Easter Island’s Controversial Collapse: More To The Story Than Deforestation?

[Adsos Letter]

Source: Science Daily

Easter Island (Rapa Nui) has gained recognition in recent years due in part to a book that used it as a model for societal collapse from bad environmental practices—ringing alarm bells for those concerned about the health of the planet today. But that’s not the whole story, says Dr. Chris Stevenson, an archaeologist who has studied the island—famous for its massive stone statues—with a Rapa Nui scientist, Sonia Haoa, and Earthwatch volunteers for nearly 20 years.

The ancient Rapanui people did abuse their environment, but they were also developing sustainable practices—innovating, experimenting, trying to adapt to a risky environment—and they would still be here in traditional form if it weren’t for the diseases introduced by European settlers in the 1800s.

“Societies don’t just go into a tailspin and self-destruct,” says Stevenson, an archaeologist at the Virginia Department of Historic Resources. “They can and do adapt, and they emerge in new ways. The key is to put more back into the system than is taken out.”

While evidence suggests the Rapa Nui people cut down 6,000,000 trees in 300 years, for example, they were also developing new technological and agricultural practices along the way—such as fertilization techniques to restore the health of the soil and rock gardens to protect the plants. As a result, every rock on Easter Island has probably been moved three or four times, Stevenson said.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090218095435.htm

[Odin2005]

1. This has been my thinking for a while.

IMO Environmental collapse is a side effect of decline that hurts the society even more. Often the ultimate cause of both the decline and the environmental collapse is militarism and/or elites going on a binge of consumption and monument-building. The Mayans fit that perfectly, as does Ancient Mesopotamia.

Another example: in Classical times Sicily and Southern Italy were extremely vibrant places with rich farmland. By the early Middle Ages centuries of plantation farming ruined the farmland and the area became a feudal backwater, falling behind the rest of Western Civilization.

[sofa king]

2. Right... but the first thing the Polynesians asked for was wood.

"All the natives repeated often and excitedly the word miru and became impatient because they saw we did not understand it: this word is the name of the timber used by the Polynesians to make their canoes. This is what they wanted most...." --Jared Diamond, Collapse, p. 107, quoting a French captain who visited the island in 1838.

Now admittedly, this was over a hundred years after Europeans first made contact with the island and wrecked the remnant population with diseases, but the fact of the matter remains that with the disappearance of timber, the seagoing canoes could no longer be made. Without the canoes, tuna and porpoise disappear from trash heaps by 1500. And along with them disappeared all fruits, all land birds, and pretty much everything else except people and rats. Soil erosion buried neighborhoods and the lack of shade in the tropical sun effectively forced the innovative farming techniques they used, while the people stayed warm at night only by burning low-temperature grasses and weeds.

So when the diseases came along with the Europeans, the people of Rapa Nui were malnourished, dehydrated, too hot and too cold, and politically weakened by constant infighting over ever decreasing resources. Whatever sustainability they finally adopted wasn't enough to permit them to survive that.

[Turborama]

3. Fascinating, thanks for the share.

Trying to find more about this study on the Earthwatch site but not having much luck...

:kick: & R