Motu Nui (''large island'' in the

Rapa Nui language Rapa Nui or Rapanui (, Rapa Nui: , Spanish: ), also known as Pascuan () or ''Pascuense'', is an Eastern Polynesian language of the Austronesian language family. It is spoken on the island of Rapa Nui, also known as ''Easter Island''. The isl ...

) is the largest of three

islet An islet is a very small, often unnamed island. Most definitions are not precise, but some suggest that an islet has little or no vegetation and cannot support human habitation. It may be made of rock, sand and/or hard coral; may be permanen ...

s just south of

Easter Island 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 nearl ...

and is the most westerly place in

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the eas ...

and all of

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the sou ...

. All three islets have seabirds, but Motu Nui was also an essential location for the

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 ...

("Bird Man") cult which was the island religion between the

moai Moai or moʻai ( ; es, moái; rap, moʻai, , statue) are monolithic human figures carved by the Rapa Nui people on Rapa Nui in eastern Polynesia between the years 1250 and 1500. Nearly half are still at Rano Raraku, the main moai quarry, ...

era and the

Christian era The terms (AD) and before Christ (BC) are used to label or number years in the Julian and Gregorian calendars. The term is Medieval Latin and means 'in the year of the Lord', but is often presented using "our Lord" instead of "the Lord" ...

(the people of the island were converted to

Roman Catholicism The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

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

hectare The hectare (; SI symbol: ha) is a non-SI metric unit of area equal to a square with 100- metre sides (1 hm2), or 10,000 m2, and is primarily used in the measurement of land. There are 100 hectares in one square kilometre. An acre i ...

s 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. Easter Island map-en

The ritual of the "Bird Man" cult was a competition to collect the first egg of the

manutara ''Onychoprion'', the "brown-backed terns", is a genus of seabirds in the family Laridae. The genus name is from Ancient Greek , "claw" or "nail", and , "saw". Species Although the genus was first described in 1832 by Johann Georg Wagler the f ...

. This took place starting from Motu Nui where the Hopu (representatives from each clan) waited for the

sooty tern The sooty tern (''Onychoprion fuscatus'') is a seabird in the family Laridae. It is a bird of the tropical oceans, returning to land only to breed on islands throughout the equatorial zone. Taxonomy The sooty tern was described by Carl Linnae ...

s to lay their first eggs of the season. The Hopu who seized the first egg raced to swim back to Easter Island, climbed the cliffs to

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 t ...

and presented the egg to their sponsor in front of the judges at Orongo. This gave their sponsor the title of

and great power on the island for a year. Many Hopu were killed by sharks or by falling. The winning clan gained certain rights, including the collecting of eggs and young birds from the islets. Motu means "island" in

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 ...

language, and there are two smaller motus located nearby: Motu Kao Kao (a

sea stack A stack or sea stack is a geological landform consisting of a steep and often vertical column or columns of rock in the sea near a coast, formed by wave erosion. Stacks are formed over time by wind and water, processes of coastal geomorphology ...

, rising around 20 meters (65 feet) above sea level) and Motu Iti (near Motu Nui). Motu Nui was scientifically surveyed by the Routledge expedition of 1914, which reported that six other varieties of seabirds nested there in addition to the sooty tern. They explored two caves on Motu Nui, in one of which the Hopu used to stay while waiting for the first egg of the season, and the other used to contain Moai Maea "The Boundary of the Land," a small moai that had already been taken to the

Pitt Rivers Museum Pitt Rivers Museum is a museum displaying the archaeological and anthropological collections of the University of Oxford in England. The museum is located to the east of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, and can only be accessed ...

Oxford, England Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the Un ...

. Although the Tangata Manu cult's rituals have long since been discontinued (the last competition known to have taken place in 1888), current visitors to Rapa Nui often enjoy the beauty of the Motus via small boat excursions from

Hanga Roa Hanga Roa (; rap, Haŋa Roa, Rapa Nui pronunciation: �ha.ŋa ˈɾo.a (Spanish: ''Bahía Larga'') is the main town, harbour and seat of Easter Island, a municipality of Chile. It is located in the southern part of the island's west coast, in th ...

, the island's only town. The diving in the sea between Motu Nui and Kau Kau is exceptional, and it is a highly sought-after scuba diving location for dive enthusiasts from around the world. Once heavily populated with sharks, the coastal waters of Rapa Nui are now much safer, due in large part to overfishing.

References

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 o ...

: The mystery of Easter island, Adventures Unlimited Pr 1998, (in

Google Books Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical ...

br>
and in

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...

br>
(reprint of original book from 1919)

External links

Patrick C. McCoy: The Place of Near-Shore Islets in Easter Island Prehistory. The Journal of the Polynesian Society, Vol. 87, No. 3 (September 1978), pp. 193-214
{{coord, 27, 12, 05, S, 109, 27, 10, W, type:landmark, display=title Islands of Easter Island Uninhabited islands of Chile