What happened on Easter Island?

Credit: Aurbina, Wikimedia Commons

One of the most interesting books I’ve read that talks about environmental issues is Jared Diamond’s Collapse. It’s about societies around the world, and the differences between the ones that thrive and the ones that fail. Diamond wants to know if there’s anything we can learn from societies that collapsed, because those who don’t know their history are doomed to repeat it. He believes that one of the key factors for a successful society is for it to have a controlled and measured approach to environmental resources.

He looks into several ancient societies that collapsed, like the Easter Islanders, the Vikings in Greenland (but very successful in Iceland and Norway), and the Mayans in South America. He also looks into collapsed societies in modern times, like Haiti and Rwanda. Then he looks at two societies with environmental futures in the balance: China and Australia.

The Easter Island, or Rapa Nui, case is the most haunting, in my opinion. When the rest of the world came to their doorstep in the 1800s, the Islanders were struggling – their land was nearly barren, and they had very few resources. Their farms had problems with erosion, and the largest animals on the island were their chickens. Their skill at boat- and house-building crafts was much less than in other Polynesian islands. But then there were hundreds of the now-famous stone statues, evidence of a much larger and more prosperous society. Archeological remains show that in a previous time, the Islanders had a sophisticated and complex culture that’s now just a legend.

What happened to these people? Diamond thinks that the Islanders cut down all of their trees. All of them! There are currently no forests on the island, although similar islands all have them, and there is evidence that Easter used to have them. Only small shrubs and bushes remain now, with more trees being planted in recent years. Without their forests, the people had no source of wood for building houses or fires to cook their food. The soil erodes easily without trees to anchor it, makeing farming difficult for them. The animals that would have lived in the forests and been a source of food are long gone.

But why would anyone cut down all of their trees? We will never know. Perhaps the chiefs of the tribes demanded it, to create the logs and rope used to haul the statues into place. Perhaps it was just the usual demands of everyday living – too many people wanting bigger houses or boats. But after the trees were gone, life got very difficult for the Islanders: less food, less warmth, less shelter. During the wars in the centuries that followed, many of the statues were thrown down. Others were half-buried by the shifting sands.

It’s not all their own fault. Easter Island’s environment is uniquely susceptible to deforestation – it doesn’t get much rainfall, and has less fertile soil than other islands. So after they’d reached a certain point, there was no going back to the richly forested lands they first inhabited. And there was no way they could have known this, without the kinds of research we can easily do in our modern age. Diamond says:

I have often asked myself, “What did the Easter Islander who cut down the last palm tree say while he was doing it?”. Like modern loggers, did he shout “Jobs, not trees!”? Or: “Technology will solve our problems, never fear, we’ll find a substitute for wood!”? Or: “We don’t have proof that there aren’t palms elsewhere on Easter, we need more research, your proposed ban on logging is premature and driven by fear-mongering”? Similar questions arise for every society that has inadvertently damaged its environment.

The Easter Islanders may have known that they were cutting down their last tree, or maybe they thought there were still more left. But what’s our excuse? As we keep replacing our forests with urban development and sterile plantations, we already know the consequences, and what must be done to prevent them. What will we tell our children when our forests are no longer enough to absorb our pollution, or provide shelter for our unique wildlife? Or will we be able to tell them how we stopped the logging, and grew back our future? I hope so.