EASTER ISLAND

1. Introduction
When many people hear of Easter Island, they immediately think of the moai, the giant stone statues built near the coast around the whole island. These giant monuments built to represent some sort of chief or important person among the people, would have taken tremendous effort and materials to build. These statues tell us that the Rapanui people had exceptional stonemasonry skills, superior to other Polynesian cultures. Another surprising fact is that these people had a system of writing – known as “Rongorongo” – that was not only unique to their culture, but has so far proved to be undecipherable by Western peoples. With all of these fantastic artefacts in mind we must ask ourselves: how is it that a complex and thriving society such as that of Easter Island’s early inhabitants can crumble and fall as theirs did? How in just a few short centuries, did the population dramatically reduce, and why did the diet of the remaining people comprise mainly of chickens and rats?

2. History
The history of Easter Island and its people has both fascinated and confused historians over the time they have studied it. This is because many different versions of the story of Easter Island exist. Some are theories from seperate historians and some are stories from the current residents of Easter Island or from the remaining descendants of the early peoples of Easter Island.

It is widely believed that all the original settlers from Easter Island were of Polynesian descent, although people from the island that uphold the traditions and know stories about their ancestors believe that there were actually two separate people that came to the island: the first of these two was – unusually – people that had fair skin and red hair. The second people to come to the island were the dark skinned Polynesians. They refer to the fair skinned people as “Hanau eepe,” or “long-ears,” and the Polynesians as “Hanau momoko,” or “short-ears.” When the first explorer, Dutchman Jacob Roggeveen finally arrived at Easter Island, he also noticed that there were two different colours of people, and has been quoted saying:
“Among the first who came aboard was a white man...”
He then continues on to say:
“They are a tall, well built people who, so far as can be judged, are fair skinned such as we know them in Tahiti, Hawaii and other eastern islands of the south seas. But the population is mixed, some are conspicuous by their darker skins, while others are quite white, like Europeans. A few are also of a reddish tint as if somewhat severely tanned by the sun..."

3. Factors contributing to the collapse of Easter Island, using Jared Diamond’s five point framework.

Environmental Damage
Today Easter Island is devoid of tree life, while it once had forests upon forests of various types of plants. These included many types of palms, trees, shrubs, grasses and many more that thrived before the arrival of man. Deforesting the island had many effects, such as:
· Degrading topsoil
· Increasing salinity
· Driving species to extinction
· etc.
While the island’s volcanos gave Easter Island fertile soil, perfect for growing plants, the islanders destroyed the landscape, cutting down trees to help build buildings to house the ever increasing population. When Jacob Roggeveen first set foot on Easter Island, he didn’t see lush plants, he saw only a few scarce shrubs and trees. The islanders had unwittingly destroyed their once fertile environment as they cut down the trees for firewood and building materials. There also must have been uses relating to the building of the moai, judging by the amount of statues that once stood erect on the island, and including many semi complete statues that have been found in quarries, if there were many uses for wood during this building process then this would count as a major factor in the reasons why they cut down the trees.
Because of all the deforestation, many species that were once a source of food for the Rapanui drastically reduced in numbers (such as many varieties of bird) and some species even became extinct. An example is that without exception, every species of land bird that existed on Easter Island before human interaction is now extinct.
Boats had become not only rare but also flimsy. Since wood that once would have been used for both boats, spears and other fishing equipment was being used for other things that the Rapanui people thought were more important, seafood was now gone from the daily meals. Other than seafood such as fish and shellfish, porpoise, which was a very good source of food for the people of Easter Island, was now hard to hunt because of a lack of well made equipment.

Climate
Climate change didn’t play a big part in the fall of Easter Island.

Hostile Neighbours
Because Easter Island was so isolated it didn’t have any neighbours that could be hostile. As far as we know, the people of Easter island didn’t interact with any other islands, there being no evidence of the people of Easter island travelling to other islands and vice versa. There are no giant stone monuments like those of Easter island anywhere in the world, let alone the islands nearest to Easter Island.

Trade Partners
Again, because of Easter Islands isolation to the rest of the world, the concept of the people of Easter Island trading with anyone is very unlikely. That said, the Dutch explorers that discovered Easter Island and its people in a state of distress, probably did trade things with the Rapanui people. This lack of trade partners meant that the Rapanui didn’t have any aid when they were faced with imminent collapse.

Response
The inhabitants of Easter Island never responded to the problems that arose as a result of the deforestation, and kept cutting down trees as usual until there weren’t any left.


4. Joseph Tainter’s views on the collapse of Easter Island
Unlike Jared Diamond, Joseph Tainter doesn’t believe that environmental issues were the cause of Easter Island’s societal collapse. While he does think that the damage they did to their island was a major part in Easter Island’s collapse, he believes that it was their lack of response to the issues that they themselves created, was what caused their once great society to collapse as it did.

5. My views on the collapse of Easter Island
I believe in a mixture of these two ideas. I believe that it was the great strain that the Rapanui put on the environment that caused their society to go onto the verge of collapse. It was they that put their world and their livelihoods in such a precarious position. But I think that it was the fact that after doing all this, they did not seek to remedy the situation. I agree with Joseph Tainter, that it was the fact that they did nothing to try to save their falling civilisation, that destroyed the island and its people.

Sources:

From Genocide to Ecocide, The Rape of Rapa Nui – sci.archaeology Google Groups
August 23, 2005
(http://groups.google.com/group/sci.archaeology/browse_thread/thread/86407c0d901eb015/2f9e4f4ece572a54?lnk=st&q=Benny+Peiser+easter+island&rnum=1&hl=en)

American Scientists Online – Rethinking the Fall of Rapa Nui
Terry L. Hunt, September/October 2006
(http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/53200?fulltext=true&print=yes)

Easter Island’s End
Jared Diamond, “Discover Magazine”, August 1995
(http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/24/042.html)

View of Easter Island Disaster All Wrong, Researchers Say
Kher Tan, March 9th, 2006
(http://www.livescience.com/history/060309_easter_island.html)

Easter Island – Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia
Page last modified on 14th March 2008
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_island)

Bill Totten’s Weblog: Easter Island, C’est Moi
Bill Totten, July 16th 2005
(http://billtotten.blogspot.com/2005/07/easter-island-cest-moi.html)


(ALL RESCOURCES FIRST COMPILED ON 15/03/08)