Easter Island thread

alternative thread title: what went wrong?

>>1452042
They chopped down all the trees on the island.

>>1452042

They were repeatedly fucked.


For unknown reasons, a coup by military leaders called matatoa had brought a new cult based around a previously unexceptional god Make-make. In the cult of the birdman (Rapanui: tangata manu), a competition was established in which every year a representative of each clan, chosen by the leaders, would swim across shark-infested waters to Motu Nui, a nearby islet, to search for the season's first egg laid by a manutara (sooty tern).

The first swimmer to return with an egg and successfully climb back up the cliff to Orongo would be named "Birdman of the year" and secure control over distribution of the island's resources for his clan for the year. The tradition was still in existence at the time of first contact by Europeans. It ended in 1867. The militant birdman cult was largely to blame for the island's misery of the late 18th and 19th centuries. Each year's winner and his supporters short-sightedly pillaged the island after the victory. With the island's ecosystem fading, destruction of crops quickly resulted in famine, sickness and death.

>>1452073
In 1862, Peruvian slave raiders struck Easter Island. Violent abductions continued for several months, eventually capturing or killing around 1500 men and women, about half of the island's population.by Bishop Florentin-Etienne Jaussen of Tahiti.

The slaves were finally freed in autumn, 1863, but by then most of them had already died of tuberculosis, smallpox and dysentery. Finally, a dozen islanders managed to return from the horrors of Peru, but brought with them smallpox and started an epidemic, which decimated the island's population to the point where some of the dead were not even buried.

Contributing to the chaos were violent clan wars with the remaining people fighting over the newly available lands of the deceased, bringing further famine and death among the dwindling population.

The first Christian missionary, Eugene Eyraud, arrived in January 1864 and spent most of that year on the island; but mass conversion of the Rapanui only came after his return in 1866 with Father Hippolyte Roussel and shortly after two others arrived with Captain Jean-Baptiste Dutrou-Bornier. Eyraud was suffering from phthisis (tuberculosis) when he returned and in 1867, tuberculosis raged over the island, taking a quarter of the island's remaining population of 1,200 including the last member of the island's royal family.

Jean-Baptiste Dutrou-Bornier - arms dealer, gambler, bigamist, murderer, slave dealer, encourager of apostasy and alleged ship wrecker - was to have a long lasting impact on the island. He set up residence at Mataveri, aiming to cleanse the island of most of the Rapanui and turn the island into a sheep ranch. He married Koreto, a Rapanui, and appointed her Queen, tried to persuade France to make the island a protectorate, and recruited a faction of Rapanui whom he allowed to abandon their Christianity and revert to their previous faith. With rifles, a cannon, and hut burning, supporters ran the island for several years.

File: IncanArt.jpg (80KB, 624x468px) Image search: [Google]

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>>1452038
Incan culture was really interesting and they made beautiful art; it's a shame the Spanish destroyed a lot of it. The spanish imported huge amounts of it across the atlantic, but only really wanted to the raw material, such a the gold and silver, so it would often get smashed up or melted down before being shipped off.

Welp, at least they stopped human sacrifice and the other barbaric tradtions native to meso-america.

>>1452073
that competition is pretty based, they still do it every year
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwCs-ZkFsoo

File: reconstruction of a nuraghe.jpg (85KB, 1263x836px) Image search: [Google]

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>>1452038
They built 8,000 of these towers and palaces, plus thousands of temples, I wonder where did they get all that manpower from.

>>1452281
slaves?

>>1452281
Rapa Nui did not build that

>>1452297

Read the filename