Jo Anne Van Tilburg of Rapa Nui's role in Polynesian seafaring history; Explore the natural environment of the Pacific Ocean and the ecology of Rapa Nui as part of that environment; Develop cultural exchanges with other Pacific islanders and continental peoples through the celebration of Rapa Nui maritime skills. Jo Anne Van Tilburg Jo Anne Van Tilburg is an American archaeologist best known for her research on the statues of Easter Island (Rapa Nui). Her primary specialty is rock art. Van Tilburg was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota and graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1965, receiving her Ph.D. from the University of California
Easter Island explorer Jacob Roggeveen, who encountered it on Easter Sunday (5 April) in 1722, while searching for Davis or David's island. Roggeveen named it "Paasch-Eyland" (18th-century Dutch for "Easter Island"). The island's official Spanish name, "Isla de Pascua", also means "Easter Island". The current Polynesian name of the island, "Rapa Nui" ("Big Rapa"), was coined after the slave raids of the early 1860s, and refers to the island's topographic resemblance to the island of Rapa in the Bass Islands of the Austral Islands group. However, Norwegian ethnographer Thor Heyerdahl argued that "Rapa" was the original name of Easter Island and that