{"id":10196,"date":"2019-08-13T14:15:07","date_gmt":"2019-08-13T14:15:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/rapa-nui-an-enormous-petrified-sponge\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T00:46:40","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T00:46:40","slug":"rapa-nui-an-enormous-petrified-sponge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/rapa-nui-an-enormous-petrified-sponge\/","title":{"rendered":"Rapa Nui – An enormous petrified sponge"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Rapa Nui<\/strong><\/h1>\n

An enormous petrified sponge<\/strong><\/span><\/h1>\n

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Under a thin layer of soil over the ancient volcanic rocks lies an invisible world, cloaked in legends and mysteries.\u00a0 Rapa Nui has a volcanic bedrock which can be compared to a giant petrified sponge, riddled with caverns of varying sizes, from small grottoes and narrow winding passages to spacious vaulted chambers.\u00a0 A Polish speleological expedition has registered more than ten kilometers (six miles) of underground passages and explored more than 315 caves in the Roiho area and in the cliffs of the Rano Kau and Rano Raraku volcanoes, making topographic maps combined with archaeological and anthropological studies of their contents. W. H. Thomson (1886) divided the caves of Rapa Nui into two groupings, those grottoes formed by the action of the waves on the coast and the caves formed by volcanic gases and lava.<\/p>\n

For the Rapanui, there are three principal types of caves according to their structure : Karava, Ana Kionga and Ana.\u00a0\u00a0 The Karava caves are small grottoes, usually found on the cliff sides in which one person could hide.\u00a0 The Ana Kionga caves are small ones which were used as safe havens for persecuted people in times of war.\u00a0 The name Ana is applied to all natural caverns of large dimensions, including those which have been built or reconstructed, regardless of their use.\"\"
From the arrival of the first inhabitants of the island, the caves began to form an essential part of the social, spiritual and daily life. Oral tradition reveals that in order to enter a cave it is necessary to ask for protection from the spirits, because the caves are as sacred as the earth and are \u201cTapu\u201d or taboo.\u00a0 In many caves, petroglyphs and pictographs of the god Make Make, the bird-man and other ancient cosmic figures can be discerned.\u00a0 Some served as residences, such as the Ana Kena cave, where the legendary king Hotu Matu\u2019a lived during his first years on the Island, and which has since given its name to the Anakena beach, originally called Oromanga.\u00a0 The Rapanui tell us that each cave had its own name, sometimes related to the name of the original inhabitants or their clan, other times due to some characteristic of place, form, size or use.<\/p>\n

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The caves served not only as living spaces or refuges for people or even complete families, but also to keep maidens where they could whiten their skin for spiritual purposes (Ana O Keke and Ana Hue Neru),\u00a0 to hold religious rites (Ana Kai Tangata and Ana Te Pora) or to store food and family treasures.\u00a0 According to Lavancherie (1935) there used to be \u201cworkshop\u201d caves in which bone and obsidian objects were manufactured.\u00a0 Some caves served as collective tombs, while others were set aside as individual burials, where the old people could go when it was their time to die.\u00a0 Only a few years ago, this happened for the last time.\u00a0 The family searched for their missing grandmother for more than a month without finding a trace of her.\u00a0 She had gone to her rest.<\/p>\n

Featured Reports:<\/strong><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rapa Nui An enormous petrified sponge Under a thin layer of soil over the ancient volcanic rocks lies an invisible world, cloaked in legends and mysteries.\u00a0 Rapa Nui has a volcanic bedrock which can be compared to a giant petrified sponge, riddled with caverns of varying sizes, from small grottoes and narrow winding passages to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":10180,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[128],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archeology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10196\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moevarua.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}