Moderator
Question 1: How did your family react (behind closed doors)? Do you share the same views as them in regards to the collapse?
- Many people, especially younger people, have differing political views than their older family members or vice versa. This often can lead to animosity or arguments as well as extreme cases. Diamond noted political and social factors behind the collapse which many people typically have strong opinions on.
Question 2: How did you/your family connect with others during this time? Isolation as a whole was a factor in the collapse of Easter Island, but did you feel it on a community scale?
- Relationships with neighbors would probably be the difference in life or death in apocalyptic situations. Even in daily life, having neighbors that look out for each other makes life more bearable.
Question 3: Did you notice unrest before the tragedy? Were your clan and chief leaders angrier, more concerned?
- I’m thinking back to the beginning of the pandemic when we all saw memes of a new “cold” going around. Some brushed it off, some began to hunker down. This question can have multiple facets such as political or cultural responses.
Question 4: How did you get goods and services? Did you feel the strain when resources started to become scarce?
- If you had a hunch that collapse was inevitable, you may have prepared. If not, you likely would have to trade or find another way of getting the things you need. Diamond wrote about how Easter Island was unprecedentedly isolated and environmentally fragile, making resources increasingly harder to come by. The alternate reading wrote about how the Island was essentially a victim of “Tragedy of the Commons.”
Question 5: Society aside, how did the physical environment around you change?
- Climate concern probably would go out the window amidst societal collapse, but still be an important aspect of the way people navigated life during collapse. Diamond noted deforestation and decline of bird populations. He also wrote about how the island was environmentally fragile in general.
Character 1: Young Male Hard-laborer
Character Description
The character is a young polynesian man in his mid 20’s. He works to cut down trees and to help move the statues. He is not rich and considered poor due to the amount and quality of food he gets. He has a younger brother, mother, and father, but he came to the island without his family to seek hope for a better life. He works all day cutting trees in 70°F weather.
Brief Essay
The problem for our society collapsing was human environmental impacts and religious/political factors that only we can blame ourselves for the cause. The cause of human environmental impacts were destruction of bird populations and deforestation. When I first came to the island, there were many trees and a forest with birds. The bird population played an important role in society as it was the main animal pollinator and seed dispersers in order to grow more trees. Eventually, I started to see less birds each day in the forest as I was cutting trees. The more the trees were cut, the less it was a forest. The realization that the birds lost their homes as we tried to make Easter Island our home. Deforestation led to the bird population being extinct. Therefore, we caused our own society to collapse by harming the environment. The cause of religious and political factors was the statue that was a competition between clans and commemorating ancestors. The statues that were built were known as moai. The statues were important to our religion and politics as our main focus was building them. They were big stones and it took a lot of my friends and people in my clan to move them. As we figured out how to move a stone from one place to another, it required a lot of wood and rope. Therefore, I had to chop down a lot of trees in order for us to move the stones. Sadly, one day there were no more trees to chop down and led to deforestation. I didn’t realize this because I was so focused on the statues. As the last tree was cut, hope was still there that the trees would grow again but it did not. We also ran out of food, as there were no more chickens and seafood. The higher ranked chiefs and important people got access to more food than we did, they were also fed with higher quality food. As time passed, there was less food available and no more resources on the land.
Character 2: Moai Carver
Character Description
I am a moai carver from Easter Island, it is my responsibility to carve and separate moai, or statues, from the rock known as Rano Raruka tuff. This rock is by far the easiest carving rock on the Pacific. One the Moai are carved, a team of movers come in and transport it to its resting place. We work in conjunction with this team to keep a slow but steady stream of statues coming out of this mine. We eat only when we have to, resources have been running low recently, we manage though.
Brief Essay
The factors that impacted our societies “collapse” are mainly environmental damage and cultural response. Although a case can be made that both of these issues stemmed from our hostile neighbors. Environmental damage is the base of why our society collapsed. The island was deforested, which led to many factors impacting our society such as a lack of food, lack of resources for building and farming, and a lack of habitat for our prey. The societies response to these issues spelled just as much trouble for us as the issues themselves, our society failed to adapt quickly enough to these issues and ran ourselves into the ground. An issue that we can into was the fact that Easter Island is a very dry, cool, and windy island, this means that plant life grows much slower than it does on other Polynesian islands. It can be argued that the environmental issues were caused by hostile neighbors, but not in the traditional sense. There is a case to be made that our competition in terms of building our Moai larger and larger than our rival tribes became the sole focus of our society. This led to us purely focusing on winning this somewhat arbitrary competition and running ourselves out of resources. This claim can be argued though as there was also a fair amount of friendliness between the tribes of my island. We help each other with resources that some tribes don’t have access to. It is a mixed bag as most things are, we help each other while also feuding with each other. My life is relatively monotonous, it is focused on creating food and moving moai. We farm and hunt when we can, and when strength is needed, we are called in to haul Moai from the quarry to their resting place.
Character 3: Moai Carver
Character Description
My character, on Easter Island, is a moai carver at the period when moai carving was beginning to be threatened by deforestation and resources on the island being depleted. I imagine this character is a middle-aged skilled laborer with a family who is less involved in the food/resource production on the island. I am writing my account based on Jared Diamond’s explanation that the deforestation happened mostly due to the inhabitants of Easter Island, the rats they brought, and the geography of the island making it susceptible to deforestation. My character lived on Easter Island from the mid-1500s to towards the end of the 1500s, when the civilization on Easter Island was beginning to decline according to Jared Diamond.
Brief Essay
I carve moai from the stone as I was taught by my father. I enjoy shaping the stone and honoring our ancestors by making these statues of them. Lately some people have been saying that we are running out of trees and some of the farms aren’t yielding as much as they used to, but I think we will be ok. As a child I heard stories from my older family members that said our people used to make boats out of big trees and hunt large animals that lived in the deep waters, and even though we don’t do that anymore we have adapted to that change. There are fewer trees than when I was younger, and I do hope there will still be some as my children grow older.
I have heard that some people think the moai take too many resources to make, or that they are just for the chiefs to show off, but I think they are an important part of our culture. Creating and moving these statues to honor our ancestors brings our community together. Over the generations we have improved in making them, so that now we can make them larger than before. I hope that my son will one day follow in my footsteps as a moai carver, and that my work will go on to be appreciated by future generations.
Character 4: Commoner
Character Description:
My character is a commoner, one of two classes within the community on Easter Island described by Diamond, chiefs and commoners. The commoners farmed, raised livestock, and built structures like houses and the numerous stone statues that were erected across the island. They were involved in the entire process from mining, to transporting, to construction of the stone platforms the statues stood on.
Brief Essay:
The explanatory factors I’ve seen present in the collapse of the islands society are environmental damage, hostile neighbors, and cultural response. First there was environmental damage from a large, quick increase in the islands population. The forests began to shrink overtime and eventually there were none left at all. Because of the limited resources fighting between groups began over what little was left on our remote island. Hostile neighbors would attack each other and this lead to using the few remaining resources present on the island even faster so other groups could not have them.
Finally, after loss of resources and fighting between and within different groups the chiefs were overthrown. Cultural response came when the commoners grew tired of their dire situation. The chiefs were tied to religion, being related to the gods themselves and elite members of the society. Once they were overthrown religion left with them. This collapsed traditional society and led to people acting more and more hostile towards each other. As if the bad circumstances on the island weren’t enough on their own, people from other countries visited our island and caused diseases to spread which decimated the population.
Character 5: Farmer
Character Description
Agriculture was a difficult life during the decline of the settlements at Easter Island, and it is within this struggling system that my character is found. They live within the dense population of Easter Island, working in the southwestern farms harvesting the few crops that survived the season and managing the chickens. The food grown here supports more than just my character’s family, as the entire island’s diet is based upon agriculture, as the waters surrounding the island do not support any fish.
Brief Essay
Environmental damage is a theme of life at Easter Island, not out of greed or hatred of the environment, instead stemming from necessity. Life is hard on the island, the wind is powerful, rain uncommon, and temperatures are cool. These aspects of the environment have forced us to utilize most of our resources, our most extreme shortage being wood, as trees have entirely disappeared from the island. Not only has the island suffered, but the ecosystem around it as well. When the fish disappeared years ago, we had to increase our dependence on other food sources, one of these sources were the shellfish surrounding the island which were quickly decimated by the demand for food.
I do my best to assist my friends around the island, sharing the crops that do grow, and in return they assist with my work, providing superior tools and extra laboring. Farmers in other parts of the island grow crops within rock gardens, higher up on the island with a better source of water. The whole of the island is a community, each of us providing what we can to each other, especially the wonderful yellow moai which sculptors have provided throughout the island.