Caption: Hanga Roa harbor with Moai Ko te Riko (whatever that is), Easter Island or Rapa Nui.
Easter Island is one of the world's most isolated inhabited islands. 3,600 km west of continental Chile, 2,075 km east of Pitcairn, 415 km west of Sala y Gomez (uninhabited).
Area 163.6 km**2, and so scale length of about sqrt(164) = about 13 km.
Maximum altitude 507 m on Terevaka, an
extinct volcano.
No permanent streams or rivers, but there are 3 fresh water crater lakes near summit of
Terevaka.
Today largely treeless, but the island was forested at the time of the Polynesian settlement.
Settled by Polynesians at currently uncertain date (i.e., maybe 700--800 CE or about 1200 CE), inhabitants were completely (or almost completely) isolated from the outside world until the first European contact in 1722apr05, Easter Sunday (Wikipedia: Easter Island History).
The Rapanui people lived alone in the universe of the Pacific Ocean.
They built their monuments and apparently toppled them down in internal wars.
The contact was tragic for Rapanui people---slavery, devastating diseases---but perhaps they would have become extinct through internal wars or environmental degradation or loneliness if outside world had NOT arrived.
Credit/Permission: ©
User:Makemake
before or circa 2005
(uploaded to Wikipedia
by Markus (AKA User:KAMiKAZOW,
2005) /
Creative Commons
CC BY-SA 3.0.
Image link: Wikipedia:
File:Hangaroa Moais.jpg.
Local file: local link: easter_island_statue.html.
File: Art_e file:
easter_island_statue.html.