Mata ki te rangi (The eyes that look to the sky) Rapa Nui

 Located in the eastern corner of the gigantic Polynesian archipelago, the Island of Rapa Nui -also known as Easter Island- has a very particular history. Since its initial colonization by Polynesian immigrants, its extreme isolation favored the development of a culture with unique features in the world, which has only been reconstructed thanks to the contribution of archeology and ethnology.

About three thousand years ago, navigators from Southeast Asia settled on the islands of Tonga and Samoa, and over the next thousand years they began a process of colonization of Polynesia. Moving in successive waves, they occupied the vast area between Hawaii to the north, New Zealand to the southwest, and Rapa Nui to the southeast. Around the year 600, a group of settlers arrived on the island from the Marquesas Islands, who introduced a wide variety of vegetable crops such as sweet potatoes, taro, yams, bananas and sugar cane, as well as the Polynesian rat. and the chicken that was very important for the exchange. according to oral tradition, the group would have been headed by the Ariki Hotu Matu'a, who founded the dominant lineage that would control access to priestly and political positions in the future. The children of Hotu Matu'a became the ancestors of the different tribes with a supreme chief, the Ariki Mau.