ipl-logo

Fall Of Easter Island Research Paper

1362 Words6 Pages

Intro:
The fall of Easter Island has been claimed to be one of the biggest mysteries in the world. Many people have debated if Easter Island turned into a small inhabitable island due to mass ecocide? Or, did the society fall because the tribes stated turning against each other, so was it genocide? Or was it a story of success, were the inhabitants adapted to the harsh conditions and limited food, surviving off rats and small vegetables. Was the problem one of the people due people, or people due land. Personally, I believe that the collapse of Easter Island is more complex than only one of those, but an inter-relationship between the two. Where the islanders first thrived off the natural land and its abundances, but quickly, in only a few …show more content…

Some more eccentric than others. One major cause that contributed to the fall of Easter Island was environmental degradation. Many scientists have come up with numerous reasons as to how the environmental damage was caused, but they all agree that it lead to the eventual collapse of the society on Easter Island. According to Jared Diamond in his recent book ‘How societies chose to fail or succeed’, He states that “In just a few centuries the people of Easter Island wiped out their forest, drove their plants and animals to extinction, and saw their complex society spiral into chaos and cannibalism”. Diamond theorises that the fall of Easter Island was purely caused by the Native Islanders destroying their land completely. While there is some evidence out there supporting this claim, and it does fit the ecocide theory. where it was purely the fault of the islanders, they were the ones who felled the trees, they forced their system into a collapse with rival clans fighting over resources and turning to cannibalism. This theory relies on the carrying capacity of the Island changing, due to the nature in which the islanders treated the land. Taking all of the resources from the island without letting the land …show more content…

The Polynesian rats that they brought with them to the island would have thrived without any natural predators and an apparat abundant supply of tree seeds and nuts. The rat population quickly grew vastly surpassing that of the Easter islanders that brought then there. Then there is evidence of European contact, how the natives of the island were taken for the slave trade. There is sufficient evidence to support the claim that when the Polynesians first came to Easter Island, they unknowingly brought Polynesian rats with them. These rats who faced no natural predators on the island, quickly devastated the natural population of over ’20 forest plants, six land birds and several sea birds’ were now extinct due to the infestation of

Show More
Related
259 Words | 2 Pages

The lorax and Easter Island (Polynesians) The Lorax by Dr.Seuss is a fictional story and the story Easters End is not. The Lorax has many messages about how if we are not careful we will soon be in a similar situation and also tells shows what shape are enviroment is in society by showing: Pollution both land and water, overpopulation, and having all the trees cut down. The sotry of the Polynesians show what is going to happen if we dont learn from their past and the mistakes they've made. The Polynesian people would make big statues made of stone and put them on platforms and they used many trees to make what they needed to move the statues. In The Lorax they used the Truffela tree to use as a resource for their product "the thneed"

Read More
469 Words | 2 Pages

The island was an extremely poor country with very little structured government or infrastructure due to poor rule for

Read More
886 Words | 4 Pages

For one the Lorax is a fictional tale rather than reality. Also, in the Lorax the Once-ler used the trees for his own economic gain rather than for a population to build resources for them to live and survive. In Easter’s End people didn’t know how to survive off resources and sustain for the future. Since the Polynesians had no wood to make tools with, they had no ways to hunt for food which led to the idea of cannibalism, that later lead to the extinction of humans on Easter Island.

Read More
278 Words | 2 Pages

When Western presence commenced to escalate in Hawaii, it ultimately would lead to the collapse of its monarchy and annexation to the U.S. Its downfall may have started when western Christian missionaries began to populate the island in order to initially spread Christianity. This would eventually lead to the education of ali’i children, who were the monarchies’ broods, and this would serve as the foundation for exposing these Hawaiian children to the lifestyle of Western society, such as Liliˋunokalani. However, this would only strengthen the power of these missionaries as their population began to grow. For instance, this eventually lead to the establishment of a constitutional government.

Read More
555 Words | 3 Pages

Changing his references, he brings up the argument from two anthropologist, Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo, in which the story of the inhabitants is more positive than we normally believed. The new report develops around the fact that there were no remains of the first Polynesians bringing their doom upon themselves. Instead mother nature brought forward a plague of rats that infected the trees. Not focusing on the problem, the population somehow adapted to their new environment. Eating the rats and surviving with what resources were available, they managed to endure the

Read More
631 Words | 3 Pages

Easter Island vs. The Lorax While “The Lorax” by Dr. Seuss was a fictional story and the story of the people of Easter Island is real, they both showed examples of modern environmental issues. “The Lorax” had many hidden messages underneath the children’s story and the Polynesians showed us what would happen to society if we don’t learn from their mistakes. “The Lorax” messages included how bad our environment is in modern society and also had a few life lessons added in.

Read More
921 Words | 4 Pages

The Great Mahele was a substantial change to life for the Hawaiians, however, they weren’t prepared to change their ways after centuries of the same systems, so it resulted in dreadful outcomes for them and the Hawaiian government in the

Read More
587 Words | 3 Pages

The land was devastated and farmlands were destroyed, it would take a while to rebuild but at least there is peace to the islands of Hawai’i (23). After taking the Kingdom of Maui, all that was left was the Kingdom of Kaua’i, which included the islands of Ni’ihau and Kaua’i (23). Kamehameha’s first attempt to take Kaua’i had gone wrong, a massive storm swept through Kamehameha’s canoes and warriors during the voyage and had many casualties so they had to pull back (23). Kamehameha’s second attempt to take Kaua’i had gone wrong to, a disease which included measles and the sickness that slaughtered many of Kamehameha’s warriors (23). There was still hope, the chief of Kaua’i made peace with Kamehameha, but the chief of Kauai, Kaumualii, had to follow some rules, if Kamehameha died, the kingdom and all the political systems will go to his next generation (23).

Read More
804 Words | 4 Pages

So now not only had the Americans made themselves at home in Hawaii by moving in to the islands and planting their own crops but they also killed off thirteen percent of the population, turned what started as a few acres of sugarcane plantations into almost one fourth of the land being dedicated to sugar, and they brought in foreign

Read More
451 Words | 2 Pages

The island grew, and

Read More
633 Words | 3 Pages

The island itself was their society that corrupted them because of being stranded on the island at a young age. The boys’ fear was larger than anything and the idea of

Read More
528 Words | 3 Pages

In the two stories “The lorax” and “Easter Island” there are lots of differences and similarities. Both stories have environmental issues dealing with trees and air quality. The environment in each story became a wasteland and was eventually polluted by trash. Once-ler in the lorax story and the Polynesians in the Easter island story tried to protect the environment but both failed to do so, all natural resources were lost and everything went downhill from there. First, in “The lorax” an environmental issue was the air quality.

Read More
299 Words | 2 Pages

The main message of this article was that although Easter Island seemed like some mystical, abandoned place it used to be very populated and lush. The inhabitants of the island were very skilled and used the natural resources that the island provided to build homes, boats, and the infamous Easter Island heads. However all of these things that helped them build their society would eventually be the death of them. The islanders used up all of their (very limited) resources like the palm trees, animals, etc. and then had to resort to cannibalism until they became extinct.

Read More
2405 Words | 10 Pages

. . only to consume everything there, doomed to isolation and extinction when there were no more trees left to craft the canoes so necessary for survival. Easter Island is a speck in the vastness of the Pacific Ocean, the humans stranded there long ago by their own means, the island ravaged, their choices gone – one of many such examples. We now find ourselves in just that situation . . . stranded on a finite planet of dwindling abundance in the infinity of the Universe, devouring everything in our way, refusing to curb our appetites, oblivious to the dark future we are certainly creating.

Read More
539 Words | 3 Pages

The palm trees they depended on began to decrease, as the trees disappeared wars broke and people starved. The use of these trees was cut down for farming purposes, but also to burn for fire and help transport the statues. Over time the people of Easter Island had what some might say “wore out their welcome” as there was no more trees and having eaten all the dogs and nesting birds the people of Rapa Nui realized the decision knowing that they had cut down their last tree was it. Wright uses this catastrophic incident as a lesson to learn.

Read More

More about Fall Of Easter Island Research Paper

Related Topics

Open Document