249. THE ECO-COLLAPSE OF EASTER ISLAND IS A MYTH
Easter Island plays a key role in peak oil theory as a metaphor for the earth. Its "eco-collapse" is regarded by peak oilers as a moral tale, which shows us what is in store for modern civilization if we don't get our act together and powerdown. Here's a typical description of the peak oiler view by lawnorder at the Daily Kos:
Disaster on Easter Island: When Nature trumps Economy
This is what happened in Easter Island:
Ever more wood and rope were needed to move the effigies, but a growing population, coupled with the drive for bigger and bigger statues, wiped out the trees. ... given the island's extremely fragile ecology, they didn't grow back.
1. For some reason those huge statues were all the rage and every tribal chief wanted more, bigger and better statues.
2. But no matter how much money or prestige was showered into the statue builders, there came a time that there were NO MORE RAW MATERIALS to make them.
3. Importing them from other places was impossible with the islanders' technology at the time, since Easter Island is pretty isolated.
4. And then the economic fueled hunger for raw materials started an ecological disaster: Deforestation, i.e, all trees of the island were cut to cater to the "statue making industry".
5. By cutting all trees, the islanders created an even bigger ecological problem: soil erosion, wildlife migration. Which in turn made the yield of food from harvests and hunting decrease significantly and brought the onslaught of famine...
A deforested island suffered from soil erosion and a lack of food and raw materials. Starvation, a population crash, cannibalism, and social collapse followed. (2)
This story of Easter Island's ecological suicide was popularized by the best-selling environmentalist author Jared Diamond in a book called Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. The book has become one of the "core texts" of peak oil theory because it shows how a complex society can collapse into starvation, warfare and cannibalism due to myopic consumption of a critical resource (wood for the Easter Islanders, oil for us moderns).
As went Easter Island, so will go modern society...
That's what the peak oilers say, and it would all be very scary except for one critical fact: Jared Diamond's theory is a fairy tale. He made the whole thing up for propaganda value.
This fact is demonstrated in an extremely interesting paper called From Genocide to Ecocide: The Rape of Rapa Nui* by Dr. Benny Peiser of the Faculty of Science, John Moores University, Liverpool. By judiciously sifting through original sources and archeological research, Dr. Peiser tracks Jared Diamond to his lair, and shows how Diamond's scholarship is marred by biased gullibility, selective quoting and a deep-seated agenda. Peiser's conclusion is that the complex culture of Rapa Nui (Easter Island) never self-destructed in a late 17th century spasm of starvation, warfare and cannibalism due to the ecological myopia of its native inhabitants.
The facts show, rather, that Rapa Nui's high culture was destroyed by the predations of the Europeans who murdered, raped, enslaved, mass deported, infected and Christianized the island's inhabitants -- well-documented facts which Diamond conveniently fails to mention. In short, Diamond's theories of the collapse of Easter Island are an elaborate, borderline-racist example of deflecting attention from the true perpetrators, and blaming the victim.
-- by JD
-----*) Energy & Environment, Volume 16, No. 3&4, 2005. Many thanks to Robert Schwartz for this enlightening link.
**) More on this topic here: 260. MORE EVIDENCE DEBUNKING THE ECO-COLLAPSE OF EASTER ISLAND
posted by JD @ 4:10 PM
15 comments
15 Comments:
And who can talk about Jared Diamond without recalling this golden oldie? I would have liked to gone to the LA Natural History Museum's "Collapse" exhibit and handed out that essay to everyone entering the place.
you are welcome. You are an articulate exponent of my observation that enviromentalism is the last socially acceptable refuge for racism. Keep up the good work.
Roland,
What makes you think the Easter Islanders were dependent on the palm?
And what makes you think they didn't have at least some palm trees when they first encountered Europeans? This bit from Peiser's paper got me wondering:
"Diamond's assertion that Easter's discoverers encountered an island devoid of trees is also contradicted by Carl Friedrich Behrens, Roggeveen's officer. According to Behrens' description of the island and its inhabitants, the natives presented "palm branches as peace offerings." Their houses were "set up on wooden stakes, daubed over with luting and covered with palm leaves" (Behrens, 1903:134/135; his account was originally published in 1737).
Behrens concluded his remarkably cheerful description of Easter Island and its natural environment on a high note: "This island is a suitable and convenient place at which to obtain refreshment, as all the country is under cultivation and we saw in the distance whole tracts of woodland [ganze Wälder]” (Behrens, 1903:137).(P. 518)
Benny Peiser is the Michael Lynch of Anthropology. His main point seems to be that Eco-collpase is always the most fashionable explanation among hundreds of other theories.
To beleive that the collapse of Easter Island is a Myth one must believe the culture of Easter Island is a thriving civilization to this day. To believe that peak oil is somehow debunked or that our civilization cannot suffer a similar eco collapse is to beleive that dinosaurs still walk the earth.
No one ever said Easter Island never collapsed. And dinosaurs suffered eco collapse? If you want to call a meteor eco-collapse, sure. Or if you want to call naturally occuring global climate change eco-collapse, then again sure.
So what is Easter Island an analogy for? An alien invasion?
LOL. That's pretty true.
chris, I couldn't help but notice that you provide no rebuttal whatsoever to the actual content of Peiser's paper.
Silly me. I actually read the paper (twice) before forming an opinion of it. ;-)
The sentence in Peiser's paper which really resonated in my mind was this:
"The striking lack of research into actual European atrocities contrasts noticeably with the fixation of most researchers on hypothesised ecological 'suicide' which is squarely blamed on the self-destructive actions of the natives themselves."
That is very true, and very sad. Diamond is just the latest European to exploit the natives for his own purposes. If he wants to talk about the brutal, barbaric collapse of Easter Island, why not focus on the one we know happened, for a fact.
BBC Horizon did a programme on Easter Island in 2003. They include both the deforestation/civil war theory and the fact that Europeans bringing their diseases and slave trade to the island which dealt a final crippling blow. The Peiser paper claims no archeological evidence of starvation or cannibalism, however there is evidence of violent war and the abandonment of statue erection. What is disputable was the cause: Deforestation? Climate-induced extinction of the palm? Or a simple clash of ideologies leading to the overthrow of the statue-erecting elites?
But the Easter Island story was always a poor fit for the current peak oil doomer scenario. Tree-driven economies can actually be sustainable since trees can be grown within a human's lifetime. One cannot say the same of one barrel of light sweet crude -- depletion started when the first productive well was drilled.
"To believe that the collapse of Easter Island is a Myth one must believe the culture of Easter Island is a thriving civilization to this day."
No, that does not logically follow. Peiser's claim is that Easter Island did not commit suicide, it was murdered. I don't know whether Peiser or Diamond is correct. However, I do know that other Native American societies, such as the Tiano were wiped out by disease and slavery. Eco-suicide would be a unique explanation. Murder, is unfortunately common, which makes it more likely.
A good discussion on this topic at sci.archaeology is located here.
here's another new data point about easter island that further blows the eco-collapse theory out of the water.
it looks like humans weren't even on the island until 1200A.D.!
I am forced to agree, my diary at kos does present a very simplistic explanation of Easter Island demise.
I also have to agree that the truth is more on Peiser side. Most likely European conquerors did more damage than the ecological disaster.
I don't really subscribe to the doom and gloom sect of peak oilers. But the threat is very real and will bring at the least a sizable recession. It is just simple math. When distribution costs grow 2X of what they are, our goods will be a lot more expensive. Ergo, will sell less. Ergo factories will close.
Hopefully that will be all that we will see, and an alternative will present itself. But we are running out of time.
And that was the main point of my flawed diary at kos. No matter how much money you throw at a problem, some things can't be resolved immediately. We need time to convert our distribution of food, parts, etc from oil to something else. Our agriculture has to be converted as well from using oil based fertilizer and pesticides.
So if we have an alternative to oil we best start conversion NOW. I don't see any viable alternative to oil now, do you ?
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You guys are all wet so to say, NONE of you are working or have done any work on the island. Its laughable to read your comments. jacob Rogeveen was on the island for 1 day, and in his quotes "there are no trees taller than 10' tall" Learn your facts.
I am doing the palynology in Rano Kao, want to really know what the island was like? and what humans caused? read the Rapa Nui Journal any science and study is printed there.
"I am doing the palynology in Rano Kao, want to really know what the island was like? and what humans caused? read the Rapa Nui Journal any science and study is printed there."
Yes I do want to know, goddamit, it's fascinating! This may come as a shock to you iorana, but I haven't got a copy of the Rapa Nui Journal lying around. Any chance of a quick run down of the latest thinking on"what the island was like and what humans caused"? JD has taken one man's essay as proof that all other theories of Easter Island's history are racist nonsense, which seems premature to say the least. Why don't you give us a more balanced overview?
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