Land ahoy: Easter Island

Easter Island is a Polynesian island, located in the south-eastern Pacific Ocean. Around 700 -1200 A.D. a small group of Polynesians reached the island and settled there (despite the closest inhabited area they could have come from being 1,600 - 2,000 miles away). It’s probable that they came from either the Gambier Islands or the Marquesas Islands as these were the closest inhabited islands. This small group of people, possibly just one family, grew into the Rapa Nui civilization. 

Easter Island location... Pretty out of the way. Source: Google Maps

During their time on the island 887 monumental statues called ‘Moai’ were erected and dramatic landscape change occurred. 

Moai statues. Source Taringa!

Have a read of the National geographic article on the history of the Moai statues. There's also a really nice animation on how it's thought the statues got to where they are now, which you can watch in full on Youtube. (It gets going 40 seconds in!).

It is thought that the Rapa Nui civilization ended roughly in 1530 with a collapse of the Ancestor Cult and the rise of the new Bird Man Cult.

As we’re beginning to learn, when it comes to civilization collapse a load of theories come with it.

The traditional explanation for collapse was Ecocide, coined by Jared Diamond in his 2005 book 'Collapse: How societies choose to fail or succeed'. He argues that inhabitants degraded their environment, due to their preoccupation to create imposing stone statues, to such an extent that they were no longer able to survive there. Through paleoecology it’s been shown that when the island was colonized it had dense forests with high species diversity. Today there are no trees on the island. It has been argued that this subsistence farming society cut down all the trees by slash-and-burn management which led to a growing population and decreasing wood resources. This increasing population pushed the islands carrying capacity to the extreme and the lack of wood meant that they could not restore/build new canoes for them to leave the island. Jared Diamond argues that Easter Island is a classic example of a society causing its own collapse by over exploiting their environment.

Source: Chris Madden cartoons

A Malthusian explanation can also be applied suggesting that populations grew until the carrying capacity of an increasingly degraded environment was surpassed, which led to dramatic population decline and collapse.

For a long time these two theories were used to explain what happened on Easter Island. However with more modern technologies and deeper understandings of societal-environmental interactions, new theories take precedence.

In my next post I’ll start looking into how theories of collapse have progressed from ecocide and the classic Malthusian hypothesis.

In the meant time take a look at some of the slightly weirder hypothesis that have emerged (especially the alien invasion). It may be a good idea to have a closer look at the role of rats…  10 fascinating theories