I didn't know what Orongo was; I only knew that it meant walking to the crater of the volcano that formed the southwest corner of the island. I could see the grass-covered side of the volcano sloping up from my campsite, and basically just followed my nose along the coast until I found a good place to start climbing. Before I reached the base, I saw a sign for an historical site, and though I couldn't quite make out what it said, I decided to follow it. The path descended steeply down to crashing waves and a rough coastline, into a cave where the waves were deadened by an inlet. Inside the cave I saw paintings of birds on the ceiling. Little did I know then that these paintings were connected to the culture that emerged at Orongo, on the rim of the volcano where I was headed. I carried on and an hour or two later reached a high point. Crossing over a narrow ridge, I looked down on the crater itself, now one of the only sources of fresh water on the island. Inside a diversity of flora responded to the rare environment, soaking in their desalinated heaven. It is literally the most ecologically diverse place for thousands of miles. Next to me at the overlook was a etched rock encircled by other stones, with a petroglyph of another bird on it. My curiosity piqued. I followed the rim of the crater to its southern edge, overlooking the ocean 1000 feet below, where a path led further to a narrow strip of grass and terraced houses. This little village had been mostly reconstructed to represent Orongo, a ceremonial gathering place that rescued the island from chaos.
Jared Diamond talks about Easter Island in his book Collapse, citing it as an example of a civilization that overused its limited resources with no attempt to replenish them. The rush to create moai so depleted the island's natural resources that it descended into anarchy. Moai were carved out of the side of a volcano on the east side of the island (more to come on this in a future post). After they were created, they were transported to the villages that commissioned them on a system of moai roads, which were basically logs laid over the earth so that the moai could be easily rolled. The construction and maintenance of these roads essentially depleted the island of its trees. Without trees, the thin layer of topsoil eroded, making the limited farming on the island virtually nonexistent. Add this to the glut of fresh water and the ecosystem could not support the 10,000+ people that had come to inhabit the island. A fierce competition for resources began, resulting in the fracturing of tribes and eventually island-wide warfare. During the 1700s and early 1800s, every single moai on the island (several hundred at this point) were toppled by warring tribes, leaving the people devoid of their most sacred spiritual symbols (moai lost their spirit if they were toppled or broken). Tribal chiefs lost their power and the island descended into anarchy.
During this time, though, the warrior class took charge and instituted a new ritual that re-established stability and hierarchy to the fragile island. Each September, the leaders of each tribe would gather at Orongo, on this thin strip of land dropping on one side into the crater and on the other into the ocean. After several days of dancing, singing, and prayer, a representative from each tribe would embark on a perilous journey: they would climb down the crater to a notch in the ocean side, cross over to the cliff that dropped 1000 feet into the ocean, and then scale the cliff into the water below. If they didn't die doing this (and many did), they would swim 2 miles out to a little islet that had become the nesting place for migrating sooty-terns every fall. There they would camp in caves and await the terns. The first tribesman to capture an egg and signal back to his chief at Orongo would win power and tribute from all other tribes for the entire year. The tribesman then had to swim back to Rapa Nui, climb the cliff, and present the egg in tact to his chief. The victorious chief would live in isolation for the next several months. By all accounts this ritual took place until 1866, when the first Catholic missionaries came to the island. During this time, the sooty tern, representing fertility and abundance, gained in stature, and gradually displaced the moai as the primary object of worship and reverence.
The cave drawings of the bird, above and below, at an ocean-side inlet
This profile of the birdman sits at the rim of the crater. Its beak and eye are on top.
Click to enlarge these panoramas of the crater. The notch at the back is where the tribesmen would cross over and then scale the cliff to the ocean. Below, you can see the path that leads around the village of Orongo.
These are the low houses of Orongo, terraced into the hillside. Because the people spent most of their time outside, the houses were used mostly for sleeping.
This house has only been partially reconstructed, revealing the narrow inner chamber that was protected from the wind by a layer of earth.
The doorways to the houses were intentionally small to protect inhabitants from the wind, and also to make it difficult to enter without the inhabitant's permission.
In the distance is the islet where the sooty term migrated every year.
This shot shows petroglyphs on the rim of Orongo and the islet in the distance. Tribesmen basically had to climb down from here and then swim to the islet.
Close-up of the petroglyphs.
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