Easter Island Paradigm

Many consider the fate of Easter Island a warning for the Earth. If a society consumes natural resources recklessly, that society will fail. Certainly, an environmental lesson can be drawn from the island, but other social phenomena occurred over the course of the Easter Island civilization that tell us much about humanity as well.

Polynesian colonists arrived at Easter Island as early as 500 AD. The island is famously very isolated and comes up from the water quickly. For this reason, it lacks coral reefs to produce much seafood. A thousand miles from any other island, trade was extremely limited. Unlike the rest of Polynesia, the population had to rely on what was solely on the island and little else. Luckily, in the beginning, the island was heavily forested with a number of animal species.

The Easter Island people, at first, thrived and their numbers grew to over 20,000 by some estimates. After the deforestation of the island and the extinction of the wildlife, the population fell. Boats could no longer be built, thus, trapping the population there. By the time it was discovered by Europeans throughout the 1700’s, the population had fallen to around 1,200 and they were described as a thin, meek people. The environmental lesson is obvious.

But there was a long social history as well. Cultural changes followed economic changes.

As Easter Island’s society grew, their monuments grew. The first mammoth heads were built around 1100 AD and the last were built around 1600 AD. Competing tribes, to outdo each other, would build larger and larger heads. Then, corresponding with their ecological disaster, they stopped. Rather than build, which didn’t have the manpower and food to do, tribes would outdo each other by knocking statues down. That practice eventually stopped as resources continued to dwindle.

As the society and environment collapsed, the people of Easter Island began to eat fewer domesticated livestock. They began hunting wild birds driving them to extinction before switching to rats. They eventually fell into cannibalism. The society recovered slightly after the sharp population drop and cannibalism stopped in the Eastern Island community by the time the Europeans had arrived. The society still mentioned cannibalism in its euphemisms, though.

The Easter Island people went from construction during good times to destruction during bad times. Eventually, though, with no hope to compete and only a desire to survive, cultural apathy took hold. I wonder if humans in their personal life follow this same trend. We all seem to go through waves of construction, destruction and apathy as well. Are they simply in response to gain and loss?

It took a long period of time for cultural practices to form and a long time for them to be erased. They followed economic trends, but there was a lag period. Cultural practices are able to take hold with time when there is an economic incentive to (i.e. women working, emigration/immigration, driving smaller cars) and they takes some time for them to go away when economic barriers are removed (low divorce rates, eating chitlins). Is all culture simply economic induced practices and lags?

In retrospect, Easter Island shouldn’t have consumed so quickly and carelessly, but if they hadn’t, they wouldn’t have built those heads and fallen into cannibalism. Those ups and downs made them interesting and remembered. Of course, they were remembered as a being stupid.