Imagine you are sailing across the world’s largest ocean, no ship to be seen around for weeks, no other people than the crew on the board, nothing, except water everywhere, always...
And, suddenly, you come to a totally isolated island in the middle of the ocean with huge monumental stone statues on it. You can’t understand who, how and why built theses sculptures – there are only a few decimated, poverty-stricken inhabitants, there are no trees on the island to help the transportation or erecting the sculptures. Amazing.
This view has fascinated scientists for a long time. Among several non-scholar explanations, such as those of lost continents or extraterrestrial invaders, archeologists and researchers discovered several facts elucidating the islands civilization history, as well as some incentives explaining the building of Easter Island monuments.
Before I present these theories, it’s worth to have a look at the fundamental geographical and historical details about the island and its civilization, determining the culture and development of native inhabitants. Basic Information
Easter Island, also known as Rapa Nui or Isla de Pascua, lies in the south-eastern part of the Pacific Ocean, 2 000 km from the nearest inhabited place. Formally, it is part of the Chilean republic with an area of about 160 square kilometers. Its name comes from the spring holiday that Jacob Roggeveen, Dutch admiral, paid it a visit on in the year 1722.
The small and hilly volcanic island is chiefly composed of tuff – a rock formed of compacted volcanic fragments. The original fauna and flora were, because of the isolation, limited to a very few species, but still much more abundant than today (Diamond, 1995).

Easter Island Civilization
Native population of Rapa Nui is the easternmost settlement of a Polynesian subgroup that probably derived from the Marquesas group (“Easter Island”, Encyclopaedia Britannica Online). On the other hand, we can see here several elements of the South American culture (as shown later).
Eastern Polynesian emigrants, who thereafter remained isolated, most probably colonized the island around AD 400. The social organization resembled that of other Polynesians, with several clans tracing descent to a single ancestor.