Tourist information Easter Island, origin of the name, where it is located, territory and origins of the population that inhabits this island located south of the Pacific.
Where is it
Belonging to Chile, Easter Island is one of the most isolated and fascinating lands in the world, located in the southern Pacific Ocean 3600 km west of the coast of Chile and 2075 km east of the Pitcairn islands, the nearest inhabited land.
Origin name
Easter Island, in the indigenous language Rapa Nui, which means large rock island, owes this name to the fact that the Dutch Jakob Roggeveen landed on it on Easter Monday 1722.
Territory
The island's territory is of volcanic origin, it is made up of three extinct volcanoes, the Rano Kau, Maunga Puakatiki and Maunga Terevaka, and reaches its maximum altitude around 500 meters above sea level.
This land is mainly barren, covered by large grasslands beaten almost uninterruptedly by the wind, bordered by coasts that rapidly sink into the ocean, eroded by the stormy sea.
Easter Island due to its distance from the coast is poor in plant species, therefore it can be deduced that the majority of the island's plants were brought by man, who, over the centuries, has changed their vegetation.
It turns out that the island was covered by a luxuriant vegetation formed largely by palm trees, then with the increase of the population a progressive deforestation began which led to the felling of a huge quantity of plants causing the desertification of large lands, with consequences catastrophic for the population.
Land was cleared to obtain new areas to grow, build canoes, burn wood and transport the famous Moai, the stone statues depicting human figures of variable size, depending on the time, between two and twenty meters, which still find numerous on the island.
Population
There are conflicting opinions on the origin of the population of Rapa Nui, recent studies have revealed affinity between the inhabitants of the island and the Polynesians.
