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“The most promising evidence for the Rapanui people’s groundwater was

Feb. 24, 2017 by Ella Pickett

“The most promising evidence for the Rapanui people’s groundwater was found in a region called the Boona Sea (also known as the 'Sandy Sea' or 'the Boona Sea'), south of the island’s main trading port. Some of its water was found in a shallow channel in the sea off the north-western coast of the island’s South Sandwich Islands, which was a relatively recent settlement of the Rapanui.

Binghamton University researchers found abundant water on the Boona Sea, which is not an ancient freshwater source. The shallow channel was found as early as the 1600s’s, and it was the site of a small but significant development (see Fig. 4, left).

What's more, the channel is deep enough that there is no visible water source on the Boona Sea, and researchers are unsure of how much water the Rapanui could have collected from the area.

A new study from Binghamton University researchers, which was published in the April issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences, suggests a deeper and more complex aquifer could have developed there along with a new source of groundwater to support the Rapanui.

“The Rapanui have spent millennia in the South Sandwich Islands, where they inhabited a region with abundant, plentiful freshwater. The Rapanui lived in a coastal climate characterized by strong, low-lying rock formations called "gastos," a type of limestone or rock known to be an integral part of the climate. The Gastos were a type of limestone that could be found under the seas along the coast of the South Sandwich Islands.

“The Gastos were more than 1,000 feet tall’’ and covered almost 3,000 acres, but their structure gave rise to many other aquatic organisms, including crustaceans, salamanders, bivalves, and other organisms. In addition to the marine life, the Gastos' main food source was a broad range of invertebrate animals such as crabs, fishes, and mollusks.