Changing Perspectives, Part 1
There’s an island deep in the Pacific Ocean. A tiny place that captures the imagination with iconic stone statues that line the shore. I’m talking about Easter Island, of course, the most isolated yet still comfortably habitable sixty-four square miles on Earth. Without long-range sea and air travel its isolation from the outside world is nearly complete.
Easter Island was once covered with lush temperate forest. Many tree species grew there along with a multitude of grasses, flowering plants, and other flora. Land animals were limited to birds, some of which were flightless since there were no predators. There were no mammals but abundant insects and as one would expect, a wealth of creatures in the waters offshore.
Humans showed up on Rapa Nui – their name for the island – around four or five hundred years after the birth of Christ. They found a paradise. Food was plentiful in the form of birds, fish, and plants, and the Easter Island Palm would have provided sap that was basically maple syrup. Building materials were in ample supply, space for farming was not limited, and the population of the island exploded.
But it wasn’t long before they had cut down most of the trees, which for some reason they used primarily to transport and erect heads carved from stone. No, extraterrestrials weren’t involved. The quarry where the heads were cut is well known and methods for moving, shaping, and erecting the enormous edifices using only indigenous materials and technology have been reconstructed. In fact, it seems that the most active period of statue erection was when the last of the trees were being felled. Instead of using their resources to improve they situation, they squandered them in an attempt to pacify cultural appetites.
No doubt, around this time, the people realized that they had eliminated their source of materials for boats and rope and hadn’t bothered to replace them. Fish, which had always been a primary source of protein for the islanders, could no longer be sought offshore so were replaced by chickens and humans. Cannibalism became widespread and autocratic religious cults sprang up and made war on one another. By the time Europeans arrived, the paradise the inhabitants’ ancestors had discovered had been transformed into a hellish nightmare, a fact seen in the description of the islanders by the Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeven, who named the island for the day of its discovery in 1722.
“We originally, from a further distance, had considered the said Easter Island as sandy; the reason for that is this, that we counted as sand the withered grass, hay, or other scorched and burnt vegetation, because its wasted appearance could give no other impression than of a singular poverty and barrenness.”
But European attention did not improve the downward spiraling plight of the Easter Islanders. Many of the inhabitants were kidnapped and taken to South America where they were sold as slaves. Ultimately the island was claimed by Chile who turned it into a sheep farm and sequestered the remaining population into a tiny area around the only serviceable harbor on the northwest coast. There they lived in disease-infested poverty, exploited and mistreated by their Chilean overlords.
Conditions are better now, thanks to the efforts of missionaries after World War II who brought the plight of the Easter Islanders to the world’s attention. There are still several thousand inhabitants and steps have been made to restore a more balanced ecosystem. The original plant and animal species are long extinct but related species from other Polynesian islands are being use to plant new forests.
Easter Island is perhaps the most striking, human-induced ecological disaster in the history of our species. Stating this is nothing new and the lessons should not be ignored. However, the obvious environmental theme is not the reason for this essay. Comparing Easter Island’s fall to our own teetering biosphere doesn’t require insightful analysis. I’m driving at something deeper and more elusive. Something which many of us, especially Americans, take as axiomatic, and perhaps once was, but just might not be true anymore.
Next: Part II.
-Futbol Guru, http://www.mises.org/community/blogs/not-a-lemming