Easter sunday in the year 1722 the dutch Admiral Jacob Roggeveen sighted the island of Rapa Nui and named it according to the holiday Easter Island. Roggeveen observed the island and saw that the islanders lit big fires in front of gigantic stone statues and prayed to them on their knees. In the year 1862 slave traders kidnapped 1000 islanders and forced them to work in Peru. A year later 900 islanders were dead and when returning home the survivors spreaded pox, leprosy and syphilis on the island. In 1888, Chile had just annexed the island, there were only 200 islanders left vegetated on the island.
There are only speculations about the origin of the islanders: While ethnologists believe in a colonisation from Polynesia, the norwegian Thor Heyerdahl is of the opinion, that the first islanders came from Bolivia after the destruction of the Tiahuanaco empire. They not only brought potatoes to the islands, which still grow near the crater lake of Rano Raraku and near the lake Titikaka, they also brought their art of stone cutting.

So far it is not possible to decipher the wooden Rongorongo plates. So the only informations which exist about the early history are legends.
King Hotu Matua a long time ago went out to find a new territory for his tribe. That was when he discovered Rapa Nui. He also found people living there, who streched their earlaps down to the soulders by the use of weights. They were called long ears. They permitted King Hotu Matua the use of land. In return the king and his tribe had to build gigantic stone statues for them. The history went on as you can expect: Space and food ran short and the short ears would no longer subdue themselves to the long ears. A war between the two tribes began. At the end the long ears and their culture lost and everything, the quarries and the Moais, were destroyed.

There are hunderts of Moais lying in the quarry in every state of completion. It looks like the artists had just stopped their work some minutes ago. The Moais lie in different layers and at least their backbone is still connected to the rocks. Accordering to the legends the Moais went to their destination on their own. Maybe the giants were really transported upright to their destination by the use of linkages and blocks of wood. But from where did they get the wood on a treeless island? The eyes of the Moais were carved at the destination. They consisted of white corals and black obsidian.
The most of the nowadays upstanding Moais were restaurated and erected by archeologists in the 20th century.

Besides of worshipping the Moais, the islanders had another cult - the birdman. A lot of things are known about that cult, because it was practiced until 1862. Kevin Kostner did the dramatic movie 'Rapa Nui' about the birdman competition. We were able to see the movie in the island cinema. The cult is based on the first egg of the holy bird called Manu Tara, which has to be found. The chief of every tribe on the island has to send one warrior to the offshore island of Moto Nui. After their dangerous way through the ocean the warriors have to search for the first eggs. The one who finds an egg has to strap it to his heads and has to get back to the starting point at Orongo. The first warrior who is able to get back with an unbroken egg, is called the bridman for one year and for this year is the spiritual leader of the whole comunity.
The destroyed town of Orongo contains more than 150 rock carvings, which show amongst others the birdman. It is a mans body with a birdhead, which often holds an egg in his hand.