Rapa Iti

Rapa Iti (also simply called Rapa ) is a 40 km ² island which politically belongs geographically to the Austral Islands to French Polynesia. The highest point is Mont Perau and is 650 meters above sea level. Rapa Iti has 482 inhabitants. The population is distributed between the two places Ahurei ( Haurei, the capital, about 350 inhabitants) and Area (approx. 130). George Vancouver sighted the island in 1791 as the first Europeans.

Archaeology and History

According to recent determinations of time an Australian research group of Atholl John Anderson from the Australian National University in Canberra with the help of radiocarbon dating, including on deposits in bogs on Rapa, the colonization time point of the island at about 1200 AD could be fixed. The first settlers arrived here in a 1,500 -year-long hike from the Fiji Islands, Tonga and the Samoan Islands. They found excellent living conditions, so that the population increased rapidly.

Through intensive exploitation, fire clearance for the cultivation of taro ( taro ) it came to the environmental disaster. The clearing had a far-reaching soil erosion result that gradually destroyed the foundation of agriculture. The population withdrew to the mountains into the interior of the island Rapa back and broke up into smaller groups, which fought each other in the sequence for the remaining resources.

The Australian scientists discovered the remains of 15 forts on the tops of the volcanic island. 1791, the first Europeans came to Rapa, at that time there were about 2,000 people on the island. Today there are less than 500, the ecological disaster with the population decline of approximately 2000 to 500 has occurred within a few years from 1826 to 1829.

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