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20 Lessons From Easter Island
Editor's Notes
- Tell the story of Easter Island – from Jared Diamond’s Collapse book. Easter Island is about the most remote inhabited land on the Earth. The early polynesian settlers would have forgotten their origins and would not have known about the existence of any other humans. There was no-where for them to escape to if things went wrong. Population expanded and the islanders farmed as well as fished, using boats made from wood from native tree species. They developed a culture of statue building, the statues became larger over time. Transport and erection of the statues would have used large amounts of wood for construction and bark rope. The trees were used for everything, boat building, housing, fuel for fires, rope making. At some point all the trees were cut down. Very many statues were left half finished or abandoned in the quarry at the centre of the island, indicating that statue building came to an abrupt stop when it was still in full swing. The likely reason for the abrupt end of statue building was probably the fact that all the trees were cut down. The tree species on Easter Island were unique to the island and they are now extinct! Loss of the trees was catastrophic. Soil erosion made agriculture more difficult and they could not build deep water boats for good fishing. Food supply collapsed and so did the population. It has been suggested that canabalism was very common. The lesson is not that the Easter Islanders were necessarily any more profligate than any other Polynesian Islanders (although the fact that the volcanic stone on their island was perfect for statue building may have led them to build larger statues than any other islanders). Diamond’s study of many Polynesian islands found that the climate of Easter Island (a bit further South therefore colder than other islands, and with poorer soil) meant that trees would have been slower growing than on almost any other island. So in a sense, the Easter Islanders were just unlucky. They exceeded the carrying capacity of their island, but they probably didn’t know it until it was too late. This introduces several crucial concepts: Carrying capacity: the fact that the land has a maximum size of population it can support for a certain structure of society (innovation can increase the carrying capacity) Delayed Impact: Actions can be taken whose impact is not immediately felt; but when you do realise there is a problem there is too long a gap before you can recover.