Concluding Thoughts

I’ll be the first to admit that when I started investigating Easter Island, I came across Jared Diamond’s Collapse and thought, wow, how could the Easter Islanders do this to their own island, ‘what were they thinking?’. But as I researched Easter more, I came across numerous other theories, and evidence, behind Easter’s collapse, and I realised that the Easter Island mystery was much more complex than I first thought. I’ve made a table with the summary, evidence and sources of each of the theories (see this previous post).

I started looking at climate variability and its effect on marine biomass, agriculture and other resources. I then looked at deforestation due to rats, which is an alternative theory behind deforestation as proposed by Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo. Deforestation, soil erosion, population expansion, resource depletion and warfare and cannibalism were then investigated in turn, which formed the ecocide theory that as Polynesians arrived onto the island around A.D. 800, population began to expand, as did culture and religion. Both population, and the construction of the moai statues expanded beyond the island’s limits and caused resource depletion and deforestation, which then caused soil erosion and agricultural failure. The population began to decline, and in turn caused warfare and cannibalism as the hierarchal society structure of chiefs and priests were replaced with the ‘birdman’ cult. Lastly, the impact of the European’s arrival, whalers, other colonists, slave-raids and the introduction of foreign diseases on Easter’s population were investigated.

I have tried to be as unbiased as possible when reviewing each of the theories, and looking at how Easter is a parable for today, yet I have found this quite difficult due to the considerable scientific and public support for the ‘ecocide’ theory, and the way in which those who oppose Diamond have argued their case. For example, Benny Peiser (2005) and Mark Lynas (2011) believe that the ecocide theory is just as much a myth as what actually happened on Easter Island. However, their argument seems to be based on a vendetta against Diamond, where they pick parts of his theory that they do not agree with, but don’t provide scientific evidence for doing so, and do not provide an alternative theory based on scientific evidence. I think that scholars investigating Easter Island have slightly lost their way when it comes to evidence and science, where they either seem caught up in the lessons we can learn from Easter or disagreeing with Diamond rather than providing alternative theories based on evidence. They, in my opinion, need to look at the work of Bahn and Flenley, who used archaeological and palaeological evidence from numerous lines of evidence to inform their theories that deforestation was probably the cause behind Easter’s collapse. Improved estimates of settlement dates, peak population, timings of population collapse and reasons behind the collapse are constantly emerging, and I think its this that we need to concentrate on if we are to understand the Easter Island mystery.

I personally think that deforestation did occur on Easter by looking at the pollen evidence, and this in turn triggered soil erosion, which can be seen in the soil profile on Poike Peninsula (see previous post on Soil Erosion). However, I do think that the evidence surrounding resource depletion, such as a reduction in porpoise bones, needs much more work before we can completely prove that population expansion beyond the island’s limits caused resource depletion, particularly deforestation, reduced soil erosion causing agricultural failure, a collapse in Easter’s culture, warfare and cannibalism and the corresponding population collapse. I think that deforestation and soil erosion did occur on the island, and that resource depletion did to some extent cause a population decline. However, I think that it was the European’s arrival, bringing foreign diseases, and slave-raids, which essentially caused the final population collapse. New estimates of population peaks on Easter propose number more like 3000-4000 people. The combination of slave-raids, which took 1500 people, and bringing diseases the natives were non-immune to, in my opinion, could have easily reduced the population from 3000-4000 to its estimated post-collapse numbers of 100 people.

So, what’s the point in this blog?

Despite my opinion, many scholars think that Easter collapsed due to this ecocide theory. My last few posts investigated the lessons that we can, and have learnt from Easter Island, and demonstrates the reason why so many of us argue over the reasons behind its collapse. Easter can be brought into the 21^st Century as a lesson that we can learn from, in terms of societal collapse due to population expansion, resource depletion and deforestation. Today’s society faces many environmental problems; water problems, deforestation, end of tropical rainforests, overfishing, soil erosion and salinisation, global climate change, full utilisation of the world’s fresh water supplies, exhaustion of cheap energy resources, accumulation of toxic chemicals in water, food and soil, increase in human population and increase in the per capita impact of our population. I investigated the lessons that we can learn from Easter’s collapse, particularly resource depletion, population expansion and deforestation. Essentially, Easter as a parallel to Earth boils down to politics and decision-making, but our decision-making can be different because we can use the lessons learnt from past societal collapses such as Easter Island to inform current decisions on our environmental problems.

Easter Island is tale of wonder, where one of the most socially and technologically advanced societies for its time managed to inhabit and flourish on one of the most isolated and inhabitable places on Earth. Yet, it can also be a tale of warning for today’s society, where the same reasons behind Easter’s collapse could be applied to today’s society.

And so, I reach the conclusion for this blog. Thank you all for reading my blog, I really have found it fascinating researching Easter Island and I hope I’ve been able to translate a fraction of this fascination into my blog for you to read! While my blog stops here, the mystery of Easter Island will carry on and with this in mind, I’ll leave you with one more quote:

“Of all the vanished civilisations, no other has evoked as much bafflement, incredulity and conjecture as the Pacific island of Rapa Nui (Easter Island).”