The next solar eclipse of 2024 will occur on October 2nd, and it will be Annular. The event will mainly take place in the waters of the Pacific Ocean, except for a strip of Tierra del Fuego (Chile and Argentina). The most iconic place where the phenomenon will occur is undoubtedly Rapa Nui, the island that we know as Easter Island. An island with a troubled history, both because of the indigenous populations that inhabited it and because of contact with European civilization, which proved, as usual, devastating. It is believed to have been reached for the first time by populations of Polynesian origin between 900 CE and 1100 CE, inhabitants who certainly did not behave well towards the local ecosystem. Practically all the forests on the island were cut down, it is believed for the transport of the well-known statues called “Mo’ai”, and the local fauna decimated for food needs. This almost certainly led to fierce conflicts between the local tribes (around 1400 CE) that drastically decimated the population. To complete the work came the Europeans, who in the first decades of the 1700s reached the island, predictably bringing a good number of diseases to an isolated population that their immune system could not defend against. There were also deportations, always by the Europeans, caused by the prevailing slavery in that period. In short, an island that had reached in the past, according to current estimates, even something like 20-25 thousand inhabitants, was reduced to a few hundred inhabitants. Today on the island, mainly reachable by plane from Chile, there are numerous tourist facilities, which on the occasion could host the so-called “eclipse chasers”.
But let’s see, starting from the presumed period of settlement, around 1000 CE, how many total and annular solar eclipses have been visible from the island.
In summary, we can say that between 1000 CE and 2100 CE, the following were or will be visible:
341 Solar Eclipses, 3 Total Eclipses, 6 Annular Eclipses and 5 Near-Total Eclipses.
