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Easter Island (, ) is a Chilean island in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, at the southeasternmost point of the Polynesian Triangle. Easter Island is famous for its 887 extant monumental statues, called ''moai'', created by the early Rapa Nui people. In 1995, UNESCO named Easter Island a World Heritage Site, with much of the island protected within Rapa Nui National Park. Polynesian people most likely settled on Easter Island sometime between 700 to 1100 CE, and created a thriving and industrious culture as evidenced by the island's numerous enormous stone ''moai'' and other artifacts. However, human activity, the introduction of the Polynesian rat and overpopulation led to gradual deforestation and extinction of natural resources which severely weakened the Rapa Nui civilization.〔 By the time of European arrival in 1722, the island's population had dropped to 2,000–3,000 from an estimated high of approximately 15,000 just a century earlier. European diseases and Peruvian slave raiding in the 1860s further reduced the Rapa Nui population, to a low of only 111 inhabitants in 1877. Easter Island is one of the most remote inhabited islands in the world. The nearest inhabited land (around 50 residents in 2013) is Pitcairn Island, away; the nearest town with a population over 500 is Rikitea, on the island of Mangareva, away; the nearest continental point lies just in central Chile, away. Easter Island is a special territory of Chile that was annexed in 1888. Administratively, it belongs to the Valparaíso Region, and, more specifically, it is the only commune of the Province Isla de Pascua. According to the 2012 Chilean census, the island has about 5,800 residents, of whom some 60 percent are descendants of the aboriginal Rapa Nui. ==Name== The name "Easter Island" was given by the island's first recorded European visitor, the Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen, who encountered it on Easter Sunday (5 April) in 1722, while searching for Davis or David's island. Roggeveen named it ''Paasch-Eyland'' (18th century Dutch for "Easter Island").〔An English translation of the originally Dutch journal by Jacob Roggeveen, with additional significant information from the log by Cornelis Bouwman, was published in: Andrew Sharp (ed.), The Journal of Jacob Roggeveen (Oxford 1970).〕 The island's official Spanish name, ''Isla de Pascua'', also means "Easter Island". The current Polynesian name of the island, ''Rapa Nui'' ("Big Rapa"), was coined after the slave raids of the early 1860s, and refers to the island's topographic resemblance to the island of Rapa in the Bass Islands of the Austral Islands group. However, Norwegian ethnographer Thor Heyerdahl argued that ''Rapa'' was the original name of Easter Island and that ''Rapa Iti'' was named by refugees from there.〔 Heyerdahl's view was that the two islands were about the same size, and that "big" and "small" were not physical but historical attributes, "big" indicating the original. In reality, however, Easter Island is more than four times bigger than Rapa Iti. Heyerdahl also stated that there is an island called "Rapa" in Lake Titicaca in South America, but so far there is no map available showing an island of that name in the lake.〕 The phrase ''Te pito o te henua'' has been said to be the original name of the island since Alphonse Pinart gave it the romantic translation "the Navel of the World" in his ''Voyage à l'Île de Pâques'', published in 1877. William Churchill (1912) inquired about the phrase and was told that there were three ''te pito o te henua'', these being the three capes (land's ends) of the island. The phrase appears to have been used in the same sense as the designation of "Land's End" at the tip of Cornwall. He was unable to elicit a Polynesian name for the island itself, and concluded that there may not have been one. According to Barthel (1974), oral tradition has it that the island was first named ''Te pito o te kainga a Hau Maka'' "The little piece of land of Hau Maka". However, there are two words pronounced ''pito'' in Rapa Nui, one meaning 'end' and one 'navel', and the phrase can thus also mean "the Navel of the World". This was apparently its actual meaning: French ethnologist Alphonse Pinart gave it the actual translation "the Navel of the World". Another name, ''Mata ki te rangi'', means "Eyes looking to the sky".〔 Islanders are referred to in Spanish as ''pascuense''; however it is common to refer to members of the indigenous community as ''Rapa Nui''. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Easter Island」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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