The Fall of Easter Island
By Harry Bird

Easter Island is the home of the great Moai Statues which were erected hundreds of years ago. It’s amazing to think that such a primitive civilization such as the one inhabiting Easter Island without machines, cranes or even wheels and animal power could create such structures, some weighing in excess of 80 tons. They had been created with nothing more than the muscle of the people who lived there. But just as many societies had before; it collapsed all of a sudden. How though? There are a few contradicting theories that I will address in this report.

The first framework for collapse is one that we have studied in class and that I am most familiar with; Jared Diamonds five-point framework. Jared Diamond’s framework focuses mainly on the environmental aspects for collapse and the self destruction of the natural ecosystem by the members of a society. In other words, forms of ecological suicide (ecocide). And also most importantly he focuses on a society’s response to the self caused issues. Though the framework also slightly emphasizes factors to do with hostile neighbours and loss of trade partners, these are irrelevant due to Easter Island being over 3000 kilometers away from any other inhabited island. Due to the primitive technology back before the collapse, there was no contact with any other society rendering these factors irrelevant when applying his theory.

If we apply the appropriate factors from Diamond’s theory to Easter Islands collapse, we essentially arrive at the following series of events;

Firstly is the building of the Moai statues and an increased population. After my research I found that these went hand in hand. Naturally without any source of power, no wheels, no machines or anything apart from their very own muscles, the sheer amount of people needed to create even one of these statues would be a high amount. And as time went by, there more statues there were built, the more people were needed. This led to what seems like an obsession between rivaling tribes to create bigger, grander and more statues. With this rapid increase in population and resources used to make the statues, it leads to the next event.

Rapid resource depletion is the next event. People need resources to live and statues need resources to be made. The more statues that were made, the more people were needed, the more resources were depleted to keep the society alive. At this point in my research it seemed to me like a vicious circle in which everything increased exponentially. Being the isolated place Easter Island is, there was never to be any aid from anyone else, which meant an extremely fragile environment. Once the resources were gone, that was just about it.

The next event is the one that ultimately caused their demise according to Diamond’s theory; the deforestation of the land. As more and more resources were needed, the society on Easter Island deforested the whole island in order to build canoes and vessels to transport these monumental statues and farm more crops. Of course, these threw the delicate ecosystem severely out of balance and that lead to even greater problems.

Two serious events that marked the end of the civilization on Easter Island due to the deforestation were the ruined topsoil from erosion, the extinction of native animals. The ruined topsoil made it impossible to farm and support the wildlife wish led all the people to starvation and out of desperation even cannibalism.

In summary of applying Jared Diamond’s framework, it was essentially their response to the problems that arose that saw them to meet their end. It was a drive to complete the Moai statues to rival other tribe’s statues that blinded them from seeing that they were destroying the environment and that depleting their resources would lead their island to collapse.
In regards to theories on response to problems, Joseph Tainter has devised a framework particularly for this. He suggests that there is three ways a society can respond to a collapse. The first one is when the society’s resources are being depleted at an exponential rate, but the leaders are too arrogant to change their ways because of cultural or religious reasons etc. This then causes an increased number of resources to be devoted to current goals regardless of what has happened. The second response is a society that cannot sustain itself when it is not constantly growing. Finally, the third one is when a society falls due to having far too many complex systems, causing it to become unstable, and then collapsing due even the slightest things.

If we apply Tainter’s theory, we can conclude that the society on Easter Island had all three of his factors;

The leaders are too arrogant and continue to deplete their resources exponentially while building the Moai statues, they then grow with hope that the statues will bring them prosperous futures, and the finally the delicate ecosystem on the island causes the collapse of the society.
Although Diamonds theory is the logical answer, some claim he is biased in his thinking in regards to ecocide. They say that although when the first colonists arrived, the Island may have been in a decline, this may not have been the sole reason Rapa Nui declined so rapidly.
The proof that Diamonds theory might not be completely accurate lies with the radio-carbon tests conducted in the last several years by the writer of the Rethinking the Fall of Rapa Nui article, Terry L. Hunt. It points to different explanations as to why the society collapsed. If these dates prove true, it places the deforestation of the Island virtually immediately as soon as the Polynesian settlers stepped foot on the Island; and that is impossible. It also points to saying that the population might never have risen to more than a few 1000 people because of the Island being unable to support it, as opposed to the 20,000 stated in Diamonds book. For Diamonds truth on population growth, should these radiocarbon dates prove to be accurate, the population would have to increase from a few dozen to 20,000 in a mere 500 years.

Hunt and the many other researchers who support this theory state that instead of, or at least part of the cause of collapse were British colonizers who introduced disease, took islanders away as slaves and rats which quickly multiplied; infact, rats seemed to be a key point in the decline. They had no predators on the Island, easily spread disease and as the population of rats sharply increased, they essentially ate all of the palm seeds on the island. These claims of collapse being caused by not the inhabitants themselves but by British colonizers are backed up by log entries in journals of the Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen who led the first European expedition to Rapa Nui in 1722. He describes it as "exceedingly fruitful, producing bananas, potatoes, sugar-cane of remarkable thickness, and many other kinds of the fruits of the earth…. This land, as far as its rich soil and good climate are concerned is such that it might be made into an earthly Paradise, if it were properly worked and cultivated." Also his commanders had allegedly spotted large tracks of woodland in the distance. This is contradictory to Diamond saying that the island was wasted when they first arrived and in fact, the few thousand found on the island might have been the full extent of their population.

These are the two main contradicting explanations I found with my research and when examining the evidence and comparing them they both seem to be very valid theories. There seems to be more evidence in the second theory of the European colonists but then again, the log entries by Roggeveen are very contradictory as he says it was a wasteland upon arrival but as he is leaving he changes his mind to explain the islands vast forests and ability to sustain life. Jared Diamond’s theory however fits in with the ideas and views of modern society. He has written his book, Collapse, to be a warning to society as we know it which I think has made it the more popular of the two. The proof of his theory is the isolation of the island which ideally makes it the perfect example of ecocide due to having no external causes and also the replication of this happening in other parts of the world today. Despite proof some think that this is only the most widely accepted theory because of the scare tactic of "this is what is going to happen to us if we don’t change".

When it comes to comparing Diamond’s and Tainter’s theory to another society we find one outstanding example of a society that did it right; Japan. In the late 16th century and early 17th century the governors of Japan had already felled almost all of the old-growth trees in order to build monumental buildings and images of Buddha. After a century of deforestation soil began eroding and rivers became polluted with silt. After the late 17th century Japan’s response to this growing environmental problem was what set it aside from Easter Island. The Japanese government declared large amounts of forestland national assets and anyone caught logging there was sentenced to death. They instead received their wood through imports to their country thus allowing the forests to restore to the density of what they once were. They essentially "gave" their deforestation to other countries and solved their own problems. Japan made the correct choice which caused them to avert collapse and have such a highly populated society today, whereas Easter Island’s decision to continue to cut down their palm trees caused their eventual downfall.

When it comes to comparing the causes of Easter Islands collapse to the society of today there is one fairly obvious example; the deforestation of Amazon rainforest. If we can apply Jared Diamond’s theory of Easter Islands collapse and apply it to today we find the Amazon rainforest is well on its way. Between May 2000 and August 2006 over 150,000 square kilometers were lost in Brazil and in total since 1970 that makes over 600 thousand square kilometers in all. By analysing the causes of Rapa Nui’s downfall we can conclude the same could happen for the Amazon and it appears to be unavoidable. The causes for deforestation in the Amazon mainly have been to increase livestock pasture and soybean production. Brazil is one of the largest exporters of soybeans and as the price for both soybeans and beef which is now free of Foot and Mouth Disease increase, the "need" to deforest more land increases too. This widespread deforestation shows no sign of slowing down as the Brazilian government has deemed it "effective use of land". Supply and demand and a blinded desire to make more money makes this a very real possibility. Should this continue and happen in other parts of the world as well, we too could suffer a similar fate as our Easter Island friends and we should learn from this.

Sources:

From Genocide to Ecocide, The Rape of Rapa Nui – sci.archaeology Google Groups
August 23, 2005 - Visited 7th March
(http://groups.google.com/group/sci.archaeology/browse_thread/thread/86407c0d901eb015/2f9e4f4ece572a54?lnk=st&q=Benny+Peiser+easter+island&rnum=1&hl=en#2f9e4f4ece572a54)

View of Easter Island Disaster All Wrong, Researchers Say
By Kher Tan, March 9, 2006 02:01 pm - Visited 7th March
(http://www.livescience.com/history/060309_easter_island.html)

American Scientists Online – Rethinking the Fall of Rapa Nui
By Terry L. Hunt, September-October, 2006 - Visited 12th March
(http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/53200;jsessionid=aaacZjM2c37S3l?fulltext=true)

Deforestation in the Amazon
By Rhett A Butler, - Visited 12th March
(http://www.mongabay.com/brazil.html)

DIAMOND (2005) Collapse, Penguin Books, Pg. 79-120 and Pg. 294-306

Transfer of deforestation: How Japan saved its forests by importing wood from other countries
By Kallie Szczepanski – Visited 19th March
(http://www.wrm.org.uy/deforestation/Asia/summary.htm)