Rapa Nui (Easter Island)

 

• Rapa Nui was the only Polynesian culture to keep a written language.
• Easter Island get its name from its discovery on Easter Sunday, 1722. 
• Easter Island is located in the middle of the South Pacific between Chile and Tahiti.
• Only one airline flies to Easter Island: LanChile, out of Santiago.
• The Rapa Nui people probably arrived from Polynesia around 400 AD.
• There are about 800 moai (statues) on Easter Island.
• The written language of the Rapa Nui has yet to be deciphered.  
• Easter Island's only festival is the Tapati Rapa Nui in February, which celebrates traditional Rapa Nui culture. 
• Easter Island is a small, hilly and treeless island of volcanic origin.
• In the 1860’s Tahitian sailors gave the island the name Rapa Nui, meaning ‘Great Rapa,’ due to its resemblance to another island in Polynesia called Rapa Iti, meaning ‘Little Rapa’.