On Easter Sunday, 1722 Easter Island was named by its first recorded European visitor, the Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen, who was searching for Davis or David's island. The island's official Spanish name, Isla de Pascua, is Spanish for "Easter Island".

The current Polynesian name of the island, Rapa Nui or "Big Rapa", was coined by labor immigrants from Rapa in the Bass Islands, who likened it to their home island in the aftermath of the Peruvian slave deportations in the 1870s. However, Thor Heyerdahl has claimed that the naming would have been the opposite, Rapa being the original name of Easter Island and Rapa Iti was named by its refugees. There are several options for the "original" Polynesian name for Easter Island, including Te pito o te henua, or the "The Navel of the World" due to its isolation. Legends claim that the island was first named as Te pito o te kainga a Hau Maka, or the "Little piece of land of Hau Maka

Easter Island is one of the world's most isolated inhabited islands. It is 3,600 km (2,237 mi) west of continental Chile and 2,075 km (1,290 mi) east of Pitcairn (Sala y Gómez 415 kilometres to the east is closer but uninhabited).

It has a latitude close to that of Caldera, Chile, an area of 163.6 km² (63 mi²), and a maximum altitude of 507 metres. There are three Rano (freshwater crater lakes) at Rano Kau, Rano Raraku and Rano Aroi near the summit of Terevaka, but no permanent streams or rivers

Easter Island is a volcanic high island, consisting of three extinct volcanoes: Terevaka (altitude 507 metres) forms the bulk of the island. Two other volcanoes Poike and Rano Kau form the Eastern and Southern headlands and give the island its approximately triangular shape. There are numerous esser cones and other volcanic features, including the crater Rano Raraku, the cinder cone Puna Pau and many volcanic caves including lava tubes.

Easter Island and surrounding islets such as Motu Nui, Motu Iti are the summit of a large volcanic mountain which rises over two thousand metres from the sea bed. It is part of the Sala y Gómez Ridge a (mostly submarine) mountain range with dozens of seamounts starting with Pukao and then Moai, two sea mounts to the west of Easter Island, and extending 2,700 km (1,700 mi) east to the Nazca Seamount.

Pukao, Moai and Easter Island were formed in the last three quarters of a million years, with the most recent eruption a little over a hundred thousand years ago. They are the youngest mountains of the Sala y Gómez Ridge, which has been formed by the Nazca Plate floating over the Easter hotspot. Only at Easter Island, its surrounding islets and Sala y Gómez does the Sala y Gómez Ridge form dry land.

First settled by a small party of Polynesians, Easter Island is one of the youngest inhabited territories on Earth, and for most of its history it was the most isolated inhabited territory on Earth. Its inhabitants, the Rapanui, have endured famines, epidemics, civil war, slave raids and colonialism; have seen their population crash on more than one occasion, and created a cultural legacy that has brought them fame out of all proportion to their numbers.

Easter Island, together with its closest neighbour, the tiny island of Isla Sala y Gómez 415 km further east, is recognized by ecologists as a distinct ecoregion, the Rapa Nui subtropical broadleaf forests. Having relatively little rainfall contributed to eventual deforestation. The original subtropical moist broadleaf forests are now gone, but paleobotanical studies of fossil pollen and tree moulds left by lava flows indicate that the island was formerly forested, with a range of trees, shrubs, ferns, and grasses. A large palm, Paschalococcus disperta, related to the Chilean wine palm (Jubaea chilensis), was one of the dominant trees, as was the toromiro tree (Sophora toromiro). The palm is now extinct, and the toromiro is extinct in the wild. However the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and the Göteborg Botanical Garden, are jointly leading a scientific program to reintroduce the toromiro to Easter Island. The island for the last three centuries at least is mainly covered in grassland with nga'atu or bulrush in the crater lakes of Rano Raraku and Rano Kau. Presence of these reeds (which are called totora in the Andes) was used to support the argument of a South American origin of the statue builders, but pollen analysis of lake sediments shows these reeds have grown on the island for over 30,000 years. Before the arrival of humans, Easter Island had vast seabird colonies, no longer found on the main island, and several species of landbirds, which have become

"The overall picture for Easter is the most extreme example of forest destruction in the Pacific, and among the most extreme in the world: the whole forest gone, and all of its tree species extinct.

Panorama of Anakena beach, Easter IslandTrees are sparse on modern Easter Island, rarely forming small groves. The island once possessed a forest of palms and it has generally been thought that native Easter Islanders deforested the island in the process of erecting their statues.[citation needed] Experimental archaeology has clearly demonstrated that some statues certainly could have been placed on wooden frames and then pulled to their final destinations on ceremonial sites. Rapanui traditions metaphorically refer to spiritual power (mana) as the means by which the moai were "walked" from the quarry. However, given the island's southern latitude, the climatic effects of the Little Ice Age (about 1650 to 1850) may have contributed to deforestation and other changes but such speculation is unproven. Jared Diamond disregards the influence of climate but still gives an extensive look into the collapse of the ancient Easter Islanders in his book Collapse. The disappearance of the island's trees seems to coincide with a decline of the Easter Island civilization around the 17th-18th century. Midden contents show a sudden drop in quantities of fish and bird bones as the islanders lost the means to construct fishing vessels and the birds lost their nesting sites. Soil erosion due to lack of trees is apparent in some places. Sediment samples document that up to half of the native plants had become extinct and that the vegetation of the island was drastically altered. Chickens and rats became leading items of diet and there are (not unequivocally accepted) hints at cannibalism occurring, based on human remains associated with cooking sites, especially in caves.

In his article From Genocide to Ecocide: The Rape of Rapa Nui, Benny Peiser notes evidence of self-sufficiency on Easter Island when Europeans first arrived. Although stressed, the island may still have had at least some (small) trees remaining, mainly toromiro. Cornelis Bouman, Jakob Roggeveen's captain, stated in his log book, "...of yams, bananas and small coconut palms we saw little and no other trees or crops." According to Carl Friedrich Behrens, Roggeveen's officer, "The natives presented palm branches as peace offerings. Their houses were set up on wooden stakes, daubed over with luting and covered with palm leaves," (presumably from Banana plants as the island was by then deforested) the stakes indicate that either driftwood or living trees were still available, though the reliability of Behrens as a source is questionable[citation needed]. Peiser however considers these reports to indicate that considerable numbers of large trees still existed at that time, which is explicitly contradicted by the Roggeveen quote above.

In his book "A Short History of Progress", Ronald Wright speculates that for a generation or so, "there was enough old lumber to haul the great stones and still keep a few canoes seaworthy for deep water". When the day came the last boat was gone, wars broke out over "ancient planks and wormeaten bits of jetsam". The people of Rapa Nui exhausted all possible resources, including eating their own dogs and all nesting birds when finally there was absolutely nothing left. All that was left were the stone giants who symbolized the devouring of a whole island. The stone giants became monuments where the islanders could keep faith and honour them in hopes of a return. By the end, there were more than a thousand moai (stone statues), which was one for every ten islanders (Wright, 2004). When the Europeans arrived in the eighteenth century, the worst was over and they only found one or two living souls per statue.

Easter Island has suffered from heavy soil erosion during recent centuries, perhaps aggravated by agriculture and massive deforestation. However, this process seems to have been gradual and may have been aggravated by extensive sheep farming throughout most of the 20th century. Jakob Roggeveen reported that Easter Island was exceptionally fertile, producing large quantities of bananas, potatoes and thick sugar-cane. In 1786 M. de La Pérouse visited Easter Island and his gardener declared that "three days work a year" would be enough to support the population.

Rollin, a major in the Perouse expedition of 1786, wrote, "Instead of meeting with men exhausted by famine... I found, on the contrary, a considerable population, with more beauty and grace than I afterwards met in any other island; and a soil, which, with very little labour, furnished excellent provisions, and in an abundance more than sufficient for the consumption of the inhabitants.

The fact that oral traditions of the islanders are obsessed with cannibalism is sometimes taken as evidence supporting a rapid collapse. For example, to severely insult an enemy one would say: "The flesh of your mother sticks between my teeth." Diamond suggests that this means the food supply of the people ultimately ran out; however, cannibalism was widespread across Polynesian cultures, rendering his conclusion speculative.

Rapa Nui is a volcanic island consisting of geologically recent igneous rock. The Rapa Nui people had a stone age civilisation and made extensive use of several different types of indigenous stone:

Basalt a hard dense stone was used for toki and at least one of the moai.
Obsidian a volcanic glass with sharp edges was used for sharp edged implements such as Mataa and also for the black pupils of the eyes of the moai.
Red Scoria from Puna Pau, a very light red stone was used for the pukao and a few moai.
Tuff from Rano Raraku a much more easily worked rock than Basalt was used for most of the moai.The large stone statues, or moai, for which Easter Island is world famous were carved during a relatively short and intense burst of creative and productive megalithic activity. 887 monolithic stone statues have been inventoried on the island and in museum collections. Although often identified as "Easter Island Heads", the statues actually are heads and complete torsos. Some upright moai, however, have become buried up to their necks by shifting soils.

The period of time when the statues were produced remains disputed, with estimates ranging from 1000-1500 CE to 1500-1700 CE. Almost all (95%) moais were carved out of distinctive, compressed, easily worked volcanic ash or tuff found at a single site called Rano Raraku. The Rapanui who carved them had no metal or powered machinery, only stone hand tools - mainly basalt toki. Only a quarter of the statues were installed on the coastal ahu platforms, with nearly half still remaining in Rano Raraku and the rest elsewhere on the island, probably on their way to final locations. Moving the huge statues seems to have been laborious and very slow.

Most currently standing statues, some 50 in total, have been re-erected in modern times, except for those on the slopes of Rano Raraku.

Tukuturi an unusual bearded kneeling moai.While the vast majority of Moai follow a fairly standard design there are a few radically different moai on the island, in most parts badly eroded and broken. These are believed to predate the better-known moais, including a kneeling statue with hands on its knees, parts of a statue with clearly carved ribs and a headless, rectangularly shaped torso. Similarities to Indian stone statues around Lake Titicaca in South America are striking, whether this is accidental or not.

Ahu are stone platforms that some of the Moai were erected on. They vary greatly in layout and many have been significantly reworked in the islands during or after the huri mo'ai or statue-toppling era; many became ossuaries, one was dynamited open and Ahu Tongariki was swept inland by a tsunami.

The classic elements of ahu design are:

A retaining rear wall several feet high, usually facing the sea.
A platform behind the wall.
Pads or cushions on the platform
A sloping ramp covered with evenly sized wave rounded boulders on the inland side of the platform rising most but not all the way up the side of the platform.
A pavement in front of the ramp.
Inside the Ahu was a fill of rubble.
On top of many Ahu would have been:

Moai on the pads looking out over the pavement with their backs to the rear wall.
Pukao on the Moai's heads.
And in their eye sockets, white coral eyes with black obsidian pupils.
Ahu evolved from the traditional Polynesian Marae in which the word ahu was only used for the central stone platform, though on Easter Island ahu and moai evolved to a much greater size. The biggest ahu contained 20 times as much stone as a moai; however most of this stone was sourced very locally (apart from broken old moai, fragments of which have also been used in the fill). Also individual stones are mostly far smaller than the moai, so less work was needed to transport the raw material.

Ahu Akivi, one of the few inland ahu with the only moai facing the oceanAhu are mostly on the coast where they are distributed fairly evenly except on the Western slopes of Mount Terevaka, and the Rano Kau and Poike headlands. These are the three areas with the least low lying coastal land, and apart from Poike the furthest areas from Rano Raraku. One ahu with several moai was recorded on the cliffs at Rano Kau in the 1880s, but had fallen to the beach by the time of the Routledge expedition in 1914.

Of the 313 known ahu, only 125 carried a stone moai. Others perhaps had statues made of wood, now lost. The majority of the rest had just one moai, probably due to the shortness of the moai period and difficulties in transporting them. Ahu Tongariki, one kilometer from Rano Raraku, had the most and biggest moai, 15 in total. Other notable ahu with moai are Ahu Akivi, restored in 1960 by William Mulloy, Nau Nau at Anakena and Tahai.

One of the highest quality examples of Easter Island stone-masonry is the rear wall of the Ahu at Vinapu. Made without mortar by shaping hard Basalt rocks of up to seven tonnes to match each other exactly, it has a superficial similarity to some Inca stone walls in South America.Some 1,233 prehistoric stone "houses" called tupa in earlier times and hare moa ("chicken house") later, are more conspicuous than the remains of the prehistoric human houses which only had stone foundations (except for those at Orongo). Stone houses were up to 6 meters long, with a distinctive boat shaped structure combined with a stick and palm leaf or thatch superstructure. The entrances were very low, and getting in required crawling.

Germans excavated some of the Hare Moa in 1882 and found human remains inside. Locals told them that they were resting places for the ariki, Easter Island kings and chiefs. Each house had two small holes - if a hostile spirit entered through one, the spirit of the deceased could escape through another. As such and also by their old name, the stone houses are seen similar to Indian chullpas in Peru and Bolivia. Noteworthy is that the remaining numbers of the stone houses and moais are quite close to each other, possibly meaning that for each person buried in a stone house, a moai was immediately constructed. Usage of stone houses as graves seems to have ceased around the same time when production of moais ended and ancestral worship declined. During the turmoils of the late 18th century, the islanders seem to have started to bury their dead among the ruined ahus, the moai platforms, and use the stone houses as chicken shelters. There are no human remains in them any more.

The undeciphered Easter island script Rongorongo may be one of the very few writing systems created ex nihilo, without outside influence. Alternatively the islanders' brief but very visible exposure to Western writing during the Spanish visit in 1770 inspired the ruling class to establish Rongorongo as a religious tool. Rongorongo was first reported by a French missionary Eugène Eyraud in 1864. At that time, several islanders still claimed to be able to understand the scripture, but all attempts to read them were unsuccessful. According to traditions, only a small part of the population was ever literate, Rongorongo being a privilege of the ruling families and priests. This contributed to the total loss of knowledge of how to read Rongorongo in the 1860s, when the island's elite was annihilated by slave raids and disease.

Of the hundreds of wooden tablets and staffs reportedly having Rongorongo writing carved on them, only 26 survive, all in museums around the world and none remaining on Easter Island. Decades of numerous attempts to decipher them have been unfruitful. The scientific community doesn't even agree on whether or not Rongorongo is truly a form of writing.

Legends claim that Hotu Matu'a brought the original tablets with him when he first landed at Anakena, however as Metraux pointed out, the largest tablet is made from a European oar. Also as there is not a single line of Rongorongo carved in stone despite thousands of Rapanui petroglyphs and other remarkable stonework, Rongorongo probably originated on Easter Island in a rather late period.