The Different Theories of Easter Island’s Collapse Easter Island, or as some would call it “Rapa Nui,” was one of the most isolated islands in the world that was inhabited by humans. The island does not have a lot of wood and other resources and yet, when the first travelers discovered the island, it was full of huge carved stones statues. Around the twentieth century they discovered that when the first settlers came to the island, it was rich with resources and bountiful land. The first settlers also had a complex society with a hierarchy and sophisticated religious rituals. According to Barzin Pakandam, from the London School of Economics, The inhabitants of Rapa Nui are the descendants of a group of Polynesian settler colonists. It was estimated that at first there were only twenty to thirty settlers that arrived on the island. They arrived on large conjoined sea-faring canoes built for long distance travel. The settlers brought many traditional Polynesian staple foods with them including chickens, rats (considered a delicacy), taro, yam, sweet potato, bananas, gourds, paper mulberry, turmeric, and arrowroot. Archaeologists and historians assume that the origins of the Islanders are the archipelago chain of the Mangareva’s (Pakandam, 2009, p. 9). First, researchers were interested in how these settlers carved the statue and transported them all over the island, but they changed their focus to the theories of how the islanders was driven to collapse. The researchers came up with different theories as to why the islanders were driven to collapse and they are still debating which theory is the right one. One of the first theories as to why the islanders were driven to collapse was that the islanders overexploited the natural re... ... middle of paper ... ...ted investigations of sediment archives in the crater lake of volcano Rano Raraku which contradict this hypothesis. On the basis of pollen data they found no evidence for a significant impact of rats proceeding anthropogenic woodland destruction” (2008, p. 24). Another scientist also found evidence that the rats were not abundant and was valued as currency for the Polynesian people. Brown (2006 [1924]) found that the Pacific rats were valued as currency by the islanders in the past, this report shows that rats were not abundant, but few on the island, and so the islanders will look at the animals as a valuable food source, not as a major environmental problem (2006 [1924]). Meith also conducted some research based on the intensive analysis of soils and sediments at several sites, and he also disagrees with the hypothesis of a major rat overpopulation (Mieth, 2010).
The island is about 4 square miles and is today a place for tourism in the great lakes. Many thousands of years ago though this was a little piece of land with bluffs reaching high above its surroundings and was a merely a small piece of land surrounded by water. It was because of these bluffs the appearance of the island resembled a turtle and led to it being named “The Great Turtle” (Piljac, 1998). Currently the island reaches several hundred feet above the lake and it’s because of this geography that many nations saw this as a perfect military post and would be used over and over again throughout its history as such.
A small company of thirty-four New England missionaries came to Hawaii between 1820 and 1930, were the first modern immigrants. (Lind p.59) Missionaries were powerful agents of cultural destruction, coming to Hawaii to settle and teach their ways and beliefs. Bloodthirsty priests and despotic chiefs had ruled one reason for missionaries arriving and settling in Hawaii, due to the fact that they believed ancient Hawaiians. (Trask p.14) Bringing along cultural havoc by establishing a western style educational system, which included the first textbook as the Bible. The most critical change was in the use of language as a tool of colonization. Language had once been inseparable from the Hawaiians and their history by communicating their heritage between and among many generations, now came to be used as the very vehicle of alienation from their habits of life.
The Hawaiian culture is known throughout the western world for their extravagant luaus, beautiful islands, and a language that comes nowhere near being pronounceable to anyone but a Hawaiian. Whenever someone wants to “get away” their first thought is to sit on the beach in Hawai’i with a Mai tai in their hand and watch the sun go down. Haunani-Kay Trask is a native Hawaiian educated on the mainland because it was believed to provide a better education. She questioned the stories of her heritage she heard as a child when she began learning of her ancestors in books at school. Confused by which story was correct, she returned to Hawai’i and discovered that the books of the mainland schools had been all wrong and her heritage was correctly told through the language and teachings of her own people. With her use of pathos and connotative language, Trask does a fine job of defending her argument that the western world destroyed her vibrant Hawaiian culture.
...have been destroyed and hundreds of thousands of people have reaped the consequences, yet they are only Pacific Islanders; they lay dying from cancer, being born with birth defect, and even mothers giving birth to stillborn babies. (Keever, 1-23)
Bollig, L. (1927). The Inhabitants of The Truk Islands: Religion, Live and a Short Grammar of A Micronesian People. Munster i W.: Aschendorff.
In The Lorax, the trees produce a fabric that could be used on anything and everything. With all the resources of trees gone the species that once were dependent on it were forced to migrate elsewhere. Their population did not become extinct. Something that caught my eye about the people on Easter Island was that exploiting their resources was part of their culture. They used up their resources to build and they went overboard with it. At one point they could’ve realized that they had enough statues/monuments and left the land fallow to regain its nutrients. Unlike the Lorax, once the people of Easter Island ran out of its resources and were not able to hunt for food they resulted to cannibalism. This would later lead to human extinction on the
Between the years 300BC-400BC, a group of inhabitants landed ashore the island of Easter Island, also known as Rapa Nui. Once ashore, these settlers began collecting resources and learned to survive with no help from the outside, stranded on an island in the middle of the Pacific. They created methods to hunt, fish, make clothing, and cook food properly. In addition, the people of Rapa Nui also separated into different groups or tribes. These tribes coexisted on the island for some time – until civil wars broke out across the island. The inhabitants of Rapa Nui disappeared from the island without a trace. The cause of their disappearance is unknown although experts believe the inhabitants of Rapa Nui were irresponsible with their resources.
Jovik, Sonia P. and James O. Jovik. (1997). “History.” Atlas of Hawaii. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, p.408.
Kirby, Brendan. "Point Clear : Shrinking island in a sea of growth ." Mobile Press-Register 26 March 2001.
Ii, John Papa., Mary Kawena Pukui, and Dorothy B. Barrère. Fragments of Hawaiian History. Honolulu: Bishop Museum, 1983. Print.
In the chronological, descriptive ethnography Nest in the Wind, Martha Ward described her experience on the rainy, Micronesian island of Pohnpei using both the concepts of anthropological research and personal, underlying realities of participant observation to convey a genuine depiction of the people of Pohnpei. Ward’s objective in writing Nest in the Wind was to document the concrete, specific events of Pohnpeian everyday life and traditions through decades of change. While informing the reader of the rich beliefs, practices, and legends circulated among the people of Pohnpei, the ethnography also documents the effects of the change itself: the island’s adaptation to the age of globalization and the survival of pre-colonial culture.
The Polynesian peoples have a lifestyle quite different than that of any other culture, as living on an island requires a level of flexible adaptability in order to cope with such a different, sometimes difficult environment. We see the way diverse cultures build their lives around their circumstances and how they respect them in their cultural myths and stories. The Polynesian legends emphasize the physical environment that they live in. They are quite different than any other region in the world, but the beauty and individuality of the Polynesian culture is prominent as seen in their mythology.
“Once in a while you find yourself in an odd situation. You get into it by degrees and in the most natural way but, when you are right in the midst of it, you are suddenly astonished and ask yourself how in the world it all came about,” Thor Heyerdahl once said and that is what happened to him. One day, he was wondering whether the Polynesians could have come from South America instead of Asia as was commonly thought by scientists then, and the next, he finds himself out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean on a wooden raft with five other men and a parrot trying to prove his hypothesis true. To prove that Polynesians could have originated from South America, Heyerdahl built and sailed across the Pacific Ocean on a man-made raft from South America to Polynesia.
Weisburd, Stefi. "Volcanoes And Extinctions: Round Two." Science News 131.16 (1987): 248-250. Health Source - Consumer Edition. Web. 13 Jan. 2014.
In approximately 800 A. D. a group of around forty Polynesians voyaged across the Pacific Ocean in two large double canoes. Possibly seeking new lands to settle, this small band of intrepid travelers eventually discovered a small (64 sq. mile) island that they decided to make their new home. The island they encountered was triangular shaped and offered numerous features that made it attractive for settlement. Two, out of the three volcanic craters that anchored the corners of the island, contained fresh water. In addition, the soil of the island was found to be rich and fertile and a large palm forest covered many parts of the island. The Polynesian explorers had set out from their home with an abundant supply of goods, and were ready to colonize