Rapa Nui Point Rapa Nui Point Rapa Nui Point is a rocky point projecting 180 m westwards into Shirreff Cove from the west coast of the small (2.6 km by 1.6 km) ice-free promontory forming the north extremity of Ioannes Paulus II Peninsula, western Livingston Island in the South Shetland Islands, Antarctica and ending up in Cape Shirreff. The point is dominated by "Scarborough Castle", a 35 m crag roughly charted and descriptively named by the British sealer Captain Robert Fildes in 1821. The feature is named descriptively from its resemblance to the moai figures of Easter Island (Rapa Nui), Chile. Rapa Nui
Easter Island 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 2,000–3,000. European diseases, Peruvian slave raiding expeditions in the 1860s, and emigration to other islands, e.g. Tahiti, further depleted the population, reducing it to a low of 111 native inhabitants in 1877. 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, comprising a