How Deforestation Caused Easter Island’s Society to Collapse

How Deforestation Caused Easter Island’s Society to Collapse
2012 06 08

By Lisa Hossler | EnvironmentalGraffiti.com

When the Polynesians first settled Easter Island as late as 1200 C.E., it was a sub-tropical piece of land covered with millions of palm trees. Five hundred years later, when the Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen came upon the island, there were no trees over 10 feet tall. The landscape was instead dominated by tall stone heads, known as Moai. Scattered across the island, the largest of these were up to 65 feet tall and weighed around 270 tons. Yet the island people the European arrivals found were emaciated and lacked an organized society. How could these people have constructed and transported such large objects?

The first setters on Easter Island found an island full of nesting seabirds and land birds. The soil, although low in nutrients, was good for growing the yams, sweet potatoes and other crops the people had brought with them. But it was the trees that were perhaps the most valuable resource for their society. The trees supplied fruit for the birds – both of which the humans ate – plus bark, used as a material for their clothing, and thatch for their roofs. The people also used the trees for building canoes and harpoons, which in turn helped them to hunt porpoises, their main source of food. What’s more, the trees supplied log rollers, sleds or levers, and rope made from fibers, all of which the islanders used to move and erect the hundreds of Moai heads for which Easter Island is now famous.

As well as bringing crops to cultivate, the early settlers developed systems of government and religion on Easter Island. They thrived for several centuries, yet their need for trees outpaced the ability of the forest to renew itself (with rats eating the trees’ seeds another possible contributing factor to the deforestation). Without the large palm trees, the islanders were unable to build their canoes and so eventually lost their main source of food. This forced them to focus their diet more on mollusks and birds, the latter of which soon also disappeared. With the land birds extinct and migratory bird numbers severely reduced, gone were the trees’ means of dispersing pollen and seeds.

[...]

Read the full article at: environmentalgraffiti.com

Share |

Latest News from our Front Page

Footage of Killer Machete ‘Terrorist’ Attack in Woolwich, East London
2013 05 24
Red Ice Creations: The following analysis of the killing in Woolwich, London is provided by many sources. Many different opinions are gathered, but on the whole it’s clear that the level of suspicion of the press, as well as government and security officials, is high. And with all that’s going on it’s not unfounded suspicion. There are still a multitude of ...

Soldier Beheaded in Broad Daylight Machete Attack
2013 05 23
Woolwich attack: terrorist proclaimed ’an eye for an eye’ after attack A British soldier has been butchered on a busy London street by two Islamist terrorists, one of whom proclaimed afterwards: “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” In the first terrorist murder on the British mainland since the 7/7 suicide bombings of 2005, the men attempted ...

Ciudad Blanca Found? The lost city in Honduras
2013 05 23
Explorers have been searching on foot for Honduras’s mythical city for generations. Now, they seem to have found it from a tiny Cessna airplane, aided by million-dollar technology. Is the fabled lost city of Honduras hiding beneath the dense jungle canopy? The Mosquitia rain forests of Honduras and Nicaragua are, to put it mildly, thick jungle. As one travel guide notes, "While ...

Cheetah-bot races into your post-apocalyptic nightmares
2013 05 23
An ongoing robotics project at MIT aiming to recreate the gait of a cheetah is sharing a new video showing off the latest progress. There’s a long way to go before anyone would call it catlike, but it’s impressive nevertheless. MIT Cheetah The Biomimetic Robotics Lab at MIT is attempting to create things much like those being made by the more well-known ...

When an Army of Artists Fooled Hitler
2013 05 23
Shortly after the D-Day invasion on June 6, 1944, two Frenchmen on bicycles managed to cross the perimeter of the United States Army’s 23rd Headquarters Special Troops and what they saw astounded them. Four American soldiers had picked up a 40-ton Sherman tank and were turning it in place. Soldier Arthur Shilstone says, “They looked at me, and they were ...

More News »