The current Polynesian name of the island, Rapa Nui ("Big Rapa"), was coined after the slave raids of the early 1860s, and refers to the island's topographic resemblance to the island of Rapa in the Bass Islands of the Austral Islands group. The island's official Spanish name, Isla de Pascua, also means "Easter Island". Roggeveen named it Paasch-Eyland (18th-century Dutch for "Easter Island"). The name "Easter Island" was given by the island's first recorded European visitor, the Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen, who encountered it on Easter Sunday (5 April) in 1722, while searching for " Davis Land". The nearest inhabited land (around 50 residents in 2013) is Pitcairn Island, 2,075 kilometres (1,289 mi) away the nearest town with a population over 500 is Rikitea, on the island of Mangareva, 2,606 km (1,619 mi) away the nearest continental point lies in central Chile, 3,512 km (2,182 mi) away. Įaster Island is one of the most remote inhabited islands in the world. The 2017 Chilean census registered 7,750 people on the island, of whom 3,512 (45%) considered themselves Rapa Nui. Administratively, it belongs to the Valparaíso Region, constituting a single commune ( Isla de Pascua) of the Province of Isla de Pascua. In 2007 the island gained the constitutional status of "special territory" ( Spanish: territorio especial).
In 1966, the Rapa Nui were granted Chilean citizenship. European diseases, Peruvian slave raiding expeditions in the 1860s, and emigration to other islands such as Tahiti further depleted the population, reducing it to a low of 111 native inhabitants in 1877. By the time of European arrival in 1722, the island's population was estimated to be 2,000 to 3,000. However, land clearing for cultivation and the introduction of the Polynesian rat led to gradual deforestation.
The inhabitants created a thriving and industrious culture, as evidenced by the island's numerous enormous stone moai and other artifacts. 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. In 1995, UNESCO named Easter Island a World Heritage Site, with much of the island protected within Rapa Nui National Park.Įxperts disagree on when the island's Polynesian inhabitants first reached the island. The island is most famous for its nearly 1,000 extant monumental statues, called moai, which were created by the early Rapa Nui people. Easter Island ( Rapa Nui: Rapa Nui Spanish: 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.
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