By Larry Kummer. From the Fabius Maximus website.
Summary: The Polynesian expansion across the Pacific from Samoa to South America is one of history’s greatest achievements of exploration. Conducted with primitive technology, they colonized almost every suitable island in the Pacific. Equally remarkable in a different way is how the sad story of the last and least-suitable of their settlements has been twisted into an eco-fable. Here is that story and the long effort of a few scientists to bring the truth to light.
Like most myths, the eco-fable of Easter Island evolved over time. It reached full flower in Easter Island, Earth Island
Paul Bahn and John Flenley (1992), and reached a mass market in Jared Diamond’s Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed![clip_image002[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/clip_image00211.gif "clip_image002[1]"){kind=small}
(2005) — Excerpt…
“The overall picture for Easter is the most extreme example of forest destruction in the Pacific, and among the most extreme in the world: the whole forest gone, and all of its tree species extinct. Immediate consequences for the islanders were losses of raw materials, losses of wild-caught foods, and decreased crop yields.
“… I have often asked myself, “What did the Easter Islander who cut down the last palm tree say while he was doing it?” Like modern loggers, did he shout “Jobs, not trees!”? Or: “Technology will solve our problems, never fear, we’ll find a substitute for wood”? Or: “We don’t have proof that there aren’t palms somewhere else on Easter, we need more research, your proposed ban on logging is premature and driven by fear-mongering”?
“… The parallels between Easter Island and the whole modern world are chillingly obvious. Thanks to globalisation, international trade, jet planes, and the internet, all countries on Earth today share resources and affect each other, just as did Easter’s dozen clans… Those are the reasons why people see the collapse of Easter Island society as a metaphor, a worst-case scenario, for what may lie ahead of us in our own future.”
“The new picture that emerges from these results is really one of sustainability and continuity rather than collapse, which sheds new light on what we can really learn from Rapa Nui. Based on these new findings, perhaps Rapa Nui should be the poster-child of how human ingenuity can result in success, rather than failure.”
— Anthropologist Mara Mulrooney (see her bio and papers here).
One of the more complete tellings of the full story is The Statues that Walked: Unraveling the Mystery of Easter Island![clip_image002[2]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/clip_image0022.gif "clip_image002[2]"){kind=small}
by Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo (2011). From the publisher’s summary:
“The monumental statues of Easter Island, both so magisterial and so forlorn, gazing out in their imposing rows over the island’s barren landscape, have been the source of great mystery ever since the island was first discovered by Europeans on Easter Sunday 1722. How could the ancient people who inhabited this tiny speck of land, the most remote in the vast expanse of the Pacific islands, have built such monumental works? No such astonishing numbers of massive statues are found anywhere else in the Pacific.
‘How could the islanders possibly have moved so many multi-ton monoliths from the quarry inland, where they were carved, to their posts along the coastline? And most intriguing and vexing of all, if the island once boasted a culture developed and sophisticated enough to have produced such marvelous edifices, what happened to that culture? Why did Europeans find a sparsely populated wasteland?
“The prevailing accounts of the island’s history tell a story of self-inflicted devastation: a glaring case of eco-suicide. The island was dominated by a powerful chiefdom that promulgated a cult of statue making, exercising a ruthless hold on the island’s people and rapaciously destroying the environment, cutting down a lush palm forest that once blanketed the island in order to construct contraptions for moving more and more statues, which grew larger and larger. As the population swelled in order to sustain the statue cult, growing well beyond the island’s agricultural capacity, a vicious cycle of warfare broke out between opposing groups, and the culture ultimately suffered a dramatic collapse.
“… Far from irresponsible environmental destroyers, they show, the Easter Islanders were remarkably inventive environmental stewards, devising ingenious methods to enhance the island’s agricultural capacity. They did not devastate the palm forest, and the culture did not descend into brutal violence.
“Perhaps most surprising of all, the making and moving of their enormous statutes did not require a bloated population or tax their precious resources; their statue building was actually integral to their ability to achieve a delicate balance of sustainability. The Easter Islanders, it turns out, offer us an impressive record of masterful environmental management rich with lessons for confronting the daunting environmental challenges of our own time.”
I recommend reading the opening pages of chapter one, one of the strongest openings I’ve ever seen in a book about science. The Statues that Walked describes islands history from the initial and only colonization of Easter Island at roughly 1200 AD — less than a hundred people traveling 14 thousand miles (tacking in their canoes across the Pacific against the trade winds — until the present. Things quickly went wrong for them.
“In the first few decades of their lives on Easter Island, the colonists lost some of the staples they would have brought with them, because the climate on Easter Island wasn’t conducive to their growth. The rats they brought with them (whether as a food source or as freeloading rodents) began decimating the large palm trees that forested the island. Those palms protected the soil, reduced the wind and provided shade; and all too quickly, the sheltering palms were gone, not as a result of human over-use, but rather because the rats dined wholesale on the palm nuts.”
It is one of the smallest and most isolated inhabited islands, with relatively infertile soil and a narrow biota (an important factor Diamond discusses in Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies![clip_image002[3]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/clip_image0023.gif "clip_image002[3]"){kind=small}
. In Collapse Diamond describes these and other factors that made Easter Island a fragile ecology, far more so than most Pacific Islands — especially so for its people and forests.
Polynesian islands were often subject to population crashes (e.g., salt contamination of gardens from storms), and Easter Island’s limitations made its people unusually vulnerable (other small islands were abandoned or had die-offs).
As for the trees, deforestation began soon after colonization and proceed quickly, resulting from over-exploitation by the inhabitants and rats (an ecological disaster for many Pacific islands). But the inhabitants adapted and built a sophisticated society (e.g., the giant statues) and a high population — especially impressive considering their meager resources.
The people of Easter Island, like so many others, were wrecked by the West: we gave them pandemic diseases, then depopulating slave raids and ecological devastation (conversion of the island to a sheep range, for which it was poorly suited). This eco-fable is an outrageous example of blaming the victim.
The real mystery of Easter Island
Benny Peiser (Wikipedia bio) asks a question of importance in “From Genocide to Ecocide: The Rape of Rapa Nui” (Energy and Environment, July 2005 — a special issued debunking Collapse).
“The real mystery of Easter Island, however, is not its collapse. It is why distinguished scientists feel compelled to concoct a story of ecological suicide when the actual perpetrators of the civilisation’s deliberate destruction are well known and were identified long ago.
“… As a final point, I would argue that Easter Island is a poor example for a morality tale about environmental degradation. Easter Island’s tragic experience is not a metaphor for the entire Earth. The extreme isolation of Rapa Nui is an exception even among islands, and does not constitute the ordinary problems of the human environment interface. Yet in spite of exceptionally challenging conditions, the indigenous population chose to survive – and they did.
“… What they could not endure, however, and what most of them did not survive, was something altogether different: the systematic destruction of their society, their people and their culture.”
Distorting science for political purposes is a large and growing problem. The only solution is for scientists themselves to resist the temptation — and call out their peers when they do so.
Summaries of the clashing histories about Easter Island
See these posts at the website of journalist and environmental activist Mark Lynas (see his Wikipedia entry) …
- The Myth of Easter Island’s ecocide by Mark Lynas.
- Jared Diamond’s rebuttal.
- Reply by Carl Lipo and Terry Hunt.
Selected Bibliography about the Easter Island mystery
The literature about the history of Easter Island is vast. This selection focuses on the papers disputing Diamond’s eco-fable. See excerpts from many of these here.
- “A message for our future? The Rapa Nui (Easter Island) ecodisaster and Pacific island environments“, Paul Rainbird, World Archaeology, 1 February 2002.
- Recommended: “From Genocide to Ecocide: The Rape of Rapa Nui“, Benny Peiser (Wikipedia bio), Energy and Environment, volume 16 No. 3&4, 2005.
- “Cannibalism and Easter Island: Evaluation, discussion of probabilities, and survey of the literature on the subject“, Shawn McLaughlin, Rapa Nui Journal, May 2005 — Reviews the inconclusive evidence and puts it in the context of the often-bogus claims of cannibalism by foreign people.
- “Late Colonization of Easter Island“, Terry L. Hunt and Carl P. Lipo, Science, 9 March 2006
- “Easter Island mystery deepens“, New Scientist, 18 March 2006.
- “Easter Island: A monumental collapse?“, New Scientist, 31 July 2006.
- “Rethinking the Fall of Easter Island“, Terry Hunt (Prof of Anthropology, U of Hawaii-Manoa), American Scientist, May 2006.
- “Rethinking Easter Island’s ecological catastrophe“, Terry L. Hunt, Journal of Archaeological Science, March 2007.
- “Chronology, deforestation, and “collapse:” Evidence vs. faith in Rapa Nui prehistory“, Terry L. Hunt and Carl P. Lipo, Rapa Nui Journal, October 2007
- “Revisiting Rapa Nui (Easter Island) ‘’Ecocide’“, Terry L. Hunt and Carl P. Lipo, Pacific Science, October 2007
- “An island-wide assessment of the chronology of settlement and land use on Rapa Nui (Easter Island) based on radiocarbon data“, Mara A. Mulrooney, Journal of Archaeological Science, December 2013 — Gated. Summary here.
- The Statues that Walked: Unraveling the Mystery of Easter Island
![clip_image002[4]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/clip_image0024_thumb.gif?resize=2%2C2 "clip_image002[4]")
by Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo (2012) - Recommended: “Challenging Easter Island’s collapse: the need for interdisciplinary synergies“, Valentí Rull et al, Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 17 December 2013 — Survey of the recent literature, with many citations. Supports the Hunt-Lipo theory.
- “Weapons of war? Rapa Nui mata’a morphometric analyses“, Carl P. Lipo, Terry L. Hunt, Rene Horneman and Vincent Bonhomme, Antiquity, February 2016. Gated. See the good summary at ars technica.
![clip_image002[4]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/clip_image0024.gif "clip_image002[4]"){kind=small}
For More Information
- Learning skepticism, an essential skill for citizenship in 21st century America.
- We cannot agree on simple facts and so cannot reform America.
- Our minds are addled, the result of skillful and expensive propaganda.
Ship of Fools http://news.yahoo.com/australian-icebreaker-runs-aground-antarctica-031132408.html
This breach has occurred in an area of the ship that poses no risk to the stability of the vessel or of fuel leaking into the environment,” it said.
“Attempts to refloat the vessel will occur when the weather conditions ease. It will take a minimum of three days for the ship’s crew to complete a full assessment of the ship once the vessel is afloat again.”
Science, compare?
http://www.economist.com/node/17722704
I had the privilege to visit the place in the early 1973. There was a guy who was researching the history of one of the families on the island. He told me then that there was evidence for social strife many centuries ago after which the population had been relatively stable. Until the island was “discovered” by Europeans who brought infectuous diseases to which the Rapa Nui had no defence. After that came the adventurers who believed that there was gold to be found under the statues (how could it be otherwise?) and dug them up. The population dropped from a few thousand to less than a hundred in a matter of a few years.
On a lighter note: future visitors from afar to the now British isles but then sparsely populated wild outcrops in the Atlantic, wil notice the strange metal statues with moving arms which litter the place and wonder what on Earth they were all about.
An alternative metaphor: The island “died” because its people were led to believe that they would only survive by building statues (known today as windmills) to placate a non-existent God, i.e. an early example of the Green Blob in action.
If you are looking for a failed windpower project in the South Pacific, try Pitcairn Island about 2000km West of Easter Island. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/pitcairnislands/9978125/Britain-wasted-250000-on-failed-wind-farm-project-in-South-Pacific.html
Anthropologists astray: Misled or Misleading?
The Easter Island eco-cide fable parallels Martha Mead’s wishful anthropology. See how she was misled in the biggest prankster hoax of modern history.
The Fateful Hoaxing of Margaret Mead: A Historical Analysis of Her Samoan Research
Either that or the self imposed carbon tax did them in. Proceeds from the carbon tax were funneled to favored voting blocks and public stone works like high speed rail for the stone heads project.
“jobs not trees”
Yet another example of how the eco-nuts have absolutely no idea how the other side thinks.
No logger would say such a thing. In fact logging companies are at the fore front of research in how to maintain the forests so that logging can continue into the future.
There’s an old saying. Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil.
Read the response by Jared Diamond, to the criticism here of his book.
Note especially his assertion that rats are present on nearly all the Polynesian islands, but none of them have been deforested – only Easter Island. Which makes sense to me, as the claim that rats cause deforestation is ‘out there’ alongside alien abductions. Which is fine, if you want to make the argument. But if you want to make such an extrordinary claim you need some extrordinary evidence to back it up, not just the bald assertion made here.
Response by Jared Diamond:
http://www.marklynas.org/2011/09/the-myths-of-easter-island-jared-diamond-responds
Ralph
But the opposite is true, apparently – deforestation causes a rat infestation….
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-35461412
Ralph
ralfellis, don’t forget to read the response to Diamonds response, referenced in Kummer’s article above:
http://www.marklynas.org/2011/10/the-easter-island-ecocide-never-happened-response-to-jared-diamond/
And what a load of trash that was. Which kindergarten did these guys go to? Please tell me they are not scientists, please.
The first thing they do is drop the raccist white man bomb on Jared Diamond. Sorry, but if that is your opening gambit, then this report and article are political, not scientific.
They then say, quote:
Setting aside the fact that even if only a fraction of palm nuts were destroyed by rats, the cumulative effect would have been significant.
And then they cite a palm tree that does not fruit until it is 70, so obviously lives for centuries. All of which displays a complete misunderstanding of the breeding strategies of fruiting trees. A tree does not really care if 99.999% of its seeds are destroyed by rats, because it only takes two successful seeds in three centuries, to reproduce the species. There is no ‘cumulative effect’ when it comes to seeds.
They then say, quote:
anyone who has seen a palm tree cross-section with its thin, brittle bark and soft fibrous interior would quickly recognize these would not be suitable. Nor frankly would they have been capable of supporting the weight of multi-ton statues as rollers.
But note what the professionals say about palm wood:
“Its exceptional strength … makes it the perfect substitute for tropical hardwoods.”
http://www.palmwood.net/#what-is-palmwood
“The wood is extremely hard once cured, or dried. Harder than oak by far.”
http://www.palmtreepassion.com/palm-tree-uses.html
The secret is in the drying, and I am sure a location like Easter Island would be ideal for drying. Frankly, I see no merit whatsoever in any of the claims being made in this article or the original ‘research’ (I use the term loosely). It does not even pass the common sense test.
Ralph
“The first thing they do is drop the raccist white man bomb on Jared Diamond.”
Read it again. They explicitly absolve Diamond of racism:
“Diamond simply continues the tradition by reworking the tale to remove the racist elements, relying instead upon an environmental twist put forth by popular writer Bahn and palynologist Flenley.” (my emphasis) They accuse Diamond of victim-blaming, not racism.
“And then they cite a palm tree that does not fruit until it is 70, so obviously lives for centuries.”
It took as long as 500 years for it to go extinct, with the pollen disappearing not long before first European contact. Land clearing and rats could do that. Considering that the islanders transported an average of only two statues per year, it hardly seems they’d need 16 million palms for the work, even if they did use the palms for rollers, as Diamond claims.
“But note what the professionals say about palm wood:”
Um, you’re taking a modern processed product that took “25 years research and development”, is kiln “cooked”, and impregnated with preservatives, and you’re comparing it to the use of an extinct palm tree (with perhaps one living relative) by stone age people?
But hey, let’s say the extinct palm really was that durable. So why do you need 16 million new rollers when the old ones are just as good?
“I see no merit whatsoever in any of the claims being made in this article or the original ‘research’ (I use the term loosely).”
Unlike Diamond, they did actual field work, careful radiocarbon dating, the whole shebang. They went to the island expecting to confirm and extend the same work that Diamond built on. It was evidence, not prejudice, that changed their minds.
Incidentally, if you haven’t already, check out the video of the “walking statues”. Whether it’s historically accurate or not, it’s pretty interesting:
You don’t think an Easter Islander can drop a palm log onto fire embers, to ‘kiln dry’ it? Perhaps it is you who are invoking the ‘R’ bomb.
And you still fail to grasp the fact that out of the (say) one million seeds a palm will generate in its life, only two need to grow to maturity. So it matters not how many seeds are eaten by rats. The whole concept of rat deforestation is nonsensical, and it does not happen anywhere else.
And you also fail to grasp that palm wood has many uses, apart from in construction. Fuel being a major one. What proportion of fuel to construction materials do we use? Think about it. The only thing you cannot use palm wood for, as far as I understand it, is boats, because it does not like getting wet.
But I note you give no apology for not knowing that palm wood is a very strong construction material, as strong as oak. So with my having blasted this entire argument out of the water, you just ignore the facts and carry on regardless. This is not a theory, it is a faith.
Ralph
Strangely enough, I was thinking the same thing about you and Diamond. 🙂
Late to the party …
The rats and palms are really a side show here. In whatever proportions man and rat account for the palm trees’ demise, the archaeological evidence seems pretty clear that
1. the trees were gone very soon,
2. the population was stable or grew for centuries after that,
3. the demise of the population occurred not before contact with Westerners.
So the felling of the last tree that Diamond turned into his ridiculously ham-fisted piece of propaganda was pretty much a non-event in terms of societal survival (although we don’t know how much better they would have fared with continuous presence of trees).
Visiting from (comparatively speaking) lush, forested Germany, I always found treeless Belgium and Holland to be quite desolate – green, yes, but with every square inch of soil under the plough, nothing in the way of nature to rest your eyes on. Strangely, however, the natives of those places don’t seem to mind, and they look quite well-fed, too.
The PBS tagline “to explore new ideas” does not include revisiting the “new” ideas when they are proved wrong. The selection bias of the “new” claim is more important than the truth or revision process in finding the truth or the status of the former “new” idea.
The heads look rather presidential, resolute and uncompromising to the end.
People are overlooking a very obvious thing.
These people set sail on very long and dangerous journeys in their primitive boats.
People who are prosperous do not do such things.
Harsh conditions, incompatible with further survival, must have prompted them to take these journeys. Which, suggests, that overpopulation and ecosystem stress were very common in these island societies. And, considering the difficulty in travel and communication, such societies would be often isolated and unstable. The loss of just one important link in the technological chain might mean disaster. For example, I read years ago of an island society which died out because they lost the ability to make trading ships (cut all the tries down ?), and they could no longer import soft shells from another far off island, soft shells which were crucial to making fish hooks.
And don’t forget genetic decay. Our betters like to show their contempt for poor people in Appalachia by talking about their low IQ’s from marrying their cousins. What do you think happens on an island?
Interesting article. Living in Hawaii and having a large Polynesian library, I am familiar with the true cause of the ecological collapse. It most definitely was the Polynesian rat, and the realization of its preditation by the settlers too late. It is also likely the settlers were also eating the palm fruit. It is also unclear the state of the voyaging canoe when it came upon the island. And it may have traveled so far as to have lost all its seed etc. Clearly it did not have provisions to go back and acquire better fauna and flora. Something the Hawaiians, Tongans, Tahitians, Marquesans, Samoans, and most others did in fact . By Polynesian standards, this was a miserable place. Such islands in Hawaii were barely occupied at the time of Western discovery even though in easy and regular travel routes, and some only for transient fishermen, worshipers, and meditation. And these islands had far more resources.
It is also well established that the “discovery” quickly resulted in a population collapse. No doubt by some disease.
Within the past two weeks our local paper (the Telegraph-Journal) had an article about a local man who released a dozen “bunnies” on an island. In the following few decades (IIRC) the rabbits had stripped the vegetation from the island, eating any of the few shoots that tried to establish themselves. It is not difficult to believe that rats could do the same on Easter Island. (The rabbits have been hunted close to extinction and soon will be eliminated entirely from the island; the flora of the island are quickly returning to normal.)
If anyone wants more details on this story I will track down the newspaper. Contact me at imcqueen(at)nbnet.nb.ca
Ian M
According to the Remain EU campaign, that’s what’s going to happen to the UK if we leave. We’re all doomed.
For all we know Easter Island could have been a Polynesian prison island and stone carving was a skilled trade education program.
It has been suggested that people set out from the Marquesas or elsewhere in Polynesia to find new islands surrounded by waters not afflicted with a dread fish plague.
White Europeans often underestimated intelligence of natives, in this case assuming the islanders actions were product of their total stupidity.
In the last few years most of the mature, some more than a century old, palm trees along French and Italian Mediterranean coastline are devastated by some bug or a fungus.
If the Easter Islands’ palm trees were succumbing to a similar fate, realising consequence of an eventual catastrophe, the islanders had no alternative but to turn to their goods for salvation. They carved huge monoliths into image of goods they worshiped, hauling them to the shore on the remnants of dead palm trees.
The story of the islanders could be a misinterpreted story of a totally natural and not a man initiated disaster that befell the islanders, eventually leading to warfare over depleting natural resources.
You will notice that he line of reasoning used by the proponents of the ‘the islanders cut down ever tree’ theory is that anyone proposing an alternate theory has an extreme burden of proof because they got there first. You see this a lot in science where speculation becomes dogma and the burden of proof on any competing theory is based not in the strength of evidence of the prevailing theory but only that the prevailing theory got there first.
I must admit I found this book and website very useful in looking at why nations fail. The authors discuss Jared Diamonds theories in good objective terms.
It’s also worth looking at what happened to the flora and fauna of New Zealand after Maori people settled there. They by all accounts did not return to their home islands once they landed in New Zealand and brought no pigs. I suspect that on long voyages carrying provisions for both dogs and pigs is a major challenge. Once Maori landed on New Zealand there was no motivation to return to the home islands for Pigs due to the abundance of Moa, like giant chickens with no fear of humans. ( I wonder what happened to them!) However they brought rats which did just fine and were an important source of food. There were almost no mammals in New Zealand prior to it’s discovery and the habit of birds flying down to the ground when danger threatened made them easy prey for human and canine.
But do they know how much carbon they have been eating in the form of wood pulp in parmesan cheese?
Ralfellis didn’t read the reply to Jared Diamond nor watch the video showing that the heads could be moved with ropes and dismisses opposing views in a rather snarky offhand manner using the words:
“This is not a theory, it is a faith”
He should take the time to read all 3 articles (the original, Diamond’s reply, and the reply to Diamond). He might actually learn something.
From his replies to me above, it looks like he did read all three, but didn’t learn anything. It makes his preaching about “faith” doubly ironic. 🙂
National Geographic had an article about this subject that implied the Easter Islanders simply threw down their tools and took to war. That never made sense to me for a couple of reasons.
Carving heavy stone monuments and moving them, regardless of how they were moved, requires organization and plenty of expenditure in food energy.
This was not a culture under stress while the heads were being placed.
Apologies, I left the link out in my post on Maori decimating the new Zealand environment http://whynationsfail.com
[chilemike
February 24, 2016 at 5:44 pm
They have many coconut palms now, but they have to plant germinated palms. The coconut palms won’t germinate by themselves. ]
The trees never grew there to begin with. When people arrived, the people planted the trees. “Gardener-Man” always improves the environment. After they planted the trees they may have given up on tending them as they may have felt it was not a worthwhile effort compared to other crops. Watering is hard work. My family is from the Virgin Islands and my uncle plants, grows, and sells palm trees and other farm produce. The palm trees he plants, especially inland, need to be watered until they are well established.