Concluding thoughts Part 2 - The Society

So now I will summarize my thoughts about what it was that pushed the society into complete demographic collapse. As I have argued in my blog, I don’t find the ecocide argument that convincing and have instead looked for other alternatives, most notably the argument that European contact was what really caused the population to rapidly decline.

The argument that places the degradation of the environment on Easter as the cause for the collapse of the society ‘ecocide’ argues that the islanders were dependent on the forests for numerous resources, not only for food but also the wood provided material for canoes used to fish, ropes and logs to transport the great stone statues and so on (Diamond 2005). Therefore once the forests became scarce the islanders ran out of resources and Easter exceeded it’s carrying capacity, causing the society to pushed into famine, internal strife and civil war, ultimately resulting in collapse.

 As mentioned previously Hunt & Lipo’s (2009) paper observes that the only sharpest and sustained population decline on the island occurs long after the greatest period of deforestation, but more notably directly after European contact, where it very sharply drops. This gap of several hundred years between deforestation and demographic collapse made the ecocide argument unconvincing for me on its own, but also important was, as I mentioned in ‘Part 1’, the fact that the islanders showed the ability to adapt to their degrading environment.

I therefore looked to the other major argument, that European contact was the cause for the collapse of the society on Easter. The main evidence for this I suggest is Hunt & Lipo’s (2009) observation about the only sustained population decline occurring after European contact. Indeed, this is something you would expect, with the well documented effect of Old World diseases wiping out New World populations upon contact. Furthermore, the main evidence used by other writers to display periods of warfare (obsidian points) appears to actually become most common after European contact in the 18^th century.

Additionally, Bahn (1997) documents frequent visits in the 18^th and 19^th century by Europeans on the island, a number of which involving abduction and murder (also to note is that a great amount of raids would have gone undocumented). Bahn (1997) estimated that around 1000 to 1400 natives were deported by slave raiders between 1862 and 1863, which would have been devastating to such a small island.

Finally, one key piece of evidence used to describe civil warfare that tore the island apart following the deterioration of the forests are oral traditions, are notoriously unreliable (Rainbird 2002), being transcribed by European missionaries who would likely want to portray the islanders as savages needing the Europeans to save them and turn them to civilization (and Christianity). Additionally, despite the dearth of oral traditions describing conflict placed before European contact, there are almost none that describe the traumatic experiences the islanders faced after contact, involving repeated slave raids, killings and other such atrocities (Rainbird 2002), again making the issue of bias clear.

I therefore find the argument that European contact was the cause of population collapse a more compelling one, mostly due to the observation that evidence for warfare is most prolific at this point and that the society on Easter increases in size right up to European contact and then very sharply declines. Furthermore, the other main source of evidence for warfare, oral traditions, are very dubious sources of information with the question of bias being significant, making the counter argument a relatively weak one.

Concluding thoughts Part 1 - The Forests

Firstly I'd like to say sorry for a long gap between this and my last post but you know what it's like going back to the family home at Christmas! Anyway, back to Easter Island! In this and my next post I will be concluding my thoughts about the mysteries of Easter Island; what caused the forests to deteriorate and what caused the population to collapse? In this post I will be looking at the forests. The conventional story argues that the islanders put too much pressure on the forest, both for food resources and for wood for canoes and the statue building. Other writers argue the importance of climate change while others put further alternatives to blame, such as rats and so on.

Rollet and Diamond (2004) argue that the key issue facing the island was that the geography of Easter was extremely vulnerable, to an extent that it was predisposed to deforestation. Receiving some of the lowest amounts of volcanic dust and tephra than any other Pacific islands meant poor soil quality and receiving a relatively small amount of rainfall but reasonably strong winds compounded this. The island was therefore very fragile, and the presence of some thousands of Polynesians that were dependent on the land for most resources would have put enormous pressure on the environment.

Hunt & Lipo’s (2009) paper observed that the greatest period of deforestation (around 1200AD) occurs several hundred years before the only sustained population decline on the island that occurs after European contact, suggesting that the islanders were not the sole driver of deforestation as they were not solely dependent on the forest for all their resources. As Hunt & Lipo (2009) add, the islanders developed numerous adaptations to the poor geography of the island to cope with resources scarcity, suggesting that they did not just thoughtlessly put up with an increasingly degraded environment. Furthermore, as I discovered in this post, the islanders may not have even used trees that heavily for statue building and transportation, which is a key source of blame in the conventional argument. 

This conclusion therefore led me to look at the role climate could have played in deforestation. One of the first things I noted while researching this was Hunt’s (2007) observation that Easter’s forests survived thousands of years of climatic changes since the Pleistocene, suggesting that it is unlikely climate could be solely to blame. Junk and Claussen (2011) developed climatic models to observe the influences El Nino Southern Oscillation could have had on Easter’s vegetation, as well as the impact of volcanic eruptions, the Medieval warming period, the ‘Little Ice Age’ and a number of other climatic variations. They concluded that no significant or even marginal changes in vegetation or forest cover was observed as a result of climatic variations between 800 and 1750AD on Easter. Although they add that is possible small scale changes in climate could have been important, such as localised droughts, a crucial issue is that there is no direct information about climate change on Easter (Mann et  al.2008).

Since it seemed that it wasn’t just the islanders that pushed the environment to the limit, and that climate was also not to blame, I looked for alternative explanations. One argument is that rat populations on the island would have been able to grow on the island without predation (small island with low biodiversity and lack of predators (Diamond 2005)), putting enormous pressure on forests as they are able to prevent them regenerating through their use of tree nuts as a primary food source (Hunt 2007). Hunt (2007) noted that as the forest declined, so did rat populations, making this an interesting argument. Andreas and Bork (2010) noted several issues with this argument, an important one being widespread evidence of felled and burnt trees across the island, suggesting that both rats and humans played relative roles of important. I therefore conclude that it is likely the combination of human and rat pressures on the forests in an already fragile environment was the main cause for deforestation, with localized droughts probably also playing a role.

Europeans - is there anything we haven't ruined?

As I have discussed, the traditional Easter Island story has been criticized for numerous flaws, notably by Hunt & Lipo (2009), on the argument for ecocide as the cause of societal collapse. One issue is the disconnect between deforestation on the island and the population collapse, as I mentioned in an earlier post these two events occur between 100-300 years apart (Hunt & Lipo 2009). This therefore leads me to question whether it was environmental degradation that pushed the society to the edge. Many writers instead argue that contact with Europeans was the cause for the demographic collapse on the island, the fact that first contact with Europeans occurs around the time the sustained population decline instantly makes this an interesting argument (First European visitor - AD1722, Population fall - AD1750 [Hunt & Lipo 2009]).

The ecocide argument, as Rainbird (2002) comments, rests mostly on the connection between environmental degradation and the ensuing collapse. But the evidence suggesting that these two are causally related appears questionable. Diamond (2005) uses the discovery of obsidian points in archaeological finds as evidence for periods of increased fighting, but Bahn and Flenley (1992) point out that these points become most common in the 18th and 19th centuries, where they become the most common artifact on the island, suggesting conflict occurred then, not centuries beforehand. Another source of archaeological evidence are bone pathologies from human skeletons, but as Rainbird (2002) writes, most skeletal injuries observed appear non-lethal, with no evidence of widespread civil war before European contact. Additionally, Hunt & Lipo (2009) note that the islanders developed coping strategies such as stone mulching to optimize crop cultivation in the increasingly nutrient-poor soils and variable rainfall conditions of Easter, suggesting that environmental degradation didn't just push the island into infighting. Furthermore, Hunt & Lipo's (2009) research also suggest population increased during the worst period of deforestation.

Obsidian axes similar to those found on Easter

Another important source of evidence for the ecocide argument is oral traditions of the islanders, which describe periods of social upheaval and conflict. Peiser (2005) notes, that it is generally agreed the oral traditions of Easter are untrustworthy, contradictory and historically unreliable, as well as being relatively late in origin. Rainbird (2002) raises a very interesting point, that there are a dearth of traditions attributed to pre-European contact, but none that describe the numerous violent confrontations with European invaders  during the first half of the 19th century, which considering the fact that oral traditions where transcribed largely by European missionaries makes the question of bias a very important issue. Rainbird (2002) suggests that it is likely in an attempts to display the islanders as savages and Europeans as bringing civilization to them, the missionaries in a way edited the oral traditions to date the times of conflict before European contact.

Bahn (1997) writes that between 1722-1862, some 53 recorded vessels visited the island, with a number of these visits involving abduction and murder. For example, a common practice was for whale ships to abduct islanders to replace crew that had died during the voyage (Bahn 1997), and it is widely agreed that slavers repeatedly raided the island. Bahn (1997) suggests that mass deportations and raids led to the social order of the island collapsing, with whoever was left behind fighting over what little resources the Europeans had not taken. It is possible, Bahn adds, that the oral traditions that depict internal violence reference these periods, not events many hundreds of years earlier, which seems plausible considering how young many of the oral traditions are (Peiser 2005). Bahn (1997) adds, that an estimated 1000-1400 natives were deported by slave raiders between late 1862 and early 1863. As population estimates range from 3000 to as high as 20000 (Flenley and Bahn 2003), this would be devastating (especially if numbers were near the lower range, which Hunt & Lipo's research suggest they were).

The debate over whether it was European contact that caused the population collapse is therefore a compelling one, especially considering the proximity of both these events, as well as separation between the collapse and the environmental degradation. The main archaeological evidence of conflict (obsidian points) suggests that most conflict occurred after European contact. The evidence to suggest the conflicts occurred in the island's prehistory appear relatively unreliable, mostly being based on oral traditions (Peiser 2005). Finally, the islander's adapted to their changing environment, and population actually appears to increase despite deforestation (Hunt & Lipo 2009). As we know so little about this time period it is difficult to categorically state that the collapse was caused by European contact, but the similar timings, the ability of European contact to cause demographic collapse (Hunt & Lipo 2009) and the lack of evidence to suggest otherwise seems to indicate it is a plausible argument.

Unraveling the Mystery of Easter Island

So my last post was about rats and the role they may have played in deforestation on Easter Island. As you may have noticed, a great deal of the rat debate comes from the archaeologists Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo, (who I think I take far too much information from!). Upon searching the news for stories related to Easter Island I came across this blog entry on the courier-journal.com, reviewing one of Hunt and Lipo's latest books "The Statues that Walked: Unraveling the Mystery of Easter Island," written in 2011. As Peter Smith at the courier-journal reviews, the book goes into great detail looking at the entire Easter Island story, reviewing (and rejecting) evidence for the traditional explanation (ecocide) and instead suggesting that rats drove deforestation the island and that contact with Europeans led to the island's ultimate collapse.

Mr. Smith makes a closing point which I think is very important: assuming ecocide was not the cause for the collapse on Easter, the alternative story still offers lessons: "Live within your means. Watch out for invasive species. And especially invasive people," (Courier-journal.com 2012). The impact invasive species can have on ecosystems, as I have discussed, can be potentially catastrophic, so if we can't learn a lesson about human driven environmental degradation from Easter, we can certainly be more cautious about this one. Especially as humans have time and time again ruined the biodiversity of numerous ecosystems by introducing outside species into them - e.g. introduction of the Nile Perch into Lake Victoria in 1955 devastated native fish populations. Anyway, I highly recommend both Hunt and Lipo's book and the courier-journal.com, which seems to offer news and posts related to almost anything I can think of let alone Easter Island! 

A rat race?

As my earlier posts have discussed it is likely that deforestation was driven by a number of factors. I touched upon the role that rats may have played in this post but now I will go into a bit more detail about them. Hunt and Lipo (2009) write that there is an extensive literature documenting the profound impact rats have had on the vegetation and ecosystems of a number of islands across the Pacific. Although, Diamond pointed out (2005) that while on some islands rats have had catastrophic effects, on others they have made no apparent impact, showing that although there is potential for rats to be damaging to island ecosystems they aren’t necessarily the cause in every case. 

Andreas and Bork write (2010) that it was common for Polynesian settlers to bring rats with them to an island as a valuable source of protein, and indeed on Easter numerous rat bones were found in archaeological excavations and often in cooking pits. Rat bones on the island have been dated to first appear as back as between 600AD and 1260AD (Andreas &Bork 2010), showing that they were around long enough ago to potentially have played a role in the greatest period of deforestation between 1200AD and 1650AD (Hunt & Lipo 2009).

If you remember from one of my previous posts, the island had a particularly fragile environment, especially to invasive species due to the relatively small biodiversity and lack of predators (Hunt 2007). Rat populations therefore could have grown very rapidly on the island, and as palm nuts were a primary food source (Sardar 2008) it is likely they would have had some sort of destructive impact on the forests, as was seen on numerous Hawaiian islands (Hunt 2007).

Hunt (2007:496) Shows decline of rat population between early and late period – rat populations dependent on forest resources?

However, as Hunt (2007) comments, the relative contribution of rats to deforestation remains poorly understood, although a large amount of palm nuts have been discovered gnawed. Andreas and Bork (2010) add that numerous pieces of evidence suggest that rats were not responsible for deforestation. Firstly, rats are unable to kill mature trees, making palms fully grown by the 13^th to the 15^th century able to survive till the first European contact due to their relatively long lifetime, suggesting a number would have indeed been cut down. Furthermore, numerous palm stump relicts have been found, as well as widespread ash and carbon layers to show that fires had burned over extensive areas of the island (Andreas & Bork2010).

Despite this, I believe writers like Hunt & Lipo are more suggesting that rats played a role of relative importance, rather than an all or nothing factor. Although it seems unlikely rats could have been the sole cause for deforestation, the evidence suggests that they must have played a significant part. Rat populations could have grown almost completely unhindered on the island and as palm nuts were their primary resource, it is likely this growth would have been reflected by forest destruction. Indeed, the greatest period of deforestation appears to occur following the growth of rats on the island and as the forests declined so did rat populations.

The statues that walked?

Since my last post concluded that climate change probably wasn't the cause for the collapse on Easter, my following posts will be talking about other possible causes. Today however, I thought I would just share a very interesting video I came across on National Geographic's website that shows an alternative method of statue transportation to the classic story (using numerous logs to roll them).

The video shows a group of archaeologists moving statues down a path using just rope - and to be honest, if a group of pasty archaeologists can do it I'm fairly sure the hardened Polynesian's could have handled it easily enough as well! If the Easter Islanders did in fact move their statues using just rope, this suggests the deforestation on the island wasn't a clear cut case of them cutting down all the trees to satisfy their need to construct statues. Therefore, it is likely something other than just the islanders played a part in the severe deforestation, but this is something I'll come onto in another post.

The Usual Suspect?

In my last post I discussed whether or not ecocide was the cause for the collapse of the society on Easter Island and as I concluded with a probable 'no' I'm now going to talk about what else could be to blame. Now, the title of this post doesn't refer to the mid 90s neo-noir film starring Kevin Spacey (although I highly recommend it), but instead I'm going to be talking about the common suspect behind environmental issues - climate change.

brrr! 

When I started reading around to understand the argument behind climate change as the cause for deforestation on Easter Island, two issues came up repeatedly - that there is no direct information about climate change on Easter, especially between AD1000-1700 (Diamond 2005, 2007, Mann et. al. 2008) and that Easter's forests survived tens of thousands of years of climatic fluctuations since the Pleistocene (Diamond 2007, Hunt 2007).

These two issues therefore already make the case for climate change a tough one but two articles I read argue the case in spite of this. Mann et. al. (2008) argue that although palaeoenvironmental history of Easter is very poor, some hypotheses can be made. One interesting argument is that latitudinal shifts in subtropical storm tracks could have resulted in changes in intensity and frequency of cyclonic storms in the Pacific in a way that would have deprived Easter of a great deal of rainfall (Mann et. al. 2008). Most of the rain on the island comes from cyclonic storms moving across the Pacific, but the track of these storms can shift depending on the temperature gradient between the pole and equator which varies on an annual, decadal and millenial time scale. It therefore could be that these shifts in storm tracks may have deprived Easter of rainfall that was already fairly low, leading to severe droughts on the island and thus driving deforestation. Although this is an interesting hypothesis, Mann et. al. agree that it is as yet untested.

Strenseth et. al. (2009) argue that periods of greatest deforestation (AD1250-1650) coincide with the most intense El Nino Southern Oscillation activity during the last millennia, suggesting that there could be some correlation. ENSO is known to directly or indirectly cause shifts in Sea Surface Temperatures which can lead to lower biomass production. As a result of this it is possible that the islanders may have put greater pressure on forest resources in order to either build larger canoes in order to reach other fishing grounds or to create more land for agriculture to cope with lower marine food resources (Strenseth et al. 2009). In a Hunt and Lipo paper (2009), evidence suggests this is an unlikely explanation as the palm trees that largely made up Easter's forests were not likely to be used for woods and marine food resources do not disappear from the faunal record at all, with sea mammal bones remaining present in even late pre-historic deposits (i.e. there was no decline in fishing that would have led to a resulting increase on land resources, at least to an extent that would push deforestation alone) (Hunt and Lipo 2009).

Added to the two issues I raised at the start of this post and the lack of convincing arguments elsewhere, I do not think climate change played a hugely significant role in deforestation on the island, although as Cole and Flenley (2007) comment, it is likely forest vegetation recovery may have been constrained by droughts at times, I do not think that any specific climatic events caused it's downfall.

Easter Island – ecocide?

Easter Island is widely referred to as a classic case of ecocide “where the ancient Polynesians recklessly destroyed their environment and, as a consequence, suffered collapse” (Hunt & Lipo 2009:601). In this post, as Jo rightly mentions (who, by the way has a great blog about societal collapse of the Norse in Greenland – here), I will be examining how accurate this is – to what extent was the collapse of the Easter Island society a result of ecocide?

As I established in previous posts, Easter supported a subtropical tall forest and a range of food resources from shellfish to land birds (Diamond2005, Hunt 2007). However, the island was also a relatively fragile and vulnerable environment, with quite poor soil subject to strong winds and highly variable rainfall (Hunt & Lipo 2009). It is therefore no surprise that the arrival and growth of human populations on such a small and isolated island led to the depletion of these resources and the degradation of the environment as a whole.

On the surface the widely known image of collapse on Easter as a case of ecocide seems likely. Early research puts the blame largely on the shoulders of the Polynesians, the French explorer La Perouse commented in 1786 that the islanders “were indebted to the imprudence of their ancestors for their present unfortunate situation” (1789:318-319 in Hunt and Lipo 2009:602). The common explanation being that as population grew, more forest was cut down for agriculture, fuel and statue building and at a rate faster than it could regenerate (Diamond 2005).

Although this seems plausible, recent research casts doubt on this version of events. Although to summarise all the research against this case would be beyond the scope of this meagre blog, I will discuss a couple of issues raised in recent papers.

Hunt (2007:485) argues that “prehistoric deforestation did not cause population collapse,” using numerous observations to illustrate his argument. One major issue is that all palaeo-environmental evidence used in papers discussing the conventional story has questionable reliability and validity, with error margins often between 100 to 200 years (Hunt 2007). In this paper Hunt stresses that humans were not the sole driver of deforestation and points to the huge impact rats would have had. As a small, closed ecosystem Easter would have had little biodiversity and few, if any predators, making invasive species hugely threatening (Hunt 2007).

Documented rat population growth rates on other Pacific islands suggest rats could have grown into huge numbers in a very short space of time on Easter. Many other Pacific and Hawaiian islands have seen severe deforestation resulting solely from rats, as they use tree nuts as a primary food resource, thus preventing tree populations from regenerating (Hunt 2007). Hunt argues the relative contribution of rats to deforestation remains poorly understood and that is highly likely that both a combination of humans and rats, and indeed other factors, would have driven deforestation.

Doesn't seem so bad does he?

Hunt and Lipo (2009) make a number of points, but one argument that struck me was that the period of greatest deforestation occurs between AD 1200 and 1650, a period where population actually rose, with the only sustained decline of population occurring between AD1750 and 1800, after the arrival of European visitors (Hunt & Lipo 2009).

Source: Hunt T.L. and Lipo C.P. (2009:609)
Obsidian hydration dates used to infer population - obsidian used to make tools, weapons etc.
Population rises between 1200-1650, only sustained drop post European contact (downward arrow)

In both papers (Hunt 2007, Hunt & Lipo 2009) the sharp population decline on the island is framed as resulting largely from contact with Europeans, due to disease and slavery, with conventional arguments being based on speculation about prehistoric population size and unreliable palaeo-environmental records. Even in Diamond’s book Collapse (2005) this issue is clear, as many conclusions are drawn from evidence on the Poike Peninsula which are then extrapolated to the entire island (Diamond 2005). This is an important issue as Poike is in fact relatively peculiar in that is one of the few places on the island not covered in bedrock outcrops (Hunt & Lipo 2009) and therefore an unreliable analogue for the rest of Easter.

I therefore think that the collapse on Easter is not a clear cut case of ecocide, as records show that there was not a solid trend of deforestation matching population decline and that the largest periods of population decline occur after contact with Europeans. Furthermore, humans were likely not the only cause of the environmental degradation, as mentioned earlier the soil on the island was poor to begin with and as Hunt (2007) shows, other factors such as rats would have had a huge impact. I will go into alternatives in more detail in later posts, but it is clear that the conventional story is not completely sound.

A bit of geography!

As I will be talking about Easter Island in the following blog posts, I suppose it is necessary, as a Geographer, to give an overview of the island's geography.

Easter Island, as mentioned previously, is a very remote island located in the south eastern Pacific Ocean many thousands of miles from any other landmasses (2300 miles from Chile, 1300 miles from Pitcairn Island) (Diamond 2005). The island is located at a latitude of 27 degrees south in the subtropics. This subtropical location gives it a mild climate but interestingly as all other Polynesian settlements lay much closer to the equator, Easter is relatively cool in comparison. The weather on the climate involves relatively strong winds but a very small amount of rainfall at around just 50 inches per year (Diamond 2005). This rainfall percolates very quickly into the soil of the island due to it's volcanic nature, cutting down freshwater supplies significantly, as shown by the island's one intermittent stream (Flenley and Bahn 2003).

Easter Island - Middle of nowhere!

Why is this important?

Even if you didn't ask, I feel like I should probably tell you anyway. The isolation of the island made life difficult for the islanders in two important ways. Not only did it make communication with other Polynesian colonies difficult but it also made it relatively deficient in biota:

• Flenley (1993) reports only 48 plant taxa for the island, fourteen of which were introduced by Polynesians 
• Few if any indigenous terrestrial vertebrates with just two lizard species being native to the island (Klemmer and Zizka, 1993 cited in Hunt 2007)
• Steadman et. al. (1994 cited in Hunt 2007) report just 25 seabird species 
• Diamond (2005) documents just 127 species of fish compared to over 1000 species at Fiji 

Similarly, the subtropical location of the island brings a lot of negatives for the colonists. As all other Polynesian colonies were far closer to the equator, many crops they brought over to Easter grew poorly there, such as coconuts (Diamond 2005) or breadfruits (Hunt 2007). Furthermore, this cooler climate meant the ocean surrounding the island could not support coral reefs as other Polynesian islands could, greatly reducing the amount of fish and shellfish available to them. 

Finally, the relatively low amount of rainfall has obvious implications, as the islanders would have had to put a considerable amount of effort into obtaining freshwater with such a limited supply. As Hunt (2007:486) comments, not only was the rainfall limited but it could also "fluctuate dramatically" and "serious droughts could have been a significant problem" due to the low rainfall and excessive drainage of Easter's soils. Additionally, strong and salty winds would have had a devastating impact on agriculture (Hunt 2007) as well as causing breadfruits that could grow to drop before they were ripe (Diamond 2005).

From this overview we can see that the Polynesians that settled on Easter would have had a comparatively hard time surviving there than on many of the other islands in the south Pacific. Not only were resources relatively limited, the weather was against them, they had little ability to remain in contact with other islands and many crops and foods they brought to the island were ill suited to it's climate. However it is clear, purely by the fact that the islanders were around for many hundreds of years to follow, that they could adapt to these problems - to an extent, at least. 

Collapse and Easter Island

As this is my second post I’ll still keep things a little more laid back. This week I’d like to share with you an extremely good lecture of Jared Diamond’s on Societal Collapse via Youtube. The video is only about 20 minutes long but provides a great overview for the things I’m going to be talking about in this blog:

Although I could probably write a gigantic review of this lecture as it was packed with interesting stuff, I will only touch on a few things Diamond talked about. In my blog I’m going to largely be focusing on Easter Island as I personally find it a fascinating case study. There are a couple of questions Diamond asked in his lecture that I hope to expand on in future blog posts but for now I will just provide an overview of the Easter Island Tragedy. 

Easter is a very remote island lying far out in the South Eastern Pacific Ocean, over 2300 miles from the west coast of Chile and 1300 miles east of Pitcairn Island. At one point in time the Island was relatively rich in resources, supporting a subtropical tall forest with plenty food sources (Diamond 2004). The island was first settled by Polynesians who migrated there from other Pacific Islands between the years 700 to 1100 AD (although this itself is an on-going debate).

Somehow, between this date of settlement and the arrival of Europeans in the 1700s the island had become severely deforested, with every single tree cut down and all species of tree extinct (Diamond 2004). Furthermore, all land birds native to Easter had become totally extinct as well as other food resources collapsing, and as some have argued, pushing the Easter Islander society into collapse resulting in war, starvation and cannibalism as they battled “it out over whatever resources remained,” (Barbour 2008:132). For the Easter Islanders to watch their environment degrade over such a long space of time and mostly as a result of their own actions, as I will discuss in later posts, I find almost baffling.

As Diamond asks in the above lecture, how did the societies not see what they were doing? What did the Easter Islanders say when they cut down the last tree? How could they not see the impacts they were having on their environments and react in time? And I think these are very telling questions for human society today as it is arguable with Global Climate Change we are heading in the same direction, what will we say when we are about to use up our very last natural resources? Will we continue our current course into likely environmental degradation despite the cause and effect of this issue being fairly clear to us?

To make up for this being a fairly long post I’ll leave you with a happy birthday e-card from the Easter Island stone statues that I was shown on my birthday a few days ago:

So if you know anyone who is both interested in Societal Collapse/Easter Island and has a birthday soon, show them this blog and the e-card!

Societal Collapse: An Introduction

One of the greatest issues facing current and future human generations is that of Climate Change. Living and growing sustainably while adapting to future changes in the environment is a serious concern for people worldwide. It is therefore important to understand how societies have reacted to environmental change in the past and the role, if any, played by the environment in their downfall.

The collapse of societies is obviously brought about by a huge range of causes. In Jared Diamond’s book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2005), five major factors that contribute to societal collapse are identified:

• Climate change
• Hostile neighbors
• Collapse of essential trading partners
• Environmental problems and 
• Failure to adapt to environmental issues.

It is therefore clear that the environment can play numerous roles in the breakdown of societies, with the root issue often (but not always) lying in the relationship between overpopulation and environmental carrying capacity.  

I personally find the collapse of past societies particularly interesting because the problems those ancient peoples faced are in many ways analogous to the challenges we face today and this is something I will explore through this blog amongst other issues.

As Flenley and Bahn point out (1992), past societies have carried out for us “the experiment of…unrestricted population growth, profligate use of resources [and] destruction of the environment,” allowing us the ability to learn from past failures and possibly overcome future challenges.