Today I hiked up to the Rano Kau crater to see one of the two main attractions on Easter Island: the ceremonial village of Orongo.
There are a few things to see on the way up. First, the cave Ana Kai Tangata. From the cave entrance, there is a beautiful view of the impossibly blue Pacific and the rocky shore:
Inside, there are some cave paintings showing mainly birds, no doubt related to the birdman cult (see below):
Further up, there are great views into the inside of the Rano Kau crater from its rim:
The crater offers an environment that protects plants from the wind and salt spray prevalent on most of the island. To give native plants a safe space to recover, nobody is allowed to descend into the crater.
The village Orongo was built on the rim of the crater, right into the slim space between the crater and the Pacific. Orongo was never intended to be inhabited permanently, only for a few weeks each year for the birdman competition Tangata Manu. The competition worked like this: each year in spring, one representative from each clan would climb down from Orongo into the Pacific, swim to a tiny nearby island, find the first egg of a certain migratory bird, and return it safely to Orongo. Whoever returned first was given all sorts of privileges for the year, and his clan gained the right to collect wild bird eggs. To give you an idea how lethal the competition was, this is the cliff the participants had to climb down and up again:
This cult was fairly recent (it ended only in the 19th century), and came after the veneration of ancestors through moai statues. Interestingly enough, the rise of this cult coincided with another set of events on the island: overpopulation, conflicts between clans, and deforestation. Without trees, there were no means to build new fishing boats, and possibly also no means to transport moai statues from the quarry to their destination. Is it really a coincidence that, with the loss of fishing as a reliable food source, a cult arises that focuses on migratory birds and their eggs?
Like most houses on Easter Island, the houses in Orongo were shaped like upturned boats. Because of the strong winds on top of the cliff, the usual building materials didn't suffice, and so stone slabs were used instead. This is a partially reconstructed house that reveals the construction method:
And this is how the finished houses looked like:
At the topmost point of Orongo, there is an area with many petroglyphs - drawings etched in stone - showing the bird central to the cult:
The visitor center has a photograph comparing the state of the petroglyphs now and a hundred years ago. If the rate of decay continues, they will have vanished completely within maybe 300 years. Just imagine - any historic structure of a similar material that is older than a few hundred years may have been covered with drawings, and we will never know about it.
On my way back down, I took a detour to see this moai at Hanga Roa's harbor:
Photographing moai in the evening proves to be a difficult task, at least on this side of the island ;-)
There are a few things to see on the way up. First, the cave Ana Kai Tangata. From the cave entrance, there is a beautiful view of the impossibly blue Pacific and the rocky shore:
Inside, there are some cave paintings showing mainly birds, no doubt related to the birdman cult (see below):
Further up, there are great views into the inside of the Rano Kau crater from its rim:
The crater offers an environment that protects plants from the wind and salt spray prevalent on most of the island. To give native plants a safe space to recover, nobody is allowed to descend into the crater.
The village Orongo was built on the rim of the crater, right into the slim space between the crater and the Pacific. Orongo was never intended to be inhabited permanently, only for a few weeks each year for the birdman competition Tangata Manu. The competition worked like this: each year in spring, one representative from each clan would climb down from Orongo into the Pacific, swim to a tiny nearby island, find the first egg of a certain migratory bird, and return it safely to Orongo. Whoever returned first was given all sorts of privileges for the year, and his clan gained the right to collect wild bird eggs. To give you an idea how lethal the competition was, this is the cliff the participants had to climb down and up again:
This cult was fairly recent (it ended only in the 19th century), and came after the veneration of ancestors through moai statues. Interestingly enough, the rise of this cult coincided with another set of events on the island: overpopulation, conflicts between clans, and deforestation. Without trees, there were no means to build new fishing boats, and possibly also no means to transport moai statues from the quarry to their destination. Is it really a coincidence that, with the loss of fishing as a reliable food source, a cult arises that focuses on migratory birds and their eggs?
Like most houses on Easter Island, the houses in Orongo were shaped like upturned boats. Because of the strong winds on top of the cliff, the usual building materials didn't suffice, and so stone slabs were used instead. This is a partially reconstructed house that reveals the construction method:
And this is how the finished houses looked like:
At the topmost point of Orongo, there is an area with many petroglyphs - drawings etched in stone - showing the bird central to the cult:
The visitor center has a photograph comparing the state of the petroglyphs now and a hundred years ago. If the rate of decay continues, they will have vanished completely within maybe 300 years. Just imagine - any historic structure of a similar material that is older than a few hundred years may have been covered with drawings, and we will never know about it.
On my way back down, I took a detour to see this moai at Hanga Roa's harbor:
Photographing moai in the evening proves to be a difficult task, at least on this side of the island ;-)
