title: Megadeth

text: In 2003, after recovering from an arm injury that threatened to end his career, Mustaine became a born-again Christian. Minor controversy was sparked by Mustaine's announcement that Megadeth would not play certain songs live due to his conversion. In May 2005, Mustaine allegedly threatened to cancel shows in Greece and Israel with extreme metal bands Rotting Christ and Dissection due to the bands' anti-Christian beliefs. This caused the two bands to cancel appearances.


title: Megadeth

text: In July 2004, former bassist Ellefson sued Mustaine for $18.5 million in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. Ellefson alleged that Mustaine short-changed him on profits including tour merchandise and publishing royalties. The suit was dismissed in 2005, and Mustaine filed a countersuit alleging that Ellefson had used the band's name in an advertisement for musical equipment; the suit was settled out of court.


title: Megadeth

text: On May 10, 2021, sexually explicit videos of Ellefson were posted on Twitter. The videos, reportedly recorded by a fan that Ellefson was in correspondence with, initially led to accusations of child grooming. However, Ellefson and the other party both denied the accusations, and the fan publicly claimed they were a consenting adult and the videos were unknowingly released by a third party. The Scottsdale Police Department (SPD) was contacted by Ellefson, who sought charges for revenge porn. Ellefson took a polygraph test to affirm his claims and presented police with a photo of the fan's driver's license to prove their age. He also shared screen shots of Snapchat and WhatsApp messages related to the allegations. Ellefson's partner admitted that she had shared the video with some friends but wasn't sure how it got leaked out to others. The SPD report states the fan "was remorseful and agreed to send out a social media statement on...Instagram" that they were "a willing consenting adult during their mutual virtual sexual encounter." Ellefson then posted her statement and one of his own on May 10, asserting that the allegations of grooming were false. Ellefson stated he has not been extorted in any way, and he believes the videos of their consensual adult encounter were not intentionally leaked. An official statement released the next day from Megadeth stated that the situation was being "watched closely". Mustaine announced on May 24, 2021, that Ellefson was fired from the band.


title: Megadeth

text: Traditional heavy metal bands such as UFO, Black Sabbath, Budgie, new wave of British heavy metal (NWOBHM) bands such as Raven, Judas Priest, Motörhead, Iron Maiden, Diamond Head, and Venom, and punk rock bands such as the Sex Pistols and Ramones had a significant influence on Megadeth's sound. Hard rock bands such as AC/DC, Queen, and Led Zeppelin, as well as German acts like Scorpions and Accept, were also influential on the group's guitar style. Although the music has roots in punk, university professor Jason Bivins wrote that Megadeth followed the basic blueprint of Motörhead and Iron Maiden. He described the style as a mix of "the instrumental virtuosity of the NWOBHM with the speed and aggression of hardcore punk", while also drawing lyrical inspiration from the horror-obsessed punk band Misfits. Mustaine has also listed albums by the Beatles and David Bowie as recordings that influenced him.


title: Megadeth

text: Mustaine is the band's primary songwriter. He develops songs starting with a particular riff that, with modifications, becomes the central part of the song. He has said that song fragments are composed separately, and then the band makes a compact structure from them. Drummer Shawn Drover stated that Mustaine had saved many riffs over the years and that some recent material is based on those demo recordings. Ellefson stated that the band constantly creates new material, and that making a recording begins with exchanging ideas after which the band enters the studio and discusses the concept, direction, artwork, and song titles. The lyrics are usually written after the music is arranged. Discussing the band's lyrics, Mustaine said that many of the themes are derived from literature, such as the novels of George Orwell.


title: Megadeth

text: The music of Megadeth and its underground metal contemporaries from the 1980s featured harsh vocals, double bass drum patterns, staccato riffing, power chords, tremolo picking, and screeching lead guitar work; albums from this period were produced on low budgets. After forming Megadeth, Mustaine followed the thrash metal style of his previous band, Metallica, with more emphasis on speed and intensity. When asked to describe Megadeth's guitar style, Mustaine answered: "When you go to a show and see a guitar player who just stands there, that's a guitar player. A thrash guitar player is a guy who plays like he wants to beat the guitar's guts out." Most of the songs are recorded in standard guitar tuning as Mustaine believes it to provide a superior melody to alternative methods of tuning.


title: Megadeth

text: In 2017, David Ellefson talked in an interview about how the band recently started to use a lower tuning saying: "it's just natural with age, for singers it can be a struggle, so rather than quit, than not play, how do you work it around? Well, let's drop the guitars, let's find a way to work around it."


title: Megadeth

text: During the band's early days, Mustaine was the rhythm guitarist, while Chris Poland played lead. Poland performed only on Megadeth's first two albums at the time of the book's release; (he would go on to play on the 2004 album "The System Has Failed"); music journalists Pete Prown and Harvey P. Newquist credit him with making the music more colorful because of his jazz influences. According to former "Metal Maniacs" editor Jeff Wagner, the band's songwriting techniques peaked with the fourth album, "Rust in Peace", which he described as a "flurry of precision and fluidity, making good on Megadeth's claim to being the world's state-of-the-art speed metal band". Musicologist Glenn Pillsbury stated the guitar work on the album was a mixture of Mustaine's "controlled chaos" and the "technical brilliance" of Marty Friedman. Studio efforts released in the mid- and late 1990s featured songs with compact structures and less complicated riffing.


title: Megadeth

text: Megadeth's lyrics often focus on death, war, politics, and religion. The lyricism centers on nihilistic themes, but occasionally deals with topics such as alienation and social problems. The earliest releases featured themes such as occultism, graphic violence, and Satanism. Nuclear warfare and government conspiracy were preoccupations on albums such as "Rust in Peace" and "Countdown to Extinction". During Megadeth's commercial peak, Mustaine elaborated on more personal themes such as addiction and intimate relationships. For the lyrics on "Cryptic Writings", Mustaine said that he wanted to write songs that had more appeal to a wider audience. The title of "United Abominations" is a satiric play on the name of the United Nations; Mustaine criticized the organization's ineffectiveness on a number of songs on that album.


title: Megadeth

text: Having sold about 38 million units worldwide, Megadeth is one of the few bands from the 1980s American underground metal scene to have achieved mass commercial success. Along with contemporaries Metallica, Slayer, and Anthrax, Megadeth is regarded as one of the core founding groups of thrash metal. These bands are often referred to as the "big four" of thrash metal, responsible for the genre's development and popularization. "Loudwire" ranked Megadeth the third best thrash metal band of all time, praising the group's "provoking lyrics and mind-warping virtuosity". "CMJ New Music Report" called the band's debut album a seminal release and a representative of "the golden age of speed metal". Billboard called the band's second album "Peace Sells... but Who's Buying?" a "landmark of the thrash movement" whose lyrics it found still relevant. MTV also recognized the band as an influential metal act, highlighting the technical aspect of the early albums.


title: Megadeth

text: Megadeth is considered one of the most musically influential groups that originated in the 1980s. As part of the early American thrash metal movement, the band's music was a direct influence on death metal. Sociologist Keith Kahn-Harris wrote that the mainstream success of Megadeth was one of the reasons for the expansion of extreme metal to countries where it had previously been unknown. The band's sound and album artwork influenced a number of thrash metal bands in the 21st century, including Toxic Holocaust and Warbringer. According to Nielsen SoundScan, Megadeth has sold 9.2 million copies of its albums in the United States between 1991 and 2014.


title: 2021 NBA draft

text: The 2021 NBA draft, the 75th edition of the National Basketball Association's annual draft, was held on July 29, 2021, at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. With the first overall pick, the Detroit Pistons selected Cade Cunningham. The NBA used a "ceremonial pick" for the late Terrence Clarke, between the 14th and 15th pick of the draft.


title: 2021 NBA draft

text: Prior to the draft, the following trades were made and resulted in exchanges of draft picks between teams.


title: 2021 NBA draft

text: Draft-night trades were made after the draft began. These trades are usually not confirmed until the next day or after free agency officially begins.


title: 2021 NBA draft

text: Prior to the NBA Draft Combine, the 2021 NBA G League Elite Camp, which took place on June 19–21 at the Wintrust Arena and Marriott Marquis in Chicago, provided another chance for players not originally invited to the combine to impress scouts. The best performers from this camp were given invites to the main combine.


title: 2021 NBA draft

text: The NBA Draft Combine was held on June 21–27 at the same site sponsored by Microsoft. A total of 69 players attended the NBA Draft Combine 2021, with these players undergoing a series of interviews, five-on-five games, drills, and measurements. Lottery-projected pick Keon Johnson broke the combine's vertical leap record of , set by Kenny Gregory in 2001, with a vertical leap of . The combine also featured some recent graduates of the inaugural NBA G League Ignite team, which is a developmental basketball program meant to provide prospects with a paid alternative to playing NCAA college basketball. The success of these players, Jalen Green, Jonathan Kuminga, Daishen Nix, and Isaiah Todd, may pave the way for more top prospects to participate in the G League system pre-draft.


title: 2021 NBA draft

text: Projected top picks who decided not to attend the NBA Draft Combine include potential No. 1 pick Cade Cunningham and likely top-four pick Jalen Suggs. Numerous other potential prospects, especially those playing overseas, also decided to skip the Combine.


title: 2021 NBA draft

text: The draft is conducted under the eligibility rules established in the league's 2017 collective bargaining agreement (CBA) with its players' union, with special modifications agreed to by both parties due to disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The previous CBA that ended the 2011 lockout instituted no immediate changes to the draft. but called for a committee of owners and players to discuss further charges.


title: 2021 NBA draft

text: The NBA announced on February 26, 2021, that for this draft only, all college players who wished to enter the draft, regardless of class, had to formally declare eligibility. In October 2020, COVID-19 led the NCAA to declare that the 2020–21 season would not be counted against the college eligibility of any basketball player. The exact language of the CBA with regard to automatic eligibility of college seniors is "The player has graduated from a four-year college or university in the United States, and has no remaining intercollegiate basketball eligibility." Due to the NCAA ruling, "every" college senior in the 2020–21 season had remaining eligibility. The league was required to consult with the players' union and the NCAA to determine whether it would require seniors to opt out of the draft (which was implemented by the NFL for its 2021 draft, affected by a similar NCAA ruling for football) or require opt-ins, with the latter option being chosen.


title: 2021 NBA draft

text: Players who were not automatically eligible had to declare their eligibility for the draft by notifying the NBA offices in writing no later than at least 60 days before the event. For the 2021 draft, the date fell on May 30. Under the CBA a player may withdraw his name from consideration from the draft at any time before the final declaration deadline, which usually falls 10 days before the draft at 5:00 pm EDT (2100 UTC). Under current NCAA rules, players usually have until 10 days after the draft combine to withdraw from the draft and retain college eligibility. In 2021, however, they must have withdrawn on or before July 7, 22 days prior to this draft.


title: 2021 NBA draft

text: A player who has hired an agent retains his remaining college eligibility regardless of whether he is drafted after an evaluation from the NBA Undergraduate Advisory Committee. Players who declare for the NBA draft and are not selected have the opportunity to return to their school for at least another year only after terminating all agreements with their agents, who must have been certified no later than August 1, 2020.


title: 2021 NBA draft

text: The NBA released its official list of early entrants on June 2, 2021, consisting of 296 players from college and other educational institutions and 57 international players. The current version of the list found in this article omits players who withdrew from the draft after June 2.


title: 2021 NBA draft

text: Terrence Clarke, a freshman guard from Kentucky, declared for the draft, but died on April 22, three months before the draft. At the draft, the NBA honored him with an honorary selection.


title: 2021 NBA draft

text: "Redshirt" refers to players who were redshirt seniors in the 2020–21 season. "Graduate" refers to players who were graduate transfers in 2020–21.


title: 2021 NBA draft

text: International players that declared for this draft and did not previously declare in another prior draft could drop out 10 days before the event, on July 19. A total of 51 international players withdrew their names from consideration for the draft, with only the following eight prospects remaining after the international deadline.


title: 2021 NBA draft

text: Players who do not meet the criteria for "international" players are automatically eligible if they meet any of the following criteria:


title: 2021 NBA draft

text: As noted above, the NCAA's COVID-19 eligibility waiver for 2020–21 resulted in all college seniors having remaining eligibility, leading to the NBA and its players' union agreeing that seniors would have to declare for the 2021 draft.


title: 2021 NBA draft

text: Players who meet the criteria for "international" players are automatically eligible if they meet any of the following criteria:


title: Henry Fonda

text: Henry Jaynes Fonda (May 16, 1905 – August 12, 1982) was an American actor. He had a career that spanned five decades on Broadway and in Hollywood. He cultivated an everyman screen image in several films considered to be classics.


title: Henry Fonda

text: Born and raised in Nebraska, Fonda made his mark early as a Broadway actor and made his Hollywood film debut in 1935. He rose to film stardom with performances in films like "Jezebel" (1938), "Jesse James" (1939), and "Young Mr. Lincoln" (1939). His career further progressed with his portrayal of Tom Joad in "The Grapes of Wrath" (1940), receiving a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor.


title: Henry Fonda

text: In 1941, Fonda starred opposite Barbara Stanwyck in the screwball comedy classic "The Lady Eve". Book-ending his service in WWII were his starring roles in two highly regarded Westerns: "The Ox-Bow Incident" (1943) and "My Darling Clementine" (1946), the latter directed by John Ford, and he also starred in Ford's Western "Fort Apache" (1948). After a seven-year break from films, during which Fonda focused on stage productions, he returned with the WWII war-boat ensemble "Mister Roberts" (1955). In 1956, at the age of fifty-one, he played the title role as the thirty-eight-year-old Manny Balestrero in Alfred Hitchcock's thriller "The Wrong Man". In 1957, he starred as Juror 8, the hold-out juror, in "12 Angry Men". Fonda, who was also the co-producer of this film, won the BAFTA award for Best Foreign Actor.


title: Henry Fonda

text: Later in his career, Fonda moved into darker roles, such as the villain in the epic "Once Upon a Time in the West" (1968), a box office success in Europe, now regarded as one of the best Westerns of all time. He also played in lighter-hearted fare such as "Yours, Mine and Ours" with Lucille Ball and "My Name is Nobody" with Terence Hill, but also often played important military figures, such as a colonel in "Battle of the Bulge" (1965), and Admiral Nimitz in "Midway" (1976). He won the Academy Award for Best Actor at the 54th Academy Awards for his final film role in "On Golden Pond" (1981), which also starred Katharine Hepburn and his daughter Jane Fonda, but was too ill to attend the ceremony. He died from heart disease a few months later.


title: Henry Fonda

text: Fonda was the patriarch of a family of actors, including daughter Jane Fonda, son Peter Fonda, granddaughter Bridget Fonda, and grandson Troy Garity. In 1999 he was named the sixth-Greatest Male Screen Legends of the Classic Hollywood Era (stars with a film debut by 1950) by the American Film Institute.


title: Henry Fonda

text: Born in Grand Island, Nebraska, on May 16, 1905, Henry Jaynes Fonda was the son of printer William Brace Fonda, and his wife, Herberta (Jaynes). The family moved to Omaha, Nebraska, in 1906.


title: Henry Fonda

text: Fonda's patriline originates with an ancestor from Genoa, Italy, who migrated to the Netherlands in the 15th century. In 1642, a branch of the Fonda family immigrated to the Dutch colony of New Netherland on the East Coast of North America. They were among the first Dutch population to settle in what is now upstate New York, establishing the town of Fonda, New York. By 1888, many of their descendants had relocated to Nebraska.


title: Henry Fonda

text: Fonda was brought up as a Christian Scientist, though he was baptized an Episcopalian at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church in Grand Island. They were a close family and highly supportive, especially in health matters, as they avoided doctors due to their religion. Despite having a religious background, he later became an agnostic. Fonda was a bashful, short boy who tended to avoid girls, except his sisters, and was a good skater, swimmer, and runner. He worked part-time in his father's print plant and imagined a possible career as a journalist. Later, he worked after school for the phone company. He also enjoyed drawing. Fonda was active in the Boy Scouts of America; Teichmann reports that he reached the rank of Eagle Scout. However, this is denied elsewhere. When he was 14, he and his father witnessed the brutal lynching of Will Brown from a nearby building during the Omaha race riot of 1919. This enraged the young Fonda and he kept a keen awareness of prejudice for the rest of his life. Remarking on the incident in a 1975 BBC interview, he said: "It was the most horrendous sight I'd ever seen. My hands were wet, there were tears in my eyes. All I could think of was that young black man dangling at the end of a rope." By his senior year in high school, Fonda had grown to more than six feet (1.8m) tall, but remained shy. He attended the University of Minnesota, where he majored in journalism, but did not graduate. While at Minnesota he was a member of Chi Delta Xi, a local fraternity, which later became Chi Phi's "Gamma Delta chapter" on that campus. He took a job with the Retail Credit Company.


title: Henry Fonda

text: At age 20, Fonda started his acting career at the Omaha Community Playhouse when his mother's friend Dodie Brando (mother of Marlon Brando) recommended that he try out for a juvenile part in "You and I", in which he was cast as Ricky. He was fascinated by the stage, learning everything from set construction to stage production, and embarrassed by his acting ability. When he received the lead in "Merton of the Movies", he realized the beauty of acting as a profession, as it allowed him to deflect attention from his own tongue-tied personality and create stage characters relying on someone else's scripted words. Fonda decided to quit his job and go east in 1928 to seek his fortune.


title: Henry Fonda

text: He arrived on Cape Cod and played a minor role at the Cape Playhouse in Dennis, Massachusetts. A friend took him to Falmouth, MA where he joined and quickly became a valued member of the University Players, an intercollegiate summer stock company. There, he worked with Margaret Sullavan, his future wife. James Stewart joined the Players a few months after Fonda left, though they were soon to become lifelong friends. Fonda left the Players at the end of their 1931–1932 season after appearing in his first professional role in "The Jest", by Sem Benelli. Joshua Logan, a young sophomore at Princeton who had been double-cast in the show, gave Fonda the part of Tornaquinci, "an elderly Italian man with a long white beard and even longer hair." Also in the cast of "The Jest" with Fonda and Logan were Bretaigne Windust, Kent Smith, and Eleanor Phelps.


title: Henry Fonda

text: Soon after, Fonda headed for New York City to be with his then wife, Margaret Sullavan. The marriage was brief, but when James Stewart came to New York his luck changed. Getting contact information from Joshua Logan, "Jimmy" and "Hank" found they had a lot in common, as long as they didn't discuss politics. The two men became roommates and honed their skills on Broadway. Fonda appeared in theatrical productions from 1926 to 1934. They fared no better than many Americans in and out of work during the early part of the Great Depression, sometimes lacking enough money to take the subway.


title: Henry Fonda

text: Fonda got his first break in films when he was hired in 1935 as Janet Gaynor's leading man in 20th Century Fox's screen adaptation of "The Farmer Takes a Wife"; he reprised his role from the Broadway production of the same name, which had gained him recognition. Suddenly, Fonda was making $3,000 a week and dining with Hollywood stars such as Carole Lombard. Stewart soon followed him to Hollywood, and they roomed together again, in lodgings next door to Greta Garbo. In 1935 Fonda starred in the RKO film "I Dream Too Much" with the opera star Lily Pons. "The New York Times" announced him as "Henry Fonda, the most likable of the new crop of romantic juveniles."


title: Henry Fonda

text: Fonda's film career blossomed as he costarred with Sylvia Sidney and Fred MacMurray in "The Trail of the Lonesome Pine" (1936), the first Technicolor movie filmed outdoors.


title: Henry Fonda

text: He starred with ex-wife Margaret Sullavan in "The Moon's Our Home", and a short rekindling of their relationship led to a brief but temporary consideration of remarriage. Fonda got the nod for the lead role in "You Only Live Once" (1937), also costarring Sidney, and directed by Fritz Lang. He starred opposite Bette Davis, who had chosen him, in the film "Jezebel" (1938). This was followed by the title role in "Young Mr. Lincoln" (1939), his first collaboration with director John Ford, and that year he played Frank James in "Jesse James" (1939) starring Tyrone Power and Nancy Kelly. Another 1939 film was "Drums Along the Mohawk", also directed by Ford.


title: Henry Fonda

text: Fonda's successes led Ford to recruit him to play Tom Joad in the film version of John Steinbeck's novel "The Grapes of Wrath" (1940). A reluctant Darryl Zanuck, who preferred Tyrone Power, insisted on Fonda's signing a seven-year contract with his studio, Twentieth Century-Fox. Fonda agreed and was ultimately nominated for an Academy Award for his work in the film, which many consider to be his finest role. Fonda starred in Fritz Lang's "The Return of Frank James" (1940) with Gene Tierney. He then played opposite Barbara Stanwyck in Preston Sturges's "The Lady Eve" (1941), and again teamed with Tierney in the successful screwball comedy "Rings on Her Fingers" (1942). She was one of Fonda's favorite co-stars, and they appeared in three films together. He was acclaimed for his role in "The Ox-Bow Incident" (1943).


title: Henry Fonda

text: Fonda enlisted in the United States Navy to fight in World War II, saying, "I don't want to be in a fake war in a studio." Previously, Stewart and he had helped raise funds for the defense of Britain. Fonda served for three years, initially as a Quartermaster 3rd Class on the destroyer . He was later commissioned as a Lieutenant Junior Grade in Air Combat Intelligence in the Central Pacific and was awarded the Bronze Star Medal and Navy Presidential Unit Citation. After being discharged from active duty due to an "overage in rank", Fonda was transferred to the Naval Reserve, serving three years (1945-1948).


title: Henry Fonda

text: After the war, Fonda took a break from movies and attended Hollywood parties and enjoyed civilian life. Stewart and Fonda would listen to records and invite Johnny Mercer, Hoagy Carmichael, Dinah Shore, and Nat King Cole over for music, with the latter giving the family piano lessons. Fonda played Wyatt Earp in "My Darling Clementine" (1946), which was directed by John Ford. Fonda did seven postwar films until his contract with Fox expired, the last being Otto Preminger's "Daisy Kenyon" (1947), opposite Joan Crawford. He starred in "The Fugitive" (1947), which was the first film of Ford's new production company, Argosy Pictures. In 1948 he appeared in a subsequent Argosy/Ford production, "Fort Apache", as a rigid Army colonel, along with John Wayne and Shirley Temple in her first adult role.


title: Henry Fonda

text: Refusing another long-term studio contract, Fonda returned to Broadway, wearing his own officer's cap to originate the title role in "Mister Roberts", a comedy about the U.S. Navy, during World War II in the South Pacific Ocean where Fonda, a junior officer, Lt. Douglas A. Roberts wages a private war against a tyrannical captain. He won a 1948 Tony Award for the part. Fonda followed that by reprising his performance in the national tour and with successful stage runs in "Point of No Return" and "The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial". After an eight-year absence from films, he starred in the same role in the 1955 film version of "Mister Roberts" with James Cagney, William Powell, and Jack Lemmon, continuing a pattern of bringing his acclaimed stage roles to life on the big screen. On the set of "Mister Roberts", Fonda came to blows with director John Ford, who punched him during filming, and Fonda vowed never to work for the director again. While he kept that vow for years, Fonda spoke glowingly of Ford in Peter Bogdanovich's documentary "Directed by John Ford" and in a documentary on Ford's career alongside Ford and James Stewart. Fonda refused to participate until he learned that Ford had insisted on casting Fonda as the lead in the film version of "Mr. Roberts", reviving Fonda's film career after concentrating on the stage for years.


title: Henry Fonda

text: After "Mr. Roberts", Fonda was next in Paramount Pictures's production of Leo Tolstoy's epic novel "War and Peace" (1956) about French Emperor Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812, in which he played Pierre Bezukhov opposite Audrey Hepburn; it took two years to shoot. Fonda worked with Alfred Hitchcock in 1956, playing a man falsely accused of robbery in "The Wrong Man"; the unusual semidocumentary work of Hitchcock was based on an actual incident and partly filmed on location.


title: Henry Fonda

text: In 1957, Fonda made his first foray into producing with "12 Angry Men", in which he also starred. The film was based on a teleplay and a script by Reginald Rose, and directed by Sidney Lumet. The low-budget production was completed in 17 days of filming, mostly in one claustrophobic jury room. It had a strong cast, including also Jack Klugman, Lee J. Cobb, Martin Balsam, and E. G. Marshall. The intense story about twelve jurors deciding the fate of a young man accused of murder was well received by critics worldwide. Fonda shared the Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations with co-producer Reginald Rose, and won the 1958 BAFTA Award for Best Actor for his performance as Juror 8. Early on, the film drew poorly, but after gaining recognition and awards, it proved a success. In spite of the outcome, Fonda vowed that he would never produce a movie again, fearing that failing as a producer might derail his acting career. After acting in the Western movies "The Tin Star" (1957) and "Warlock" (1959), Fonda returned to the production seat for the NBC Western television series "The Deputy" (1959–1961), in which he starred as Marshal Simon Fry. His co-stars were Allen Case and Read Morgan.


title: Henry Fonda

text: During the 1960s, Fonda performed in a number of war and Western epics, including 1962's "The Longest Day" and the Cinerama production "How the West Was Won", 1965's "In Harm's Way", and "Battle of the Bulge". In the Cold War suspense film "Fail-Safe" (1964), Fonda played the President of the United States who tries to avert a nuclear holocaust through tense negotiations with the Soviets after American bombers are mistakenly ordered to attack the USSR. He also returned to more light-hearted cinema in "Spencer's Mountain" (1963), which was the inspiration for the 1970s TV series, "The Waltons", based on the Great Depression of the 1930s memories of Earl Hamner, Jr.


title: Henry Fonda

text: Fonda appeared against type as the villain 'Frank' in 1968's "Once Upon a Time in the West". After initially turning down the role, he was convinced to accept it by actor Eli Wallach and director Sergio Leone (who had previously tried to hire him to portray the Man with No Name in his Dollars Trilogy, a role that was later taken on by Clint Eastwood), who flew from Italy to the United States to persuade him to take the part. Fonda had planned on wearing a pair of brown-colored contact lenses, but Leone preferred the paradox of contrasting close-up shots of Fonda's innocent-looking blue eyes with the vicious personality of the character Fonda portrayed.


title: Henry Fonda

text: Fonda's relationship with Jimmy Stewart survived their disagreements over politics – Fonda was a liberal Democrat, and Stewart a conservative Republican. After a heated argument, they avoided talking politics with each other. The two men teamed up for 1968's "Firecreek", where Fonda again played the heavy. In 1970, Fonda and Stewart co-starred in the Western "The Cheyenne Social Club", in which they humorously argued politics. They had first appeared together on film in "On Our Merry Way" (1948), an episodic comedy which also starred William Demarest and Fred MacMurray and featured a grown-up Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer, who had acted as a child in the "Our Gang" movie serials of the 1930s.


title: Henry Fonda

text: Despite approaching his seventies, Fonda continued to work in theater, television and film through the 1970s. In 1970, Fonda appeared in three films; the most successful was "The Cheyenne Social Club". The other two films were "Too Late the Hero", in which Fonda played a secondary role, and "There Was a Crooked Man", about Paris Pitman Jr. (played by Kirk Douglas) trying to escape from an Arizona prison.


title: Henry Fonda

text: Fonda returned to both foreign and television productions, which provided career sustenance through a decade in which many aging screen actors suffered waning careers. He starred in the ABC television series "The Smith Family" between 1971 and 1972. A TV-movie adaptation of John Steinbeck's novel, 1973's "The Red Pony", earned Fonda an Emmy nomination. After the unsuccessful Hollywood melodrama, "Ash Wednesday", he filmed three Italian productions released in 1973 and 1974. The most successful of these, "My Name Is Nobody", presented Fonda in a rare comedic performance as an old gunslinger whose plans to retire are dampened by a "fan" of sorts.


title: Henry Fonda

text: Fonda continued stage acting throughout his last years, including several demanding roles in Broadway plays. He returned to Broadway in 1974 for the biographical drama, "Clarence Darrow", for which he was nominated for a Tony Award. Fonda's health had been deteriorating for years, but his first outward symptoms occurred after a performance of the play in April 1974, when he collapsed from exhaustion. After the appearance of a cardiac arrhythmia brought on by prostate cancer, he had a pacemaker installed following cancer surgery. Fonda returned to the play in 1975. After the run of a 1978 play, "First Monday of October", he took the advice of his doctors and quit plays, though he continued to star in films and television.


title: Henry Fonda

text: Fonda appeared in a revival of "The Time of Your Life" that opened on March 17, 1972, at the Huntington Hartford Theater in Los Angeles, where Fonda, Richard Dreyfuss, Gloria Grahame, Ron Thompson, Strother Martin, Jane Alexander, Lewis J. Stadlen, Richard X. Slattery, and Pepper Martin were among the cast with Edwin Sherin directing.


title: Henry Fonda

text: In 1976, Fonda appeared in several notable television productions, the first being "", the story of the volatile relationship between President Harry Truman (E. G. Marshall) and General MacArthur (Fonda), produced by ABC. After an appearance in the acclaimed Showtime broadcast of "Almos' a Man", based on a story by Richard Wright, he starred in the epic NBC miniseries "Captains and Kings", based on Taylor Caldwell's novel. Three years later, he appeared in ABC's "", but the miniseries was overshadowed by its predecessor, "Roots". Also in 1976, Fonda starred in the World War II blockbuster "Midway".


title: Henry Fonda

text: Fonda finished the 1970s in a number of disaster films. The first of these was the 1977 Italian killer octopus thriller "Tentacles" and "Rollercoaster", in which Fonda appeared with George Segal, Richard Widmark and a young Helen Hunt. He performed again with Widmark, Olivia de Havilland, Fred MacMurray, and José Ferrer in the killer bee action film "The Swarm". He also acted in the global disaster film "Meteor" (his second role as a sitting President of the United States after "Fail-Safe"), with Sean Connery, Natalie Wood, and Karl Malden, and the Canadian production "City on Fire", which also featured Shelley Winters and Ava Gardner. Fonda had a small role with his son, Peter, in "Wanda Nevada" (1979), with Brooke Shields.


title: Henry Fonda

text: As Fonda's health declined and he took longer breaks between filming, critics began to acknowledge the value of his extensive body of work. In 1979, he received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. His Golden Plate was presented by Awards Council member Jimmy Stewart. In 1979, he was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame for his achievements on Broadway and received the Kennedy Center Honor. Lifetime Achievement awards from the Golden Globes and Academy Awards followed in 1980 and 1981, respectively.


title: Henry Fonda

text: Fonda continued to act into the early 1980s, though all but one of the productions in which he was featured before his death were for television. The television works included the live performance of Preston Jones's "The Oldest Living Graduate" and the Emmy-nominated "Gideon's Trumpet" (co-starring Fay Wray in her last performance) about Clarence Gideon's fight to have the right to publicly funded legal counsel for the indigent.


title: Henry Fonda

text: "On Golden Pond" in 1981, the film adaptation of Ernest Thompson's play, marked one final professional and personal triumph for Fonda. Directed by Mark Rydell, the project provided unprecedented collaborations between Fonda and Katharine Hepburn, along with Fonda and his daughter, Jane. The elder Fonda played an emotionally brittle and distant father who becomes more accessible at the end of his life. Jane Fonda has said that elements of the story mimicked their real-life relationship, and helped them resolve certain issues. She bought the film rights in the hope that her father would play the role, and later described it as "a gift to my father that was so unbelievably successful."


title: Henry Fonda

text: Premiered in December 1981, the film was well received by critics, and after a limited release on December 4, "On Golden Pond" developed enough of an audience to be widely released on January 22. With 10 Academy Award nominations, the film earned nearly $120 million at the box office, becoming an unexpected blockbuster. In addition to wins for Hepburn (Best Actress), and Thompson (Screenplay), "On Golden Pond" brought Fonda his only Oscar - for Best Actor (he was the oldest recipient of the award; it also earned him a Golden Globe Best Actor award). Fonda was by that point too ill to attend the ceremony, and his daughter Jane accepted on his behalf. She said when accepting the award that her dad would probably quip, "Well, ain't I lucky." Years later, Fonda's performance would be remembered as a "brutally honest portrayal of frightened old age."


title: Henry Fonda

text: Fonda's final performance was in the 1981 television drama "Summer Solstice" with Myrna Loy. It was filmed after "On Golden Pond" had wrapped and Fonda was in rapidly declining health.


title: Henry Fonda

text: Fonda was married five times and had three children, one of them adopted. His marriage to Margaret Sullavan in 1931 soon ended in separation, which was finalized in a 1933 divorce. Throughout most of 1935, Fonda dated actress/singer Shirley Ross; by year's end, it had been widely reported—by, among others, then-syndicated columnist Ed Sullivan—that the couple was engaged, with wedding plans afoot. Reports notwithstanding, both parties evidently reconsidered, and in January 1936 it was reported that Fonda was now seeing actress Virginia Bruce.


title: Henry Fonda

text: Later that year Fonda married Frances Ford Seymour Brokaw, widow of a wealthy industrialist, George Tuttle Brokaw. The Brokaws had a daughter who had been born soon after the Brokaws marriage in 1931.


title: Henry Fonda

text: Fonda met his future wife Frances at Denham Studios in England on the set of "Wings of the Morning", the first picture in Europe to be filmed in three-strip Technicolor. They had two children, Jane (b. 1937) and Peter (19402019), both of whom became successful actors. Jane has won two Best Actress Academy Awards, and Peter was nominated for two Oscars, one for Best Actor.


title: Henry Fonda

text: In August 1949, Fonda announced to Frances that he wanted a divorce so he could remarry; their 13 years of marriage had not been happy ones for him. Devastated by Fonda's confession, and plagued by emotional problems for many years, Frances went into the Austen Riggs Psychiatric Hospital in January 1950 for treatment. She committed suicide there on April 14. Before her death, she had written six notes to various individuals, but left no final message for her husband. Fonda quickly arranged a private funeral with only himself and his mother-in-law, Sophie Seymour, in attendance. Years later, Dr. Margaret Gibson, the psychiatrist who had treated Frances at Austen Riggs, described Henry Fonda as "a cold, self-absorbed person, a complete narcissist."


title: Henry Fonda

text: Later in 1950, Fonda married Susan Blanchard, his mistress. She was 21 years old, the daughter of Australian-born interior designer Dorothy Hammerstein, and the step-daughter of Oscar Hammerstein II. Together, they adopted a daughter, Amy Fishman (born 1953). They divorced three years later. Blanchard was in awe of Fonda, and she described her role in the marriage as "a geisha", doing everything she could to please him, dealing with and solving problems he would not acknowledge.


title: Henry Fonda

text: In 1957 Fonda married the Italian baroness Afdera Franchetti. They divorced in 1961. Soon after, in 1965, Fonda married Shirlee Mae Adams (born in 1932), and remained with her until his death in 1982.


title: Henry Fonda

text: Fonda's relationship with his children has been described as "emotionally distant". Fonda loathed displays of feeling in himself or others, and this was a consistent part of his character. Whenever he felt that his emotional wall was being breached, he had outbursts of anger, exhibiting a furious temper that terrified his family. In Peter Fonda's 1998 autobiography "Don't Tell Dad" (1998), he described how he was never sure how his father felt about him. He never volunteered to his father that he loved him until he was elderly, and Peter finally heard, "I love you, son." His daughter Jane rejected her father's friendships with Republican actors such as John Wayne and James Stewart. Their relationship became extremely strained as Jane Fonda became a left-wing activist.


title: Henry Fonda

text: Jane Fonda reported feeling detached from her father, especially during her early acting days. In 1958 she met Lee Strasberg while visiting her father at Malibu. The Fonda and Strasberg families were neighbors, and she had developed a friendship with Strasberg's daughter, Susan. Jane Fonda began studying acting with Strasberg, learning the techniques of "The Method" of which Strasberg was a renowned proponent. This proved to be a pivotal point in her career. As Jane Fonda developed her skill as an actress, she became frustrated with her father's talent that, to her, appeared a demonstration of effortless ability.


title: Henry Fonda

text: Fonda was an ardent supporter of the Democratic Party and "an admirer" of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1960 Fonda appeared in a campaign commercial for presidential candidate John F. Kennedy. The ad focused on Kennedy's naval service during World War II, specifically the famous PT-109 incident. He supported


title: Henry Fonda

text: Lyndon B. Johnson in the 1964 United States presidential election. He was initially a registered Republican, but switched parties.


title: Henry Fonda

text: The writer Al Aronowitz, while working on a profile of Jane Fonda for "The Saturday Evening Post" in the 1960s, asked Henry Fonda about method acting: "I can't articulate about the Method", he told me, "because I never studied it. I don't mean to suggest that I have any feelings one way or the other about it...I don't know what the Method is and I don't care what the Method is. Everybody's got a method. Everybody can't articulate about their method, and I can't, if I have a method—and Jane sometimes says that I use the Method, that is, the capital letter Method, without being aware of it. Maybe I do; it doesn't matter."


title: Henry Fonda

text: Aronowitz reported Jane saying, "My father can't articulate the way he works. He just can't do it. He's not even conscious of what he does, and it made him nervous for me to try to articulate what I was trying to do. And I sensed that immediately, so we did very little talking about it...he said, 'Shut up, I don't want to hear about it.' He didn't want me to tell him about it, you know. He wanted to make fun of it."


title: Henry Fonda

text: Fonda died at his Los Angeles home on August 12, 1982, from heart disease. Fonda's wife, Shirlee, his daughter Jane, and his son Peter were at his side that day. He suffered from prostate cancer, but this did not directly cause his death and was noted only as a concurrent ailment on his death certificate.


title: Henry Fonda

text: Fonda requested that no funeral be held, and his body was cremated. President Ronald Reagan, a former actor himself, hailed Fonda as "a true professional dedicated to excellence in his craft. He graced the screen with a sincerity and accuracy which made him a legend."


title: Henry Fonda

text: The home where Fonda was born in 1905 is preserved at The Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer in Grand Island, Nebraska.


title: Henry Fonda

text: Fonda is widely recognized as one of the Hollywood greats of the classic era. On the centenary of his birth, May 16, 2005, Turner Classic Movies (TCM) honored Fonda with a marathon of his films. Also in May 2005, the United States Post Office released a 37-cent postage stamp with an artist's drawing of Fonda as part of their "Hollywood legends" series. The Fonda Theatre in Hollywood, originally known as the Carter DeHaven Music Box, was named for the actor in 1985 by the Nederlander Organization.


title: Henry Fonda

text: In Joseph Heller's satirical novel "Catch-22," there is a running joke that fictional character Major Major Major Major resembles Henry Fonda. Philip D. Beidler comments that "one of the novel's great absurd jokes is the character's bewildering resemblance to Henry Fonda". Taking into account when "Catch-22" was written, this most likely refers to Fonda circa 1955, when he starred in the film "Mister Roberts".


title: Henry Fonda

text: From the beginning of his career in 1935 through his last projects in 1981, Fonda appeared in 106 films, television programs, and shorts. Through the course of his career, he appeared in many films, including classics such as "12 Angry Men" and "The Ox-Bow Incident". He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in 1940's "The Grapes of Wrath" and won for his part in 1981's "On Golden Pond". Fonda made his mark in Westerns (which included his most villainous role as Frank in "Once Upon a Time in the West") and war films, and made frequent appearances in both television and foreign productions late in his career.


title: Easter Island

text: Easter Island (; ) is an island and special territory of Chile in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, at the southeasternmost point of the Polynesian Triangle in Oceania. The island is most famous for its nearly 1,000 extant monumental statues, called "moai", which were 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.


title: Easter Island

text: Experts disagree on when the island's Polynesian inhabitants first reached the island. While many in the research community cited evidence that they arrived around the year 800, there is compelling evidence presented in a 2007 study that places their arrival closer to 1200. The inhabitants created a thriving and industrious culture, as evidenced by the island's numerous enormous stone "moai" and other artifacts. However, land clearing for cultivation and the introduction of the Polynesian rat led to gradual deforestation. By the time of European arrival in 1722, the island's population was estimated to be 2,000 to 3,000. European diseases, Peruvian slave raiding expeditions in the 1860s, and emigration to other islands such as Tahiti further depleted the population, reducing it to a low of 111 native inhabitants in 1877.


title: Easter Island

text: Chile annexed Easter Island in 1888. In 1966, the Rapa Nui were granted Chilean citizenship. In 2007 the island gained the constitutional status of "special territory" (). Administratively, it belongs to the Valparaíso Region, constituting a single commune (Isla de Pascua) of the Province of Isla de Pascua. The 2017 Chilean census registered 7,750 people on the island, of whom 3,512 (45%) considered themselves Rapa Nui.


title: Easter Island

text: Easter Island is one of the most remote inhabited islands in the world. The nearest inhabited land (around 50 residents in 2013) is Pitcairn Island, away; the nearest town with a population over 500 is Rikitea, on the island of Mangareva, away; the nearest continental point lies in central Chile, away.


title: Easter Island

text: The name "Easter Island" was given by the island's first recorded European visitor, the Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen, who encountered it on Easter Sunday (5 April) in 1722, while searching for "Davis Land". Roggeveen named it "Paasch-Eyland" (18th-century Dutch for "Easter Island"). The island's official Spanish name, "Isla de Pascua", also means "Easter Island".


title: Easter Island

text: The current Polynesian name of the island, "Rapa Nui" ("Big Rapa"), was coined after the slave raids of the early 1860s, and refers to the island's topographic resemblance to the island of Rapa in the Bass Islands of the Austral Islands group. However, Norwegian ethnographer Thor Heyerdahl argued that "Rapa" was the original name of Easter Island and that "Rapa Iti" was named by refugees from there.


title: Easter Island

text: The phrase "Te pito o te henua" has been said to be the original name of the island since French ethnologist Alphonse Pinart gave it the romantic translation "the Navel of the World" in his "Voyage à l'Île de Pâques", published in 1877. William Churchill (1912) inquired about the phrase and was told that there were three "te pito o te henua", these being the three capes (land's ends) of the island. The phrase appears to have been used in the same sense as the designation of "Land's End" at the tip of Cornwall. He was unable to elicit a Polynesian name for the island and concluded that there may not have been one.


title: Easter Island

text: According to Barthel (1974), oral tradition has it that the island was first named "Te pito o te kainga a Hau Maka", "The little piece of land of Hau Maka". However, there are two words pronounced "pito" in Rapa Nui, one meaning 'end' and one 'navel', and the phrase can thus also mean "The Navel of the World". Another name, "Mata ki te rangi", means "Eyes looking to the sky".


title: Easter Island

text: Islanders are referred to in Spanish as "pascuense"; however it is common to refer to members of the indigenous community as "Rapa Nui".


title: Easter Island

text: Felipe González de Ahedo named it "Isla de San Carlos" ("Saint Charles' Island", the patron saint of Charles III of Spain) or "Isla de David" (probably the phantom island of Davis Land; sometimes translated as "Davis's Island") in 1770.


title: Easter Island

text: Oral tradition states the island was first settled by a two-canoe expedition, originating from Marae Renga (or Marae Toe Hau – otherwise known as Cook Islands), and led by the chief Hotu Matu'a and his captain Tu'u ko Iho. The island was first scouted after Haumaka dreamed of such a far-off country; Hotu deemed it a worthwhile place to flee from a neighboring chief, one to whom he had already lost three battles. At their time of arrival, the island had one lone settler, Nga Tavake 'a Te Rona. After a brief stay at Anakena, the colonists settled in different parts of the island. Hotu's heir, Tu'u ma Heke, was born on the island. Tu'u ko Iho is viewed as the leader who brought the statues and caused them to walk.


title: Easter Island

text: The Easter Islanders are considered to be South-East Polynesians. Similar sacred zones with statuary ("marae" and "ahu") in East Polynesia demonstrates homology with most of Eastern Polynesia. At contact, populations were about 3,000–4,000.


title: Easter Island

text: By the 15th century, two confederations, "hanau", of social groupings, "mata", existed, based on lineage. The western and northern portion of the island belonged to the Tu'u, which included the royal Miru, with the royal center at Anakena, though Tahai and Te Peu served as earlier capitals. The eastern portion of the island belonged to the 'Otu 'Itu. Shortly after the Dutch visit, from 1724 until 1750, the 'Otu 'Itu fought the Tu'u for control of the island. This fighting continued until the 1860s. Famine followed the burning of huts and the destruction of fields. Social control vanished as the ordered way of life gave way to lawlessness and predatory bands as the warrior class took over. Homelessness prevailed, with many living underground. After the Spanish visit, from 1770 onwards, a period of statue toppling, "huri mo'ai", commenced. This was an attempt by competing groups to destroy the socio-spiritual power, or "mana", represented by statues, making sure to break them in the fall to ensure they were dead and without power. None were left standing by the time of the arrival of the French missionaries in the 1860s.


title: Easter Island

text: Between 1862 and 1888, about 94% of the population perished or emigrated. The island was victimized by blackbirding from 1862 to 1863, resulting in the abduction or killing of about 1,500, with 1,408 working as indentured servants in Peru. Only about a dozen eventually returned to Easter Island, but they brought smallpox, which decimated the remaining population of 1,500. Those who perished included the island's "tumu ivi 'atua", bearers of the island's culture, history, and genealogy besides the "rongorongo" experts.


title: Easter Island

text: Estimated dates of initial settlement of Easter Island have ranged from 300 to 1200 CE, though the current best estimate for colonization is in the . Easter Island colonization likely coincided with the arrival of the first settlers in Hawaii. Rectifications in radiocarbon dating have changed almost all of the previously posited early settlement dates in Polynesia. Ongoing archaeological studies provide this late date: "Radiocarbon dates for the earliest stratigraphic layers at Anakena, Easter Island, and analysis of previous radiocarbon dates imply that the island was colonized late, about . Significant ecological impacts and major cultural investments in monumental architecture and statuary thus began soon after initial settlement."


title: Easter Island

text: According to oral tradition, the first settlement was at Anakena. Researchers have noted that the Caleta Anakena landing point provides the island's best shelter from prevailing swells as well as a sandy beach for canoe landings and launchings, so it is a likely early place of settlement. However radiocarbon dating concludes that other sites preceded Anakena by many years, especially the Tahai by several centuries.


title: Easter Island

text: The island was populated by Polynesians who most likely navigated in canoes or catamarans from the Gambier Islands (Mangareva, away) or the Marquesas Islands, away. According to some theories, such as the Polynesian Diaspora Theory, there is a possibility that early Polynesian settlers arrived from South America due to their remarkable sea-navigation abilities. Theorists have supported this through the agricultural evidence of the sweet potato. The sweet potato was a favoured crop in Polynesian society for generations but it originated in South America, suggesting interaction between these two geographic areas. However, recent research suggests that sweet potatoes may have spread to Polynesia by long-distance dispersal long before the Polynesians arrived. When James Cook visited the island, one of his crew members, a Polynesian from Bora Bora, Hitihiti, was able to communicate with the Rapa Nui. The language most similar to Rapa Nui is Mangarevan, with an estimated 80% similar vocabulary. In 1999, a voyage with reconstructed Polynesian boats was able to reach Easter Island from Mangareva in 19 days.


title: Easter Island

text: According to oral traditions recorded by missionaries in the 1860s, the island originally had a strong class system: an "ariki", or high chief, wielded great power over nine other clans and their respective chiefs. The high chief was the eldest descendant through first-born lines of the island's legendary founder, Hotu Matu'a. The most visible element in the culture was the production of massive moai statues that some believe represented deified ancestors. According to "National Geographic", "Most scholars suspect that the moai were created to honor ancestors, chiefs, or other important personages, However, no written and little oral history exists on the island, so it's impossible to be certain."


title: Easter Island

text: It was believed that the living had a symbiotic relationship with the dead in which the dead provided everything that the living needed (health, fertility of land and animals, fortune etc.) and the living, through offerings, provided the dead with a better place in the spirit world. Most settlements were located on the coast, and most moai were erected along the coastline, watching over their descendants in the settlements before them, with their backs toward the spirit world in the sea.


title: Easter Island

text: In his book "", Jared Diamond suggested that cannibalism took place on Easter Island after the construction of the moai contributed to environmental degradation when extreme deforestation destabilized an already precarious ecosystem. Archeological record shows that at the time of the initial settlement the island was home to many species of trees, including at least three species which grew up to or more: "Paschalococos" (possibly the largest palm trees in the world at the time), "Alphitonia zizyphoides", and "Elaeocarpus rarotongensis." At least six species of land birds were known to live on the island. A major factor that contributed to the extinction of multiple plant species was the introduction of the Polynesian rat. Studies by paleobotanists have shown rats can dramatically affect the reproduction of vegetation in an ecosystem. In the case of Rapa Nui, recovered plant seed shells showed markings of being gnawed on by rats. Barbara A. West wrote, "Sometime before the arrival of Europeans on Easter Island, the Rapanui experienced a tremendous upheaval in their social system brought about by a change in their island's ecology... By the time of European arrival in 1722, the island's population had dropped to 2,000–3,000 from a high of approximately 15,000 just a century earlier."


title: Easter Island

text: By that time, 21 species of trees and all species of land birds became extinct through some combination of over-harvesting, over-hunting, rat predation, and climate change. The island was largely deforested, and it did not have any trees taller than . Loss of large trees meant that residents were no longer able to build seaworthy vessels, significantly diminishing their fishing abilities. One theory is that the trees were used as rollers to move the statues to their place of erection from the quarry at Rano Raraku. Deforestation also caused erosion which caused a sharp decline in agricultural production. This was exacerbated by the loss of land birds and the collapse in seabird populations as a source of food. By the 18th century, islanders were largely sustained by farming, with domestic chickens as the primary source of protein.


title: Easter Island

text: As the island became overpopulated and resources diminished, warriors known as "matatoa" gained more power and the Ancestor Cult ended, making way for the Bird Man Cult. Beverly Haun wrote, "The concept of mana (power) invested in hereditary leaders was recast into the person of the birdman, apparently beginning circa 1540, and coinciding with the final vestiges of the moai period." This cult maintained that, although the ancestors still provided for their descendants, the medium through which the living could contact the dead was no longer statues but human beings chosen through a competition. The god responsible for creating humans, Makemake, played an important role in this process. Katherine Routledge, who systematically collected the island's traditions in her 1919 expedition, showed that the competitions for Bird Man (Rapa Nui: "tangata manu") started around 1760, after the arrival of the first Europeans, and ended in 1878, with the construction of the first church by Roman Catholic missionaries who formally arrived in 1864. Petroglyphs representing Bird Men on Easter Island are the same as some in Hawaii, indicating that this concept was probably brought by the original settlers; only the competition itself was unique to Easter Island.


title: Easter Island

text: According to Diamond and Heyerdahl's version of the island's history, the "huri mo'ai""statue-toppling"continued into the 1830s as a part of fierce internal wars. By 1838, the only standing moai were on the slopes of Rano Raraku, in Hoa Hakananai'a in Orongo, and Ariki Paro in Ahu Te Pito Kura. A study headed by Douglas Owsley published in 1994 asserted that there is little archaeological evidence of pre-European societal collapse. Bone pathology and osteometric data from islanders of that period clearly suggest few fatalities can be attributed directly to violence. Research by Binghamton University anthropologists Robert DiNapoli and Carl Lipo in 2021 determined that the island experienced steady population growth from its initial settlement until European contact in 1722. The island never had more than a few thousand people prior to European contact, and their numbers were increasing rather than dwindling.


title: Easter Island

text: The first recorded European contact with the island was on 5 April 1722, Easter Sunday, by Dutch navigator Jacob Roggeveen. His visit resulted in the death of about a dozen islanders, including the "tumu ivi 'atua", and the wounding of many others.


title: Easter Island

text: The next foreign visitors (on 15 November 1770) were two Spanish ships, "San Lorenzo" and "Santa Rosalia", under the command of Captain Don Felipe Gonzalez de Ahedo. The Spanish were amazed by the "standing idols", all of which were erect at the time.


title: Easter Island

text: Four years later, in 1774, British explorer James Cook visited Easter Island; he reported that some statues had been toppled. Through the interpretation of Hitihiti, Cook learned the statues commemorated their former high chiefs, including their names and ranks.


title: Easter Island

text: On 10 April 1786, French Admiral Jean-François de Galaup, comte de Lapérouse anchored at Hanga Roa at the start of a circumnavigation of the Pacific. He made a detailed map of the bay, including his anchorage points, as well as a more generalised map of the island, plus some illustrations.


title: Easter Island

text: A series of devastating events killed or removed most of the population in the 1860s. In December 1862, Peruvian slave raiders struck. Violent abductions continued for several months, eventually capturing around 1,500 men and women, half of the island's population. Among those captured were the island's paramount chief, his heir, and those who knew how to read and write the rongorongo script, the only Polynesian script to have been found to date, although debate exists about whether this is proto-writing or true writing.


title: Easter Island

text: When the slave raiders were forced to repatriate the people they had kidnapped, carriers of smallpox disembarked together with a few survivors on each of the islands. This created devastating epidemics from Easter Island to the Marquesas islands. Easter Island's population was reduced to the point where some of the dead were not even buried.


title: Easter Island

text: Tuberculosis, introduced by whalers in the mid-19th century, had already killed several islanders when the first Christian missionary, Eugène Eyraud, died from this disease in 1867. It ultimately killed approximately a quarter of the island's population. In the following years, the managers of the sheep ranch and the missionaries started buying the newly available lands of the deceased, and this led to great confrontations between natives and settlers.


title: Easter Island

text: Jean-Baptiste Dutrou-Bornier bought up all of the island apart from the missionaries' area around Hanga Roa and moved a few hundred Rapa Nui to Tahiti to work for his backers. In 1871 the missionaries, having fallen out with Dutrou-Bornier, evacuated all but 171 Rapa Nui to the Gambier islands. Those who remained were mostly older men. Six years later, only 111 people lived on Easter Island, and only 36 of them had any offspring. From that point on, the island's population slowly recovered. But with over 97% of the population dead or gone in less than a decade, much of the island's cultural knowledge had been lost.


title: Easter Island

text: Alexander Salmon, Jr., the son of an English Jewish merchant and a Pōmare Dynasty princess, eventually worked to repatriate workers from his inherited copra plantation. He eventually bought up all lands on the island with the exception of the mission, and was its sole employer. He worked to develop tourism on the island and was the principal informant for the British and German archaeological expeditions for the island. He sent several pieces of genuine Rongorongo to his niece's husband, the German consul in Valparaíso, Chile. Salmon sold the Brander Easter Island holdings to the Chilean government on 2 January 1888, and signed as a witness to the cession of the island. He returned to Tahiti in December 1888. He effectively ruled the island from 1878 until his cession to Chile in 1888.


title: Easter Island

text: Easter Island was annexed by Chile on 9 September 1888 by Policarpo Toro by means of the "Treaty of Annexation of the Island" (Tratado de Anexión de la isla). Toro, representing the government of Chile, signed with Atamu Tekena, designated "King" by the Roman Catholic missionaries after the paramount chief and his heir had died. The validity of this treaty is still contested by some Rapa Nui. Officially, Chile purchased the nearly all encompassing Mason-Brander sheep ranch, comprised from lands purchased from the descendants of Rapa Nui who died during the epidemics, and then claimed sovereignty over the island.


title: Easter Island

text: Until the 1960s, the surviving Rapa Nui were confined to Hanga Roa. The rest of the island was rented to the Williamson-Balfour Company as a sheep farm until 1953. This exemplified the introduction of private property into Rapa Nui. The island was then managed by the Chilean Navy until 1966, at which point the island was reopened in its entirety. The Rapa Nui were given Chilean citizenship in 1966.


title: Easter Island

text: Following the 1973 Chilean coup d'état that brought Augusto Pinochet to power, Easter Island was placed under martial law. Tourism slowed, land was broken up, and private property was distributed to investors. During his time in power, Pinochet visited Easter Island on three occasions. The military built military facilities and a city hall.


title: Easter Island

text: After an agreement in 1985 between Chile and United States, the runway at Mataveri International Airport was enlarged and was inaugurated in 1987. The runway was expanded , reaching . Pinochet is reported to have refused to attend the inauguration in protest at pressures from the United States over human rights.


title: Easter Island

text: Fishers of Rapa Nui have shown their concern of illegal fishing on the island. "Since the year 2000 we started to lose tuna, which is the basis of the fishing on the island, so then we began to take the fish from the shore to feed our families, but in less than two years we depleted all of it", Pakarati said. On 30 July 2007, a constitutional reform gave Easter Island and the Juan Fernández Islands (also known as Robinson Crusoe Island) the status of "special territories" of Chile. Pending the enactment of a special charter, the island continues to be governed as a province of the V Region of Valparaíso.


title: Easter Island

text: Species of fish were collected in Easter Island for one month in different habitats including shallow lava pools and deep waters. Within these habitats, two holotypes and paratypes, "Antennarius randalli" and "Antennarius moai", were discovered. These are considered frog-fish because of their characteristics: "12 dorsal rays, last two or three branched; bony part of first dorsal spine slightly shorter than second dorsal spine; body without bold zebra-like markings; caudal peduncle short, but distinct; last pelvic ray divided; pectoral rays 11 or 12".


title: Easter Island

text: In 2018, the government decided to limit the stay period for tourists from 90 to 30 days because of social and environmental issues faced by the Island to preserve its historical importance.


title: Easter Island

text: A tsunami warning was declared for Easter Island after the 2022 Hunga Tonga–Hunga Ha'apai eruption and tsunami.


title: Easter Island

text: Easter Island was closed to tourists from March 17, 2020 until August 4, 2022 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Then in early October 2022, just two months after the island was reopened to tourists, a forest fire burned nearly 148 acres (60 hectares) of the island, causing irreparable damage to some of the "moai". Arson is suspected.


title: Easter Island

text: Starting in August 2010, members of the indigenous Hitorangi clan occupied the Hangaroa Eco Village and Spa. The occupiers allege that the hotel was bought from the Pinochet government, in violation of a Chilean agreement with the indigenous Rapa Nui, in the 1990s. The occupiers say their ancestors had been cheated into giving up the land. According to a BBC report, on 3 December 2010, at least 25 people were injured when Chilean police using pellet guns attempted to evict from these buildings a group of Rapa Nui who had claimed that the land the buildings stood on had been illegally taken from their ancestors. In 2020 the conflict was settled. The property rights were transferred to the Hitorangi clan while the owners retained the exploitation of the hotel for 15 years.


title: Easter Island

text: In January 2011, the UN Special Rapporteur on Indigenous People, James Anaya, expressed concern about the treatment of the indigenous Rapa Nui by the Chilean government, urging Chile to "make every effort to conduct a dialogue in good faith with representatives of the Rapa Nui people to solve, as soon as possible the real underlying problems that explain the current situation". The incident ended in February 2011, when up to 50 armed police broke into the hotel to remove the final five occupiers. They were arrested by the government, and no injuries were reported.


title: Easter Island

text: Easter Island is one of the world's most isolated inhabited islands. Its closest inhabited neighbour is Pitcairn Island, to the east, with approximately 50 inhabitants. The nearest continental point lies in central Chile near Concepción, at . Easter Island's latitude is similar to that of Caldera, Chile, and it lies west of continental Chile at its nearest point (between Lota and Lebu in the Biobío Region). Isla Salas y Gómez, to the east, is closer but is uninhabited. The Tristan da Cunha archipelago in the southern Atlantic competes for the title of the most remote island, lying from Saint Helena island and from the South African coast.


title: Easter Island

text: The island is about long by at its widest point; its overall shape is triangular. It has an area of , and a maximum elevation of above mean sea level. There are three "Rano" (freshwater crater lakes), at Rano Kau, Rano Raraku and Rano Aroi, near the summit of Terevaka, but no permanent streams or rivers.


title: Easter Island

text: Easter Island is a volcanic high island, consisting mainly of three extinct coalesced volcanoes: Terevaka (altitude 507 metres) forms the bulk of the island, while two other volcanoes, Poike and Rano Kau, form the eastern and southern headlands and give the island its roughly triangular shape. Lesser cones and other volcanic features include the crater Rano Raraku, the cinder cone Puna Pau and many volcanic caves including lava tubes. Poike used to be a separate island until volcanic material from Terevaka united it to the larger whole. The island is dominated by hawaiite and basalt flows which are rich in iron and show affinity with igneous rocks found in the Galápagos Islands.


title: Easter Island

text: Easter Island and surrounding islets, such as Motu Nui and Motu Iti, form the summit of a large volcanic mountain rising over from the sea bed. The mountain is part of the Salas y Gómez Ridge, a (mostly submarine) mountain range with dozens of seamounts, formed by the Easter hotspot. The range begins with Pukao and next Moai, two seamounts to the west of Easter Island, and extends east to the Nazca Ridge. The ridge was formed by the Nazca Plate moving over the Easter hotspot.


title: Easter Island

text: Located about east of the East Pacific Rise, Easter Island lies within the Nazca Plate, bordering the Easter Microplate. The Nazca-Pacific relative plate movement due to the seafloor spreading, amounts to about per year. This movement over the Easter hotspot has resulted in the Easter Seamount Chain, which merges into the Nazca Ridge further to the east. Easter Island and Isla Salas y Gómez are surface representations of that chain. The chain has progressively younger ages to the west. The current hotspot location is speculated to be west of Easter Island, amidst the Ahu, Umu and Tupa submarine volcanic fields and the Pukao and Moai seamounts.


title: Easter Island

text: Easter Island lies atop the Rano Kau Ridge, and consists of three shield volcanoes with parallel geologic histories. Poike and Rano Kau exist on the east and south slopes of Terevaka, respectively. Rano Kau developed between 0.78 and 0.46 Ma from tholeiitic to alkalic basalts. This volcano possesses a clearly defined summit caldera. Benmoreitic lavas extruded about the rim from 0.35 to 0.34 Ma. Finally, between 0.24 and 0.11 Ma, a fissure developed along a NE–SW trend, forming monogenetic vents and rhyolitic intrusions. These include the cryptodome islets of Motu Nui and Motu Iti, the islet of Motu Kao Kao, the sheet intrusion of Te Kari Kari, the perlitic obsidian Te Manavai dome and the Maunga Orito dome.


title: Easter Island

text: Poike formed from tholeiitic to alkali basalts from 0.78 to 0.41 Ma. Its summit collapsed into a caldera which was subsequently filled by the Puakatiki lava cone pahoehoe flows at 0.36 Ma. Finally, the trachytic lava domes of Maunga Vai a Heva, Maunga Tea Tea, and Maunga Parehe formed along a NE-SW trending fissure.


title: Easter Island

text: Terevaka formed around 0.77 Ma of tholeiitic to alkali basalts, followed by the collapse of its summit into a caldera. Then at about 0.3Ma, cinder cones formed along a NNE-SSW trend on the western rim, while porphyritic benmoreitic lava filled the caldera, and pahoehoe flowed towards the northern coast, forming lava tubes, and to the southeast. Lava domes and a vent complex formed in the Maunga Puka area, while breccias formed along the vents on the western portion of Rano Aroi crater. This volcano's southern and southeastern flanks are composed of younger flows consisting of basalt, alkali basalt, hawaiite, mugearite, and benmoreite from eruptive fissures starting at 0.24 Ma. The youngest lava flow, Roiho, is dated at 0.11 Ma. The Hanga O Teo embayment is interpreted to be a 200 m high landslide scarp.


title: Easter Island

text: Rano Raraku and Maunga Toa Toa are isolated tuff cones of about 0.21 Ma. The crater of Rano Raraku contains a freshwater lake. The stratified tuff is composed of sideromelane, slightly altered to palagonite, and somewhat lithified. The tuff contains lithic fragments of older lava flows. The northwest sector of Rano Raraku contains reddish volcanic ash. According to Bandy, "...all of the great images of Easter Island are carved from" the light and porous tuff from Rano Raraku. A carving was abandoned when a large, dense and hard lithic fragment was encountered. However, these lithics became the basis for stone hammers and chisels. The Puna Pau crater contains an extremely porous pumice, from which was carved the Pukao "hats". The Maunga Orito obsidian was used to make the "mataa" spearheads.


title: Easter Island

text: In the first half of the 20th century, steam reportedly came out of the Rano Kau crater wall. This was photographed by the island's manager, Mr. Edmunds.


title: Easter Island

text: Under the Köppen climate classification, the climate of Easter Island is classified as a humid subtropical climate ("Cfa") that borders on a tropical rainforest climate ("Af"). The lowest temperatures are recorded in July and August (minimum ) and the highest in February (maximum temperature ), the summer season in the southern hemisphere. Winters are relatively mild. The rainiest month is May, though the island experiences year-round rainfall. Easter Island's isolated location exposes it to winds which help to keep the temperature fairly cool. Precipitation averages per year. Occasionally, heavy rainfall and rainstorms strike the island. These occur mostly in the winter months (June–August). Since it is close to the South Pacific High and outside the range of the intertropical convergence zone, cyclones and hurricanes do not occur around Easter Island. There is significant temperature moderation due to its isolated position in the middle of the ocean.


title: Easter Island

text: Easter Island, together with its closest neighbour, the tiny island of Isla Salas y Gómez farther east, is recognized by ecologists as a distinct ecoregion, the Rapa Nui subtropical broadleaf forests. The original subtropical moist broadleaf forests are now gone, but paleobotanical studies of fossil pollen, tree moulds left by lava flows, and root casts found in local soils indicate that the island was formerly forested, with a range of trees, shrubs, ferns, and grasses. A large extinct palm, "Paschalococos disperta", related to the Chilean wine palm "(Jubaea chilensis)", was one of the dominant trees as attested by fossil evidence. Like its Chilean counterpart it probably took close to 100 years to reach adult height. The Polynesian rat, which the original settlers brought with them, played a very important role in the disappearance of the Rapa Nui palm. Although some may believe that rats played a major role in the degradation of the forest, less than 10% of palm nuts show teeth marks from rats. The remains of palm stumps in different places indicate that humans caused the trees to fall because in large areas, the stumps were cut efficiently. In 2018, a New York Times article announced that Easter Island is eroding.


title: Easter Island

text: The clearance of the palms to make the settlements led to their extinction almost 350 years ago. The toromiro tree "(Sophora toromiro)" was prehistorically present on Easter Island, but is now extinct in the wild. However, the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and the Göteborg Botanical Garden are jointly leading a scientific program to reintroduce the toromiro to Easter Island. With the palm and the toromiro virtually gone, there was considerably less rainfall as a result of less condensation. After the island was used to feed thousands of sheep for almost a century, by the mid-1900s the island was mostly covered in grassland with "nga'atu" or bulrush ("Schoenoplectus californicus tatora") in the crater lakes of Rano Raraku and Rano Kau. The presence of these reeds, which are called "totora" in the Andes, was used to support the argument of a South American origin of the statue builders, but pollen analysis of lake sediments shows these reeds have grown on the island for over 30,000 years. Before the arrival of humans, Easter Island had vast seabird colonies containing probably over 30 resident species, perhaps the world's richest. Such colonies are no longer found on the main island. Fossil evidence indicates six species of land birds (two rails, two parrots, one owl, and one heron), all of which have become extinct. Five introduced species of land bird are known to have breeding populations (see List of birds of Easter Island).


title: Easter Island

text: Lack of studies results in poor understanding of the oceanic fauna of Easter Island and waters in its vicinity; however, possibilities of undiscovered breeding grounds for humpback, southern blue and pygmy blue whales including Easter Island and Isla Salas y Gómez have been considered. Potential breeding areas for fin whales have been detected off northeast of the island as well.


title: Easter Island

text: The immunosuppressant drug sirolimus was first discovered in the bacterium "Streptomyces hygroscopicus" in a soil sample from Easter Island. The drug is also known as rapamycin, after Rapa Nui. It is now being studied for extending longevity in mice.


title: Easter Island

text: Trees are sparse, rarely forming natural groves, and it has been argued whether native Easter Islanders deforested the island in the process of erecting their statues, and in providing sustenance for an overconsumption of natural resources from a overcrowded island. Experimental archaeology demonstrated that some statues certainly could have been placed on "Y" shaped wooden frames called "miro manga erua" and then pulled to their final destinations on ceremonial sites. Other theories involve the use of "ladders" (parallel wooden rails) over which the statues could have been dragged. Rapa Nui traditions metaphorically refer to spiritual power "(mana)" as the means by which the moai were "walked" from the quarry. Recent experimental recreations have proven that it is fully possible that the moai were literally walked from their quarries to their final positions by use of ropes, casting doubt on the role that their existence plays in the environmental collapse of the island.


title: Easter Island

text: Given the island's southern latitude, the climatic effects of the Little Ice Age (about 1650 to 1850) may have exacerbated deforestation, although this remains speculative. Many researchers point to the climatic downtrend caused by the Little Ice Age as a contributing factor to resource stress and to the palm tree's disappearance. Experts, however, do not agree on when the island's palms became extinct.


title: Easter Island

text: Jared Diamond dismisses past climate change as a dominant cause of the island's deforestation in his book "Collapse" which assesses the collapse of the ancient Easter Islanders. Influenced by Heyerdahl's romantic interpretation of Easter's history, Diamond insists that the disappearance of the island's trees seems to coincide with a decline of its civilization around the 17th and 18th centuries. He notes that they stopped making statues at that time and started destroying the ahu. But the link is weakened because the Bird Man cult continued to thrive and survived the great impact caused by the arrival of explorers, whalers, sandalwood traders, and slave raiders.


title: Easter Island

text: Midden contents show that the main source of protein was tuna and dolphin. With the loss of the trees, there was a sudden drop in the quantities of fish bones found in middens as the islanders lost the means to construct fishing vessels, coinciding with a large increase in bird bones. This was followed by a decrease in the number of bird bones as birds lost their nesting sites or became extinct. A new style of art from this period shows people with exposed ribs and distended bellies, indicative of malnutrition, and it is around this time that many islanders moved to live in fortified caves, and the first signs of warfare and cannibalism appear.


title: Easter Island

text: Soil erosion because of lack of trees is apparent in some places. Sediment samples document that up to half of the native plants had become extinct and that the vegetation of the island drastically altered. Polynesians were primarily farmers, not fishermen, and their diet consisted mainly of cultivated staples such as taro root, sweet potato, yams, cassava, and bananas. With no trees to protect them, sea spray led to crop failures exacerbated by a sudden reduction in freshwater flows. There is evidence that the islanders took to planting crops in caves beneath collapsed ceilings and covered the soil with rocks to reduce evaporation. Cannibalism occurred on many Polynesian islands, sometimes in times of plenty as well as famine. Its presence on Easter Island (based on human remains associated with cooking sites, especially in caves) is supported by oral histories.


title: Easter Island

text: Benny Peiser noted evidence of self-sufficiency when Europeans first arrived. The island still had smaller trees, mainly toromiro, which became extinct in the wild in the 20th century probably because of slow growth and changes in the island's ecosystem. Cornelis Bouman, Jakob Roggeveen's captain, stated in his logbook, "... of yams, bananas and small coconut palms we saw little and no other trees or crops." According to Carl Friedrich Behrens, Roggeveen's officer, "The natives presented palm branches as peace offerings." According to ethnographer Alfred Mètraux, the most common type of house was called "hare paenga" (and is known today as "boathouse") because the roof resembled an overturned boat. The foundations of the houses were made of buried basalt slabs with holes for wooden beams to connect with each other throughout the width of the house. These were then covered with a layer of totora reed, followed by a layer of woven sugarcane leaves, and lastly a layer of woven grass.


title: Easter Island

text: Peiser claims that these reports indicate that large trees existed at that time, which is perhaps contradicted by the Bouman quote above. Plantations were often located farther inland, next to foothills, inside open-ceiling lava tubes, and in other places protected from the strong salt winds and salt spray affecting areas closer to the coast. It is possible many of the Europeans did not venture inland. The statue quarry, only from the coast with an impressive cliff high, was not explored by Europeans until well into the 19th century.


title: Easter Island

text: Easter Island has suffered from heavy soil erosion in recent centuries, perhaps aggravated by agriculture and massive deforestation. This process seems to have been gradual and may have been aggravated by sheep farming throughout most of the 20th century. Jakob Roggeveen reported that Easter Island was exceptionally fertile. "Fowls are the only animals they keep. They cultivate bananas, sugar cane, and above all sweet potatoes." In 1786 Jean-François de La Pérouse visited Easter Island and his gardener declared that "three days' work a year" would be enough to support the population. Rollin, a major in the Pérouse expedition, wrote, "Instead of meeting with men exhausted by famine... I found, on the contrary, a considerable population, with more beauty and grace than I afterwards met in any other island; and a soil, which, with very little labor, furnished excellent provisions, and in an abundance more than sufficient for the consumption of the inhabitants."


title: Easter Island

text: According to Diamond, the oral traditions (the veracity of which has been questioned by Routledge, Lavachery, Mètraux, Peiser, and others) of the current islanders seem obsessed with cannibalism, which he offers as evidence supporting a rapid collapse. For example, he states, to severely insult an enemy one would say, "The flesh of your mother sticks between my teeth." This, Diamond asserts, means the food supply of the people ultimately ran out. Cannibalism, however, was widespread across Polynesian cultures. Human bones have not been found in earth ovens other than those behind the religious platforms, indicating that cannibalism in Easter Island was a ritualistic practice. Contemporary ethnographic research has proven there is scarcely any tangible evidence for widespread cannibalism anywhere and at any time on the island. The first scientific exploration of Easter Island (1914) recorded that the indigenous population strongly rejected allegations that they or their ancestors had been cannibals.


title: Easter Island

text: The large stone statues, or "moai", for which Easter Island is famous, were carved in the period 1100–1680 CE (rectified radio-carbon dates). A total of 887 monolithic stone statues have been inventoried on the island and in museum collections. Although often identified as "Easter Island heads", the statues have torsos, most of them ending at the top of the thighs; a small number are complete figures that kneel on bent knees with their hands over their stomachs. Some upright moai have become buried up to their necks by shifting soils.


title: Easter Island

text: Almost all (95%) moai were carved from compressed, easily worked solidified volcanic ash or tuff, found at a single site on the side of the extinct volcano Rano Raraku. The native islanders who carved them used only stone hand chisels, mainly basalt "toki", which lie in place all over the quarry. The stone chisels were sharpened by chipping off a new edge when dulled. While sculpting was going on, the volcanic stone was splashed with water to soften it. While many teams worked on different statues at the same time, a single moai took a team of five or six men approximately a year to complete. Each statue represented the deceased head of a lineage.


title: Easter Island

text: Only a quarter of the statues were installed. Nearly half remained in the quarry at Rano Raraku, and the rest sat elsewhere, presumably on their way to intended locations. The largest moai raised on a platform is known as "Paro". It weighs and is long. Several other statues of similar weight were transported to ahu on the north and south coasts.


title: Easter Island

text: Possible means by which the statues were moved include employment of a "miro manga erua", a Y-shaped sledge with cross pieces, pulled with ropes made from the tough bark of the hau tree and tied around the statue's neck. Anywhere from 180 to 250 men were required for pulling, depending on the size of the moai. Among other researchers on moving and erecting the moai was Vince Lee, who reenacted a moai moving scenario. Some 50 of the statues were re-erected in modern times. One of the first was on Ahu Ature Huke in Anakena beach in 1956. It was raised using traditional methods during a Heyerdahl expedition.


title: Easter Island

text: Another method that might have been used to transport the moai would be to attach ropes to the statue and rock it, tugging it forward as it rocked. This would fit the legend of the Mo'ai 'walking' to their final locations. This might have been managed by as few as 15 people, supported by the following evidence:


title: Easter Island

text: There is debate regarding the effects of the monument creation process on the environment. Some believe that the process of creating the moai caused widespread deforestation and ultimately a civil war over scarce resources.


title: Easter Island

text: In 2011, a large moai statue was excavated from the ground. During the same excavation program, some larger moai were found to have complex dorsal petroglyphs, revealed by deep excavation of the torso.


title: Easter Island

text: In 2020, a pickup truck crashed into and destroyed a moai statue due to brake failure. No one was injured in the incident.


title: Easter Island

text: "Ahu" are stone platforms. Varying greatly in layout, many were reworked during or after the "huri mo'ai" or "statue-toppling" era; many became ossuaries, one was dynamited open, and Ahu Tongariki was swept inland by a tsunami. Of the 313 known ahu, 125 carried moaiusually just one, probably because of the shortness of the moai period and transportation difficulties. Ahu Tongariki, from Rano Raraku, had the most and tallest moai, 15 in total. Other notable ahu with moai are Ahu Akivi, restored in 1960 by William Mulloy, Nau Nau at Anakena and Tahai. Some moai may have been made from wood and were lost.


title: Easter Island

text: Ahu evolved from the traditional Polynesian "marae". In this context, "ahu" referred to a small structure sometimes covered with a thatched roof where sacred objects, including statues, were stored. The ahu were usually adjacent to the marae or main central court where ceremonies took place, though on Easter Island, ahu and moai evolved to much greater size. There the marae is the unpaved plaza before the ahu. The biggest ahu is and holds 15 statues, some of which are high. The filling of an ahu was sourced locally (apart from broken, old moai, fragments of which have been used in the fill). Individual stones are mostly far smaller than the moai, so less work was needed to transport the raw material, but artificially leveling the terrain for the plaza and filling the ahu was laborious.


title: Easter Island

text: Ahu are found mostly on the coast, where they are distributed fairly evenly, except on the western slopes of Mount Terevaka and the Rano Kau and Poike headlands. These are the three areas with the least low-lying coastal land and, apart from Poike, the furthest areas from Rano Raraku. One ahu with several moai was recorded on the cliffs at Rano Kau in the 1880s but had fallen to the beach before the Routledge expedition.


title: Easter Island

text: One of the highest-quality examples of Easter Island stone masonry is the rear wall of the ahu at Vinapu. Made without mortar by shaping hard basalt rocks of up to to match each other exactly, it has a superficial similarity to some Inca stone walls in South America.


title: Easter Island

text: Two types of houses are known from the past: "hare paenga", a house with an elliptical foundation, made with basalt slabs and covered with a thatched roof that resembled an overturned boat, and "hare oka", a round stone structure. Related stone structures called "Tupa" look very similar to the "hare oka", except that the "Tupa" were inhabited by astronomer-priests and located near the coast, where the movements of the stars could be easily observed. Settlements also contain "hare moa" ("chicken house"), oblong stone structures that housed chickens. The houses at the ceremonial village of Orongo are unique in that they are shaped like "hare paenga" but are made entirely of flat basalt slabs found inside Rano Kao crater. The entrances to all the houses are very low, and entry requires crawling.


title: Easter Island

text: In early times the people of Rapa Nui reportedly sent the dead out to sea in small funerary canoes, as did their Polynesian counterparts on other islands. They later started burying people in secret caves to save the bones from desecration by enemies. During the turmoil of the late 18th century, the islanders seem to have started to bury their dead in the space between the belly of a fallen moai and the front wall of the structure. During the time of the epidemics they made mass graves that were semi-pyramidal stone structures.


title: Easter Island

text: Easter Island has one of the richest collections of petroglyphs in all Polynesia. Around 1,000 sites with more than 4,000 petroglyphs are catalogued. Designs and images were carved out of rock for a variety of reasons: to create totems, to mark territory, or to memorialize a person or event. There are distinct variations around the island in the frequency of themes among petroglyphs, with a concentration of Birdmen at Orongo. Other subjects include sea turtles, Komari (vulvas) and Makemake, the chief god of the "Tangata manu" or Birdman cult.


title: Easter Island

text: The island and neighbouring Motu Nui are riddled with caves, many of which show signs of past human use for planting and as fortifications, including narrowed entrances and crawl spaces with ambush points. Many caves feature in the myths and legends of the Rapa Nui.


title: Easter Island

text: The "Pu o Hiro" or "Hiro's Trumpet" is a stone on the north coast of Easter Island. It was once a musical instrument used in fertility rituals.


title: Easter Island

text: Easter Island once had an apparent script called "rongorongo". Glyphs include pictographic and geometric shapes; the texts were incised in wood in reverse boustrophedon direction. It was first reported by French missionary Eugène Eyraud in 1864. At that time, several islanders said they could understand the writing, but according to tradition, only ruling families and priests were ever literate, and none survived the slave raids and subsequent epidemics. Despite numerous attempts, the surviving texts have not been deciphered, and without decipherment it is not certain that they are actually writing. Part of the problem is the small amount that has survived: only two dozen texts, none of which remain on the island. There are also only a couple of similarities with the petroglyphs on the island.


title: Easter Island

text: Wood was scarce on Easter Island during the 18th and 19th centuries, but a number of highly detailed and distinctive carvings have found their way to the world's museums. Particular forms include:


title: Easter Island

text: The Rapanui sponsor an annual festival, the "Tapati", held since 1975 around the beginning of February to celebrate Rapa Nui culture. The islanders also maintain a national football team and three discos in the town of Hanga Roa. Other cultural activities include a musical tradition that combines South American and Polynesian influences and woodcarving.


title: Easter Island

text: Tapati Rapa Nui festival ("week festival" in the local language) is an annual two-week long festival celebrating Easter Island culture. The Tapati is centered around a competition between two families/ clans competing in various competitions to earn points. The winning team has their candidate crowned 'queen' of the island for the next year. The competitions are a way to maintain and celebrate traditional cultural activities such as cooking, jewelry-making, woodcarving, and canoeing.


title: Easter Island

text: Population at the 2012 census was 5,761 (increased from 3,791 in 2002). In 2002, 60% were persons of indigenous Rapa Nui origin, 39% were mainland Chileans (or their Easter Island-born descendants) of European (mostly Spanish) or mestizo (mixed European and indigenous Chilean Amerindian) origin and Easter Island-born mestizos of European and Rapa Nui and/or native Chilean descent, and the remaining 1% were indigenous mainland Chilean Amerindians (or their Easter Island-born descendants). , the population density on Easter Island was .


title: Easter Island

text: The 1982 population was 1,936. The increase in population in the last census was partly caused by the arrival of people of European or mixed European and Native American descent from the Chilean mainland. However, most married a Rapa Nui spouse. Around 70% of the population were natives. Estimates of the pre-European population range from 7–17,000. Easter Island's all-time low of 111 inhabitants was reported in 1877. Out of these 111 Rapa Nui, only 36 had descendants, and all of today's Rapa Nui claim descent from those 36.


title: Easter Island

text: Easter Island's traditional language is Rapa Nui, an Eastern Polynesian language, sharing some similarities with Hawaiian and Tahitian. However, as in the rest of mainland Chile, the official language used is Spanish. Easter Island is the only territory in Polynesia where Spanish is an official language.