Easter Island
Rapa Nui

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The half-man, half-bird petroglyph of Tangata Manu visible on the rock centre left, crouching unpleasantly and peering at the more distant island of Motu Nui.

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The Make-Make cult focussed on fertility and springtime, celebrating the seasonal arrival of migratory marine birds with a ritual competition known as Tangata Manu.
Once a year representatives of the island's tribes used to swim to Motu-Nui and wait - sometimes for weeks - to grab the first egg of the breeding sooty terns. The first to return to Orongo with an egg became sacred bird-man [Tangata Manu] of the year [unless his chief decided that he deserved the role better] and lived there in seclusion for a year while his tribe whooped it up as top birddogs. The last year this ceremony took place on Rapa Nui was 1867.

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