Uoke (Uvoke) is the primeval giant-god who levered up the lands with his enormous pole and sank them one by one into the sea. When he reached Rapa Nui his pole broke against the rock, so that only this last fragment of earth was left standing — the island's own explanation for its small size and extreme isolation, and (on Barthel's reading) for the name Te Pito o te Henua, 'the fragment of the earth'. SOLITARY: a primeval world-shaper named with no kin in the Rapa Nui record.