╨╧рб▒с>■  ?A■   >                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                ье┴%` Ё┐H3bjbj"x"x 1<@@H+      д╪╪╪╪╪╪╪`4№№№№ Ф┘╢((((((((XZZZZZZ$ПhўN~╪╥((╥╥~╪╪((У888╥о╪(╪(X8╥X88╪╪8( ░0Ую5Q╔№АЖ8Xй0┘8E(E8E╪8 (V~Ї8r─6Ь(((~~. (((┘╥╥╥╥ФФФd° ФФФ° ьD0,\╪╪╪╪╪╪     This potted history of Easter island was originally published in a less than august journal - the National Power research labs monthly newsletter, shortly after the closure of the Leatherhead site had been announced in 1991. I had previously submitted articles on various aspects of the natural history of the site - badgers, spurge laurel, woodland flowers etc. The prospect of leaving my badgers and sending out CVs coloured my viewpoint of free market economics, inspiring me to submit the essay below. It was retyped and slightly modified 15 February 1994, but I have left in the introductory paragraph to convey the background to the essay. The text below was last updated 28 Nov 2008. йййййййййййййййййййййййййййййййййййййййййййй Since this is the last article I will write for the newsletter, please forgive me if I broaden my scope to more global matters. This is at least consistent with the maxim (espoused by Friends of the Earth and others) of thinking globally but acting locally. The story below concerns somewhere about as far removed from Leatherhead as it is possible to go, a small island in the eastern Pacific called Easter island. This may seem entirely remote from our lives, but as you will see it has lessons for us all. Easter island is not large (a triangle with sides of 15, 11 and 10 miles covering an area of c. 166 km2 - forgive my mixing of imperial and metric units). It was first discovered by Europeans in 1722, by a Dutch explorer Roggeveen after a voyage across several thousands of miles of open ocean without a single atoll or reef. The crew were astonished to see that the barren treeless island was already inhabited; dark skinned people similar to the polynesians who populate the western pacific, but some with some paler skins as well. More remarkable than this was the giant statues dotted around many parts of the small island, huge heads unlike anything anywhere else in the world and far too heavy to have been moved by bare hands (which was all the islanders possessed). After the usual exchange of pleasantries (natives stole a few trifles and were subsequently shot), Roggeveen moved on. The story of giant statues on Easter island will never be fully known, and has given rise to stories of a lost Atlantis, visitors from outer space, and ancient mystics carrying their knowledge from Egypt to South America to Easter island. The truth is far simpler, and of relevance to modern society. We can reconstruct the pre-history of the island quite accurately, despite a lack of written records. Pollen grains preserved in peaty areas of the only lake on the island tell us of the days before man came along, while archaeology and verbal traditions illuminate later periods. Easter island is a young volcanic outcrop (c. 30,000 years), and since the closest land mass is >1000 miles away, few plants ever colonized it, and no land animals apart from an endemic genus of snail (now extinct). The discovery of this tiny speck of land in an otherwise empty quarter of the pacific by stone age people must rank as one of the most amazing achievements of mankind. Before man arrived the island was forested, with some typical polynesian trees plus a cousin of the huge Chilean wine palm (Jubea). The Easter island species is extinct, but a fine specimen of Jubea chilensis can be seen in Kew temperate house - the biggest pot plant in the world! Humans arrived on Easter island around AD1200 (older sources suggest c. AD400, but in 2006 revised carbon dates were published), and around the same time charcoal and pollen of crop plants appeared in the lake sediments. The arrivals could only have with them what they could bring 1000 miles in an open boat; some crops, chickens and their culture. The legends tell of the first coloniser of the island Hotumatu'a, who brought with him taros, yams, sugar canes, bananas, Ti (Cordyline), and trees such as toromiro (Sophora toromiro - we know that this species was endemic and that this bit of the legend is incorrect). Many animals were brought, but only chickens and rats survived the journey. (As an aside, the rats in question were the polynesian rat Rattus concolor, not a pest but a food animal hunted by kings. The king of Tahiti asked Captain Cook as a favour for some of the magnificent and huge european rats he brought on his ship!) It seems that a complex society developed on Easter island, with a priest/leader caste, distinct tribal units, and religion involving ancestor worship and the polynesian deity Makemake. No memory remains of why or how giant statues were carved out of solid stone and carried over the island, but such hard and pointless work suggests a highly differentiated society with strong leaders. The majority of the statues were carved this millennium (c. AD1400-1600), and when the worked stopped it was with an abrupt halt. Half-complete statues still lie in the Rano-raraku quarry, testifying to a rapid collapse of the old order. The old legends tell tales of battle, conquest, treachery and cannibalism, but the local politics of the situation miss the point. There were no more trees. The population must have depended for much of its protein supply on fishing, for the only large edible land animal was man. Although cannibalism was common, it had the drawback that it generally resulted in blood feuds. Fishing, and any hope of escape, needed trees to make boats. Moving and erecting statues certainly needed timber, probably using logs as rollers and scaffolding. The human population peaked somewhere around AD1600 (maybe later) at c. 10,000, with each new human helping to clear forest and burn scrub. Maybe everyone knew that if they kept on clearing the island there would be nothing left, but still they kept on chopping and burning. Exponential processes such as population growth act incredibly quickly once they have 'taken off', so that the time between seeing a problem and being overtaken by it may have been too short to change traditional ways. Finally someone long forgotten cut down the last tree. No more timber to move statues or make boats, no more deep sea fishing. In ecological terms the humans had exhausted their resource base, and the environment could no longer support the population. The main population crash seems to have occurred in the late 1600s, due to starvation and internecine warfare. (A lag between final clearance and population crash probably represents the period when the available timber was re-used until rotten and the land was exploited beyond its limits). The archaeological record shows a large number of obsidian arrowheads and defensive structures - humans retreating to caves, hens being kept in heavily fortified mini-castles (hens were food, to be guarded with your life). This was civil resource war, following ecological collapse. You might think that this experience would have taught the Easter islanders to respect their environment. In fact they subsequently destroyed a sooty tern colony on an outlying islet by overharvesting, and reduced the population of the Sophora bush to a solitary specimen (from which a few seeds were rescued by Thor Heyerdahl shortly before the species finally vanished from the island). Deep traumas in a peoples' history leave scars that last centuries. We had the bubonic plague, and still sing Ring-a-Ring-o'-Roses and bless someone when they sneeze. Easter islanders have ancestral spirits (once venerated, now bogeymen) who appear as emaciated, decomposing corpses. It may not be a coincidence that they have always been noted by travellers to be a nation of highly competent thieves. After the eco-collapse, they worshipped a unique Easter island god the birdman Tangatu manu, who symbolised the freedom to escape, while they were stranded on a prison of their own making. So far the history of the island puts primitive man in a bad light. After 1722 the Europeans who landed there showed themselves to be no better. The island was visited by several European ships in the century after their first discovery, and each time a few natives were abducted. Then cheap labour was needed to mine guano on the Peruvian coast, and on Friday 12 December 1862 Blackbirders (pacific slave boats) visited Easter island to gather new recruits. Half the island's population (then c. 3000) was forcibly taken, including all the Ariki class (priests, holders of verbal traditions). One year later, following official complaints from the British and French governments, the few hundred survivors were returned to their native island. Fifteen people lived long enough to return home, bringing with them smallpox and tuberculosis, which decimated the remaining population and effectively brought to an end the vestiges of civilization that survived ecological collapse 400 years previously. So what is the relevance of this distant and desolate place to use? It is a microcosm for the action of unbridled human population in a finite world. Humans are exploiters par excellence, and don't (or won't) understand the need to harvest their environment sustainably until it is too late. It is no coincidence that the remains of the most advanced civilizations tend to be surrounded by ecological disaster zones. The flame that burns brightest must die the fastest. It is worth noting that population growth on Easter island was not fast by modern standards; the doubling time during the first few hundred years was about 50 years. By modern standards this is slow, reflecting the harshness of stone age life. Parts of Africa today have a doubling time around 20 years, and for the planet as a whole the figure is around 40 years. If intelligent aliens were to visit this planet in the next millennium, will they find a desolate world overpopulated by people, and little else but giant works that are too advanced to be the work of the inhabitants of their wrecked planet? And if a powerful and distant civilization does invest the resources to travel huge distances, they are unlikely to have done so for charitable reasons nor merely to satisfy their curiosity. Should alien civilizations ever reach planet earth, I doubt that we will fare much better than did the stone age folk of Easter island; after all, you can't buck market forces. The population / time curve for the island (exponential growth, a brief plateau, and decline lagging a declining resource base) is mathematically the same as a fungus rotting away a log. When I saw the reconstructed population / time curve, I scribbled in my notes 'the Thatcherite path'. Peter Shaw, September 1991. Bibliography Bahn P. & Flenley J (1992). Easter island, earth island. Thames Hudson. Diamond, J. (1990). The rise and fall of the third chimpanzee. Radius press, London & New York. Hunt, T. L., Lipo, C. P.( 2006). Late colonisation of easter island. Science 17 March Vol. 311. no. 5767, pp. 1603 - 1606 Metraux, A. (1974). Easter island. Book club associates, London. Mitchell, A. (1989). A fragile paradise. Fontana / Collins. 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