Easter Island
Posted on August 17, 2007
by: Big Jar
On Easter Sunday, 1722, a Dutch explorer named Jacob Roggeveen discovered a small island approximately two thousand miles west of modern day Chile. Due to its isolation, Roggeveen initially suspected that the island was deserted. When he arrived on its shores, he discovered a small society of natives who called themselves Rapa Nui (Roggeveen estimated their population stood between two and three thousand people.) The natives Roggeveen met were emaciated and sullen; their lands were barren of agriculture or plant life, and the soil was sandy and thin. They fed themselves by eating chickens, rats, snails, and occasionally each other.
It was not always this way. Archeologists estimate that Easter Island once supported a population of over twenty thousand inhabitants. Their society was delegated into clans, each of whom had their own chiefs and customary laws. The Rapa Nui ate porpoises, fish, sea birds and shellfish in addition to their bountiful farm yields, which produced taro, bananas, sugarcane, and sweet potatoes. They devoted much of their time to erecting stone monuments, called Moai, for which the island has become most famous. The largest of these statues weighs 75 tonnes, making their construction and transportation extremely arduous and more importantly, an enormous waste of resources. The statues represented deified chiefs and acted as a status symbol.
What happened in the interim period from these prosperous times to Roggeveen’s encounter?
Scientists have discovered petrified pollen of many trees that have vanished from the face of the island, including a species of palm that would have been the largest on earth. The Rapa Nui felled these trees to clear land for their farms. They used the palm wood to build their infrastructure: canoes for fishing, huts for shelter, and machines for transporting and raising the mammoth Moai.
However, the reigning rule about ecosystems (and island ecosystems in particular) is that they are exceptionally fragile. If you alter one element, or introduce another, things change radically. The Rapa Nui were cutting down their enormous palm trees faster than the forests could regrow. Additionally, the stowaway rats who accompanied the Rapa Nui on their initial settlement had ravaged the island’s flora. The rats gnawed on plant seeds, which prevented their germination and infested their root system, thereby leeching their nutrient source. By the year 1400, the enormous palm trees became extinct. Without the palm trees, the soil could not refurbish with the appropriate minerals, and as a result it ceased to support agriculture.
Without the palm trees, the Rapa Nui could not build boats to fish. The sea birds had no nesting grounds, which led to their eradication. These losses initiated a severe population decline and forced the islanders to seek sustinence in whatever they could find. Less nutrition, along with a decreased standard of living, led to increased infighting between clans. This eventually erupted into an endless civil war. The introduction of Europeans, along with their diseases and slave ships, caused the whole society to implode.
So, to summarize: a society uses its natural resources to support population increases and to build enormously inefficient and impractical monuments for its elite ruling class. The society disregards any potential ecological side effects of this behavior. When those ramifications manifest themselves, war begins and does not end until civilization itself is eradicated.
Beware.
Recommended reading: Collapse, by Jared Diamond
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