Talk:Easter Island

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A fact from this article was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the On this day section on April 5, 2011, April 5, 2014, and April 5, 2015.

Chile Top‑importance

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Polynesia Top‑importance

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Islands

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Illustrations

The very same picture is attributed to Roggeveen 1722 (left side) and to La Pérouse 1786 (right side). According to Heyerdahl it is La Pérouse. On the left side, the hat-thief has been removed. Best regards Steen Thomsen.

Sweet potatoes

The sweet potato is an american plant, this article leans to the theory that it spread to Polynesia in a natural way. The article about sweet potato has another view: Transported home by polynesians visiting South America. Read here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_potato#Dispersal Best regards Steen Thomsen.

Rename to Rapa Nui

The BBC is now using Rapa Nui as canonical, with Easter Island as an 'also called'. Example link. This appears to be relatively recent, with the reverse being true in 2021. Please give your !vote to rename or keep . Of course, this would go vise versa with the current redirect from Rapa Nui. Chumpih ^t 15:47, 23 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The official governmental name of the island is "Isla de Pascua" but the local language is also official (with Spanish) on the island, so "Rapa Nui" seems to be just as legitimate. Pascalulu88 (talk) 17:05, 28 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Chumpih Seven-month necropost but Ngrams [1] seems to show quite monolithic dominance of the English name over the indigenous one. I think it's safe to say it'll be called Easter Island for a great while longer, much like it's still strongly Isla de Pascua in Spanish. Kyoto Grand (talk) 03:56, 8 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

South American contact

Recent plant DNA research indicates pre-Columbian contact with South America: https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/obsidian-blades-with-food-traces-reveal-1st-settlers-of-rapa-nui-had-regular-contact-with-south-americans-1000-years-ago. this should probably be added. 2605:A601:F300:700:0:0:0:1349 (talk) 22:57, 20 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

We cover this in Pre-Columbian_transoceanic_contact_theories#Sweet_potato. If Rapa Nui was settled in the 12th century then sweet potatoes had been in Polynesia for centuries beforehand. If settlement was very early, then it could have been before the sweet Potato reached polynesia, but in that case which is more credible, sporadic contact with the rest of Polynesia in the early settlement period, or that Easter island far from being isolated was in contact with both South America and Polynesia? So it is part of the wider Polynesian story - not specifically Rapa Nui. As for that source, it is a big jump from someone brought Sweet Potatoes from South America to Polynesia to regular contact between the two. Not sure how they justify that claim unless they are assuming that evidence for sweet potatoes is evidence that cargoes of sweet potatoes were regularly shipped from South america as opposed to there was at least one contact that involved bringing sweet potatoes to Polynesia and planting them there in the 1st millennia CE. Ϣere SpielChequers 07:39, 8 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]