Easter Island / Rapa Nui, Chile - Motu Nui, Motu Iti, Orongo - postcard c.70s

Postcard
• Picture / Image:  Isla de Pascua / Easter Island / Rapa Nui in Pacific Chile (Quinta Region) - Islotes Frente a Orango - these are islands off Orongo, specifically Motu Nui & Motu Iti
• Publisher:  Charad
• Postally used:  no
• Stamp:  n/a
• Postmark(s): n/a
• Sent to:  n/a
• Notes / condition: 

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Text from the free encyclopedia WIKIPEDIA may appear below to give a little background information (internal links may not  work) :

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Orongo is a stone village and ceremonial centre at the southwestern tip of Rapa Nui (Easter Island). The first half of the ceremonial village's 53 stone masonry houses were investigated and restored in 1974 by American archaeologist William Mulloy. In 1976 Mulloy assisted by Chilean archaeologists Claudio Cristino and Patricia Vargas completed the restoration of the whole complex which was subsequently investigated by Cristino in 1985 and 1995. ‘Orongo enjoys a dramatic location on the crater lip of Rano Kau at the point where a 250 meter sea cliff converges with the inner wall of the crater of Rano Kau. ‘Orongo now has World Heritage status as part of the Rapa Nui National Park.

Until the mid-nineteenth century, ‘Orongo was the centre of the birdman cult, which hosted an annual race to bring the first manutara (Sooty Tern) egg from the islet of Motu Nui to ‘Orongo. The site has numerous petroglyphs, mainly of tangata manu (birdmen).

In the 1860s, most of the Rapa Nui islanders died of disease or were enslaved, and when the survivors were converted to Christianity, ‘Orongo fell into disuse. In 1868, the crew of HMS Topaze removed Hoa Hakananai'a from ‘Orongo. This unusual rare basalt moai is now in the British Museum.

The site of ‘Orongo was included in the 1996 World Monuments Watch by the World Monuments Fund, and listed again four years later, in 2000. The threat was soil erosion, caused by rainfall and exacerbated by foot traffic.^[1] After 2000, the organization helped devise a site management plan with support from American Express, and in December 2009 more funding was announced for the construction of a sustainable visitor center.^[2]

Motu Nui (large island in the Rapa Nui language) is the largest of three islets just south of Easter Island and is the most westerly place in Chile. All three islets have sea birds but Motu Nui was also an essential location for the Tangata manu (""Bird Man"") cult which was the island religion between the moai era and the Christian era (the people of the island were converted to Roman Catholicism in the 1860s). Motu Nui is the summit of a large volcanic mountain which rises over 2,000 meters from the sea bed. It measures 3.9 hectares in land area and is the largest of the five satellite islets of Easter island.

The ritual of the ""Bird Man"" cult was a competition to collect the first egg of the manutara. This took place starting from Motu Nui where the Hopu (representatives from each clan) waited for the Sooty Terns to lay their first eggs of the season. The Hopu who seized the first egg raced to swim back to Easter Island, climbed the cliffs to Orongo and presented the egg to their sponsor in front of the judges at Orongo. This gave their sponsor the title of Tangata manu and great power on the island for a year. Many Hopu were killed by sharks or by falling. The winning clan gained certain rights including the collecting of eggs and young birds from the islets.

Motu means ""island"" in Rapa Nui language, and there are two smaller motus located nearby: Motu Kao Kao (a sea stack, rising around 20 meters (65 feet) above sea level) and Motu Iti (near Motu Nui).

Motu Nui was scientifically surveyed by the Routledge expedition of 1914, which reported that six other varieties of seabirds nested there in addition to the Sooty Tern. They explored two caves on Motu Nui, in one of which the Hopu used to stay while waiting for the first egg of the season, and the other used to contain Titahanga-o-te-henua ""The Boundary of the Land"", a small moai that had already been taken to the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, England.

Although the Tangata Manu cult's rituals have long since been discontinued (the last competition known to have taken place in 1888), current visitors to Rapa Nui often enjoy the beauty of the Motus via small boat excursions from Hanga Roa, the island's only town. The diving in the sea between Motu Nui and Kau Kau is exceptional, and is a highly sought after scuba diving location for dive enthusiasts from around the world. Once heavily populated with sharks, the coastal waters of Rapa Nui are now much safer, due in large part to overfishing.

Motu Iti, or Little island in the Rapa Nui language, is a small uninhabited islet near Motu Nui, about a mile from Rano Kau on the south western corner of Easter Island, a Chilean island in the Pacific. It has a land area of 1.6 hectares, which makes it the second largest of the five satellite islands of Easter Island, after Motu Nui.

Nowadays it is a bird sanctuary and part of the Rapa Nui National Park but until the late nineteenth century CE it was important to the Rapanui people both as their best source^[1] of obsidian for sharp edged tools and for an annual harvest of eggs and fledglings from the seabirds that nested on it. Motu Iti is the summit of a large volcanic mountain which rises over 2,000 meters from the sea bed.

Seabirds nesting on Motu Iti include the Sooty Tern.

type=printed postcards

theme=topographical: rest of the world

sub-theme=south america

county/ country=chile

number of items=single

period=1945 - present

postage condition=unposted