Does the likely history of Easter Island hold an economic warning for us?

[leftofthedial]

Anthropologists hypothesize that the end of the Rapa Nui inhabitants of Easter Island was accelerated when the gap between the wealthy elites and the workers became unsustainable. Within a few years, population and standard of living declined precipitously and never recovered.

Sound familiar?

[ColbertWatcher]

1. Absolutely.

http://www.pbs.org/gunsgermssteel/

[leftofthedial]

3. cool site! I'll explore it.

Thanks!

[Burma Jones]

2. Check this out

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Short_History_of_Progress

[leftofthedial]

4. of course, no migration was possible for the Rapa Nui,

because they had destroyed all the trees and could no longer make boats to take them from the Island.

[kestrel91316]

5. Sounds like us on Planet Earth, only on a larger scale.

We're ruining our only home.

[tanngrisnir3]

6. Which anthropologists hypothesize that? It was disease, not class struggle

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_island#History

97% dead in about 10 year. Small Pox.

[Veritas_et_Aequitas]

8. That was after the introduction of the Spanish.

Before then they managed to deforest their island and deplete it of other resources in a class war that largely consisted of tribes and families trying to outdo each other by creating more and more of those big heads. Jared Diamond's Collapse has a good chapter on the subject.

[leftofthedial]

9. their civilization's collapse happened long before white men showed up

and gave the few survivors small pox.

[tanngrisnir3]

12. Where is the evidence of that, please?

[leftofthedial]

13. smallpox was introduced by the Spanish

When the Dutch discovered and named Easter Island in 1722, the population was estimated to be 2000-3000 natives. There were no trees, no significant agriculture and very poor soil. The natives' living conditions were very primitive, much more primitive than the other Polynesian societies the explorers encountered.

Subsequent archeology estimates that in their heyday, 700 to 1000 years earlier than the Dutch "discovery," when the culture began erecting the giant head carvings, the population was at least 7,000 people and possibly greater, with some estimates as high as 30,000. It also is evident from archeological study that the island was well forested and had soil good enough to support a thriving local agriculture.

http://www.islandheritage.org/eihistory.html
_Environmental Science, Tenth Edition_. by Richard T. Wright

Beyond this, you can do your own research. I don't have time to educate you on facts that are readily available from numerous sources.

[tanngrisnir3]

17. I don't have time for ridiculous figures

I tend not to trust a source that would claim "up to 30,000" for that tiny little island. It's not big enough to support enough food for such a figure, let alone have room for that many people.

Enjoy your time spent not educating me.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

18. "It's not big enough to support enough food for such a figure"

That's pretty much the point. Overpopulation, deforestation, and exploitation of resources led to a massive population loss in the hundred years or so before Europeans first showed up and found 2,000-3,000 survivors.

[tanngrisnir3]

21. No, I mean it could never have got that large to begin with.

The figure of 30,000 is ludicrous.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

22. More conventional estimates are about 10,000 to 15,000.

So 30,000 doesn't strike me as a particularly ludicruous upper limit.

[tanngrisnir3]

23. I don't see any evidence that those figures are 'more conventional'

and the island has simply too little arable land and land that could be dwelt on for anything even close to 30,000.

[leftofthedial]

24. I'm just telling you what some have said.

the usual estimate (the one I gave prominence to) is about 7000.

You are being pointlessly argumentative.

[Veritas_et_Aequitas]

7. No, of course not.

It's not like we're following an ideology that is doomed to deplete our resources...

I mean, our society doesn't have strong undercurrents of social/racial oppression in it...

Well, at least we're not carving giant heads.

[leftofthedial]

10. I hear the repukes want to propose their own "WPA"

in which we all carve giant stone heads of ronnie raygun and drag them down to the Louisiana coast and set them up.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

11. Oy Vey.

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[leftofthedial]

14. Cawabunga!

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[Lost in CT]

15. Why speculate on the past. Haiti is a textbook example of this. nt

[leftofthedial]

16. Examples abound.

Why not consider them all?

[City of Mills]

19. I always thought

They cut down so many trees to aid in moving their giant Moai that they ended up permanently altering the natural ecosystem of the island, depriving them of food? Not that I can confirm that, I wasn't there...

[leftofthedial]

25. this is clearly true. they completely deforested the island.

the question is why they escalated their head carving to the point that it destroyed their own civilization.

An insane elite, which "owned" everything and forced the workers to act against their own best interests is one possibility. That sounds to me much like the modern history of our world.

[leftstreet]

20. Easter Island rocks