otu Nui with an egg manu tara (the tern pascuense ) to the head of his clan and thus make "bird man" for a year and give the clan a prominent position during that period.
What little is known of the traditions and customs Rapanui is basically due to the accounts of the various expeditions Europe made in the past, the first documented European contact with the island is the made by Dutchman Jakob Roggeveen in 1722 . The second time that the Europeans then visited the island did not come until 1770 , when an expedition Spanish under the leadership of Felipe Gonzalez of Ahedo arrived on the island and carried out the first cartographic map of it, naming it Isla de San Carlos in honor of King Carlos III of Spain and taking possession of it to the Crown of Spain. The documentation prepared by Gonzalez Ahedo appear first drawings of moai .From toponymy developed by Gonz�lez de Ahedo only preserved today called Punta Rosalia . Later, the island was visited by other Europeans who used Spanish maps, including those found James Cook (in 1774 ) and Jean-Fran�ois de La P�rouse (in 1786 ). Easter Island eventually became a point of call for sailors that left from South America en route to Oceania .
Symbols Rongo Rongo , of course Rapanui writing system.
Regarding other expeditions subsequently brought diseases to the island which generated a massive depopulation of the island. Especially hard for the Islanders was the visit of slaveholders of different nationalities who left the Callao . 17 Between 1859 and 1863 , about twenty boats took more than 1,000 islanders to sell as slaves . The extermination of the priestly class meant a huge loss, among other things, the only Polynesian script ( Rongo Rongo ) remained unexplained since. The epidemics of tuberculosis and smallpox , and the departure of some 250 islanders with Catholic missionaries to Tahiti, reduced the population to a minimum of 110 people in 1877 .
