
Easter Island, also known as Rapa Nui or Isla de Pascua is one of the most remote inhabited corners of earth. It is app. 150 square kilometers, located in the Pacific Ocean, 2,000 miles off the west coast of South America and 1,250 km from the nearest land to the island of Pitcairn. At its peak, the population was only 7,000.
The history of Easter Island is one of the most exotic travel destinations in the world.
Short history of Easter Island
Admiral Roggeveen Netherlands, aboard the Arena was the first European to see the island on Easter Sunday 1722. He found a primitive state community,with about 3,000 people living in reed huts and caves, engaged in almost perpetual warfare and resorting to cannibalism in a desperate attempt to supplement the food resources available for scarce island. During the next European tour in 1770 the Spaniards annexed the island, but it was so remote, low populated and without much resources, so no formal colonial occupation ever took place. There have been some small successes in the late 18th century, including one by Captain Cook in 1774. An American ship stayed long enough to take people to work as slaves killing seals 20-2 Masafuera Island, off the Chilean coast. The population continued to decline and conditions on the island worsened: in 1877, the Peruvians kidnapped and enslaved, but all 110 children and the elderly. Finally, the island passed into the hands of Chile and turns into a giant ranch for 40,000 sheep by a British company, with the few who is relegated to a small town.
What has surprised and intrigued the first European visitors were the proof of all the misery and barbarism, a society once flourished and developed. Scattered across the island were over 600 massive stone statues of an average of more than twenty feet high. When anthropologists began to consider the history and culture of Easter Island in the twentieth century have agreed on something. Primitive people living in poverty and backward when the first Europeans who visited the island could not have been charged with this task socially advanced and technologically intricate carvings, statues anderecting transport. Easter Island has become a "mystery'and a variety of theories have been proposed to explain its history. Some of the most fantastic ideas involved visits by astronauts, lost civilizations on continents that had sunk in the Pacific, leaving Easter Island as a relic. The Norwegian archaeologist Thor Heyerdahl in his popular book Aku-Aku written in the 1950s, highlights the strange aspectsof the island and the mysteries hidden in its history. He said that the island was first colonized South America and from there, people have inherited a tradition of monumental sculpture and stone (similar to the great achievements of the Inca). to reflect the decrease introduced the idea at a late stage other settlers arrived from the west and began a series of wars between the so-called "long ears" and "short-ears' that destroyed the complex society in the island. Although this theory is less extravagant than others who have argued, has never been generally accepted by other archaeologists.

The history of Easter Island is one of lost civilizations, and esoteric knowledge. It is rather a striking example of the dependence of human societies in their environment and the consequences of irreversibly damaging the environment. This is the story of a people who, from a base of very limited resources, built one of the most advanced societies in the world for the technology they had. However, the demands on the environment of the island by this development are enormous. When he could no longer withstand the pressure, the company that had been carefully built over the last thousand years fell with it.
Easter Island - Heavenly Travel Destination
Since Mataveri airport opened in 1967, Easter Island became more accessible for tourists, and many visitors from all over the world now take the chance to d ponder the largest and most amazing prehistoric monuments in the Pacific. Easter Island is one of the strangest and heavenly exotic places you will ever travel to.