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On Easter Island surrounded by magnificent natural scenery, you will find Hotel Hanga Roa, just minutes away from the town of the same name and Mataveri Airport. This hotel will captivate you with a breathtaking view of the Pacific Ocean and its service bound to make your stay unforgettable.

 
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 Major City Listings Hotel Lodging Accommodations in  Easter Island

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Panamericana Hanga Roa
Hotel Acomidations
Easter Island Chile
Panamericana Hotel Hanga Roa is surrounded by magnificent natural scenery where the hotel is located. Just minutes away from the town of the same name and Mataveri airport.This hotel will captivate you with a huge view of the Pacific Ocean and its services are bound to
make your stay unforgettable.

Panamericana Hanga Roa

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Easter Island (Rapa Nui: Rapa Nui ("navel of the world"); Polynesian: Te Pito o te Henúa ("Navel of the World") or Mata-ki-te-Rangi ("Eyes [Speaking] from the Heavens"); Spanish: Isla de Pascua) is an island in the south Pacific Ocean, a territory of Chile. Located 3600 km (2,237 statute miles) west of continental Chile and 2075 km (1290 statute miles) east of Pitcairn Island, it is the most isolated inhabited island in the world. It is located at 27°09′S 109°27′W, with a latitude close to that of the Chilean city of Copiapó, north of Santiago. The island is approximately triangular in shape, with an area of 163.6 km² (63 sq. miles), and a population of 3791 (2002 census), 3304 of which live in the capital of Hanga Roa. The island is famous for its numerous moai, the stone statues now located along the coastlines. Administratively, it is a province (containing a single municipality) of the Chilean Valparaíso Region. The standard time zone is six hours behind UTC/GMT (five hours behind including one hour of the daylight saving time).

History

Oral traditions and early history
Early European visitors to Easter Island recorded the local oral traditions of the original settlers. In these traditions, Easter Islanders claimed that a chief Hotu Matu'a ("the Great Parent") arrived on the island in one or two large canoes with his wife, six sons and extended family. There is considerable uncertainty about the accuracy of this legend as well as the date of settlement. Published literature suggests the island was settled around AD 300-400. This date range is based on glottochronological calculations and on three radiocarbon dates from charcoal that appears to have been produced during forest clearance activities. (Diamond 2005:89)

The Polynesians, who settled the island are likely to have arrived from the Marquesas islands from the west. These settlers brought bananas, taro, sweet potato, sugarcane, and paper mulberry, as well as pigs, chickens, and rats. The island at one time supported a relatively advanced and complex civilization. European contact with the island began in 1722 on Easter Sunday when Dutch navigator Jakob Roggeveen found about 2,000-3,000 inhabitants on the island, although the population may have been as high as 10,000-15,000 only a century or two earlier. The civilization of Easter Island was long believed to have degenerated drastically during the 100 years before the arrival of the Dutch, as a result of overpopulation, deforestation and exploitation of an extremely isolated island with limited natural resources, some evidence to support that the island had a sudden collapse is the oral traditions of the islanders are obsessed with cannibalism, to severly insult an enemy one would say "The flesh of your mother sticks between my teeth", which would suggest that the food supply of the people ultimately ran out; however, this extreme view was based on subjective interpretation of scientific evidence. All that can be said is that there was a massive, anthropogenic alteration of the ecosystem, and subsequently a cultural transition, but it was very likely not the catastrophic event it was long believed to be. By the mid-19th century the population had recovered to about 4,000 inhabitants. Then in a mere 20 years, deportation to Peru and Chile and diseases brought by Westerners almost exterminated the whole population, with only 110 inhabitants left on the island in 1877. It is more likely these events whose recollection by the descendants of the survivors have led to belief that they described ancient memories of a pre-contact collapse. Easter Island was annexed for Chile in 1888 by Policarpo Toro. The native Rapanui have since gradually recovered from this low point in their numbers.

Today
Until the 1960s, the surviving Rapanui descendants were forced to live in a confined settlement in squalid conditions at the outskirts of Hanga Roa. Since finally being allowed to live free, they have re-embraced their ancient culture, or what could be reconstructed of it. A yearly cultural festival, the Tapati celebrates native pastimes.

Rapa Nui is not the island's original name. It was coined by labour immigrants from Rapa in the Bass Islands, who likened it to their home island. The Rapanui name for Rapa Nui was Te pito o te henua (The Navel of the World) due to its isolation, but this too seems to have been derived from another location, possibly a Marquesan landmark.

Recent events have shown a tremendous increase of tourism on the island, coupled with a large inflow of people from mainland Chile which threatens to alter the Polynesian identity of the island. Land disputes have created political tensions since the 1980s, with part of the native Rapanui opposed to private property and in favor of traditional communal property (see Demography below).

The Moai
Main article: Moai


Moai in Hanga Roa, with Chilean Navy training ship Buque Escuela Esmeralda cruising behind. This moai is currently the only one with replica eyes
A MoaiThe 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. Archeologists now estimate that ceremonial site construction and statue carving took place largely between about AD 1100 and 1600, with some statues probably still being carved at about the time Jacob Roggeveen discovered the island. According to recent archaeological research 887 monolithic stone statues, called moai, have been inventoried on the island and in museum collections. This number is not final, however. The on-going statue survey continues to turn up new fragments, and mapping in Rano Raraku quarry (see below) has documented more unfinished statues than previously known. In addition, some statues incorporated into ceremonial site construction surely remain to be uncovered. Although often identified as "heads", the statues actually are heads and complete torsos. Some upright moai, however, have become buried up to their necks by shifting soils. Most moai were carved out of a distinctive, compressed volcanic ash or tuff found at a single site called Rano Raraku. The quarry there seems to have been abandoned abruptly, with half-carved statues left in the rock. However, on closer examination the pattern of use and abandonment is more complex. The most widely-accepted theory is that the statues were carved by the ancestors of the modern Polynesian inhabitants (Rapanui) at a time when the island was largely planted with trees and resources were plentiful, supporting a population of 10,000-15,000 native Rapanui. The majority of the statues were still standing when Jacob Roggeveen arrived in 1722. Captain James Cook also saw many standing statues when he landed on the island in 1774. By the mid-19th century, all the statues had been toppled, presumably in internecine wars.

Rongorongo
Tablets found on the island and bearing a mysterious script known as Rongorongo have never been deciphered despite the work of generations of linguists. In 1932 Hungarian scholar Wilhelm or Guillaume de Hevesy called attention to apparent similarities between some of the rongorongo characters of Easter Island and the prehistoric script of the Indus Valley in India, correlating dozens (at least 40) of the former with corresponding signs on seals from Mohenjo-daro. This correlation was re-published in later books, for example by Z.A. Simon (1984: 95), but later works showed these comparisons to be spurious.

Some writers have asserted rongorongo means peace-peace and that their texts record peace treaty documents, possibly between the long ears and the conquering short ears. However, such explanations have been strongly disputed, particularly since the "long-ear/short ear" designations of historical islanders have become increasingly unsupportable.

Like most indigenous tellers of Easter Island histories or legends, islanders continue to have questionable motives for their accounts and have always been creative, imaginative and quick to give answers to inquisitive archaeologists and historians. Rongorongo's purpose and intent remain as puzzling as the script's meaning. While there have been many claims of translation, none have withstood peer review. S.R. Fischer has reportedly made the most extensive study of Rongorongo to date and in his book Glyphbreaker he claims to be the first to successfully decypher it. However, to date no one has been proven to have successfully deciphered this text.
 
Background:
A three-year-old Marxist government was overthrown in 1973 by a dictatorial military regime led by Augusto PINOCHET, who ruled until a freely elected president was installed in 1990. Sound economic policies, first implemented by the PINOCHET dictatorship, led to unprecedented growth in 1991-97 and have helped secure the country's commitment to democratic and representative government.
Location:
Southern South America, bordering the South Atlantic Ocean and South Pacific Ocean, between Argentina and Peru
Geographic coordinates:
30 00 S, 71 00 W
Map references:
South America
Area:
total: 756,950 sq km
land: 748,800 sq km
note: includes Easter Island (Isla de Pascua) and Isla Sala y Gomez
water: 8,150 sq km
Area - comparative:
slightly smaller than twice the size of Montana
Land boundaries:
total: 6,171 km
border countries: Argentina 5,150 km, Bolivia 861 km, Peru 160 km
Coastline:
6,435 km
Maritime claims:
contiguous zone: 24 NM
territorial sea: 12 NM
continental shelf: 200/350 NM
exclusive economic zone: 200 NM
Climate:
temperate; desert in north; Mediterranean in central region; cool and damp in south
Terrain:
low coastal mountains; fertile central valley; rugged Andes in east
Elevation extremes:
lowest point: Pacific Ocean 0 m
highest point: Nevado Ojos del Salado 6,880 m
Natural resources:
copper, timber, iron ore, nitrates, precious metals, molybdenum, hydropower
Population:
15,498,930 (July 2002 est.)
Age structure:
0-14 years: 26.9% (male 2,127,696; female 2,033,201)
15-64 years: 65.6% (male 5,070,476; female 5,103,490)
65 years and over: 7.5% (male 482,846; female 681,221) (2002 est.)
Nationality:
noun: Chilean(s)
adjective: Chilean
Ethnic groups:
white and white-Amerindian 95%, Amerindian 3%, other 2%
Religions:
Roman Catholic 89%, Protestant 11%, Jewish NEGL%
Languages:

Spanish
 

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