("Bird Man") cult which was the island religion between the moai era and the Christian era (the people of the island were converted to Roman Catholicism in the 1860s). Motu Nui is the summit of a large volcanic mountain which rises over 2,000 meters from the sea bed. It measures 3.9 hectares in land area and is the largest of the five satellite islets of Easter island. It is one of three islands that is closest to Point Nemo, the place in the ocean that is farthest from land. The ritual of the "Bird Man" cult was a competition to collect the first egg of the manutara. This took place starting from Motu Nui where the Hopu (representatives from each clan) waited for the sooty ...
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Motu Iti (Rapa Nui)
Motu Iti, or ''Little island'' in the Rapa Nui language, is a small uninhabited islet near Motu Nui, about a mile from Rano Kau on the south western corner of Easter Island, a Chilean island in the Pacific. It has a land area of 1.6 hectares, which makes it the second largest of the five satellite islands of Easter Island, after Motu Nui. Nowadays it is a bird sanctuary and part of the Rapa Nui National Park but until the late nineteenth century CE it was important to the Rapanui people both as their best sourceFlenley and Bahn The enigmas of Easter Island 2003 of obsidian for sharp edged tools and for an annual harvest of eggs and fledglings from the seabirds that nested on it. Motu Iti is the summit of a large volcanic mountain which rises over 2,000 meters from the sea bed. Seabirds nesting on ''Motu Iti'' include the sooty tern. See also * Orongo * Tangata Manu The ''Tangata manu'' ("bird-man," from "human beings" + "bird") was the winner of a traditional competitio ...
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Katherine Routledge
Katherine Maria Routledge (), née Pease (11 August 1866 – 13 December 1935), was an English archaeologist and anthropologist who, in 1914, initiated and carried out much of the first true survey of Easter Island. She was the second child of Kate and Gurney Pease, and was born into a wealthy Quaker family in Darlington, County Durham, northern England. She graduated from Somerville Hall (now Somerville College, Oxford), with Honours in Modern History in 1895, and for a while taught courses through the Extension Division and at Darlington Training College. After the Second Boer War, she traveled to South Africa with a committee to investigate the resettlement of single working women from England to South Africa. In 1906 she married William Scoresby Routledge. The couple went to live among the Kikuyu people of what was then British East Africa, and in 1910 jointly published a book of their research entitled ''With A Prehistoric People''. Easter Island In 1910 the Routledges ...
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2000 World Monuments Watch
The World Monuments Watch is a flagship advocacy program of the New York-based private non-profit organization World Monuments Fund (WMF) and American Express to call upon every government in the world, preservation organizations, and other groups and individuals to nominate sites and monuments that are particularly endangered. At the same time, the nominators commit themselves to participate in a carefully planned preservation Preservation may refer to: Heritage and conservation * Preservation (library and archival science), activities aimed at prolonging the life of a record while making as few changes as possible * ''Preservation'' (magazine), published by the Nat ... project. Selection process Every two years, the program publishes a select list known as the Watch List of 100 Most Endangered Sites that is in urgent need of preservation funding and protection. The sites are chosen from these nominations by an independent panel of international experts, based on the signific ...
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