Easter Island

Easter Island is a Chilean island in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, at the south-easternmost point of the Polynesian Triangle in Oceania. Easter Island is famous for its 887 extant monumental statues, called moai, created by the early Rapa Nui people. In 1995, UNESCO named Easter Island a World Heritage Site, with much of the island protected within Rapa Nui National Park.

It is believed that Easter Island's Polynesian inhabitants arrived on Easter Island sometime between 700 and 1100 CE. They created a thriving and industrious culture as evidenced by the island's numerous enormous stone moai and other artefacts. However, human activity, the introduction of the Polynesian rat and overpopulation led to gradual deforestation and extinction of many important natural resources, which severely weakened the Rapa Nui civilisation. By the time of European arrival in 1722, the island's population had dropped to 2,000–3,000 from an estimated high of approximately 15,000 just a century earlier. European diseases and Peruvian slave raiding in the 1860s further depleted the population, reducing it to a low of only 111 native inhabitants in 1877.

Easter Island is one of the most remote inhabited islands in the world. The nearest inhabited land is Pitcairn Island, 2,075 kilometres away; the nearest town with a population over 500 is Rikitea, on the island of Mangareva, 2,606 km away; the nearest continental point lies in central Chile, 3,512 kilometres away.

Easter Island is a special territory of Chile that was annexed in 1888. Administratively, it belongs to the Valparaíso Region, and, more specifically, it is the only commune of the Province Isla de Pascua. According to the 2017 Chilean census, the island has 7,750 residents, of whom some 60 percent are descendants of the aboriginal Rapa Nui.

Easter Island is considered part of Insular Chile.