Talk:History of Easter Island

Eco disaster

• This thread started off on User Talk:WereSpielChequers and was moved here on the 12th of Feb 2009

The sentence you removed addresses the prehistoric eco-disaster and is unrelated to events of the 1800s mentioned in the article later. If you like i can flesh this thread out and source it, but it is probably the most important part of the history of Easter Island when deforestation etc occurred and altered the ecology forever. Umbertoumm (talk) 04:12, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes its another disaster that may have approached two of the events of the 1800s in importance, though I'd jibe at describing it as the "most important". But it is covered in the section History of Easter Island#Pre-European society. specifically "With the island's ecosystem fading, destruction of crops quickly resulted in famine, sickness and death.". This could do with expansion and rewriting but needs to be balanced between war, drought and loss of access to deep water pelagic resources. The section you edited History of Easter Island#First settlers is earlier, and could be much earlier as there is some debate as to how long the island had been inhabited before 1200 CE. Also I would be very cautious about downplaying the Slave-raiding and epidemics which are generally agreed to have seen the death of higher proportions of the Rapanui than the era of internecine warfare. However this discussion really belongs on Talk:History of Easter Island, would you mind if I copy this thread there? WereSpielChequers 11:13, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

No, dont mind at all. That's the appropriate forum. Best regards. Umbertoumm (talk) 04:16, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Actually, it looks like we had two, not one eco disasters (or something like it) and 3 social upheavals altogether. Much information is in Steadman's Extinction & Biogeography of Tropical Pacific Birds - mostly it is raw data however, and there is to my knowledge no comprehensive non-politicized treatment of the issue at present.

• There are subfossils of landbirds in the earliest cultural deposits, but these rapidly disappear - 200 years after initial settlement or so, none were left. The general picture, if one takes into account when taxa are present and when they are absent, and when one takes into account the better-known scenarios of other Pacific islands, is that the native ecosystem collapsed within less than 10 generations after the arrival of the first humans (by the way refuting the earliest claimed arrival dates). It is not clear (but it is altogether not unlikely) that the moai-builder culture was not the original culture of the Easter Islanders; rather, they seem to have been pretty mainstream Polynesian seafarers. In any case, when this wave of extinctions was finished, the wholesale extinction of the land fauna left little if any native sources of protein remaining. It is only conjectural as of now how exactly the social structure reacted to that, but forced transitions from a hunter-gatherer to an agricultural lifestyle are rarely easy - compare Hawai'i, where the transition was largely a smooth and nonenforced adaptation due to the larger landmass leaving more wriggling space and warning time. This period would have lasted for the first 100-300 years after initial settlement (whenever that was).
• Its start nonwithstanding, the subsequent period is dominated by the moai-builders. Easter Island society at that time was agricultural, heavily stratified (indicating perhaps a worsening resource situation, given that strict social boundaries in small societies provide a convenient system to partition limited resources), and used more timber than grew. Perhaps the Tupac Inca expedition served as some sort of social catalyst; we do not know and much is claimed which is not true. But a single stray vessel of that expedition (which as far as can be told did take place and did explore deep into the Pacific) may have been enough for a new architectural and cultural paradigm to develop. The moai-builder period would have lasted to the late 17th century (when large-tree pollen disappears).
• The "coup d'êtat" and the downfall of the moai-builders. Am I correct in assuming that nothing has been found to indicate that moai-building and the tangata manu cult were coeval? Because that's how it looks like. In any case, deforestation decreased agricultural yields during the moai-builder period, and increased social tension. But though the transition was likely violent to some degree, it was only brief - the toppling of the moai did not take place then; it was a coup, not a revolution. No moai were built, presumably because there was no timber left. The tangata manu system of the new social order provided a novel means to partition the even more limited resources. This period lasted from the late 1600s to the early 1800s.
• The third upheaval - and this is presumably what the "long-ear versus short-ear war" legends refer to - was brought about by "Western" (European and Chilean) sailors. The native society was all but destroyed by violence, disease and slavery.

The problem is that the evidence is pretty clear and allows to infer the first collapse; it would be unusual for Easter Island to develop differently than any other Polynesian ecosystem after human contact did, and the material evidence is quite straightforward. Also, the flightless parrot - a most curious and unique bird - as well as the other native taxa are nowhere attested in the cultural artefacts or traditions even from the moai-builder era, indicating that they were gone and forgotten when the first moai was built.

But hardly any author was aware of this. And thus, we find in popular accounts all stages of Easter Island society rolled into one, and such glaring errors as those of Diamond and Heyerdahl - and in fact about any non-scholarly author and quite a few scholarly authors too. The most drastic portrayal is Rapa Nui (film), which manages to squeeze all changes that ever befell Easter Island society into one, and starts off with the Makemake and Hotu Matua belief systems as coeval, even though as far as anyone can tell, they were mutually exclusive - and yet the movie is compelling enough that one could almost believe it even if one knows better.

It may be that this can be sufficiently documented using the available literature, but even then it needs to be documented circumstantially - there is a load of evidence by now, but rarely if ever do even (and especially) the best sources actually touch upon the social history directly and explicitly. Steadman's book is a case in point; he discusses the changes in the local fauna in deep detail, but leaves it to the reader to draw the conclusions of how the wholesale depletion of terrestrial protein ressources affected the society. doi:10.1016/j.catena.2005.06.011 is another highly interesting and important source, because it does not fit with Hunt's "rats did it" hypothesis (which is a major irritation and reminds of the old "long ears vs short ears civil war" yarn, simplicistic and ignorant of contradicting evidence as it is presented) and documents the ecological changes that took place during the moai-builder period.

It is, in conclusion, telling of the whole sad state of affairs that few people are aware that the first settlers of Easter Island encountered a large parrot (weighing two pounds or more) - even though the bones of this bird were discovered almost 20 years ago... Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 14:12, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

South American Links -- weird sentence

It reads "However, not exist evidence of fossil human DNA, indicating an extinct people of American origin in Easter Island." Could someone fix that up? I'm not sure what the original intent was. swain (talk) 03:23, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

I think I've fixed that. The issue of cultural continuity between the statue carvers and the Polynesian Rapanui people who lived on the island when the Europeans arrived was largely settled by Routledge's discovery that the buried statues that she excavated had the same designs carved on their backs as the tattoos on the last of the old guys who'd been tattoo'd before the missionaries stopped the tattooing in the early 1860s; and Metraux's discovery that the similarities to stonework in South America were superficial. But unfortunately Heyerdahl's work has probably outsold all the serious books on Easter Island combined, and even the DNA analysis hasn't been able to kill the "Polynesians were too primitive to do this, there must have been a South American influence meme." ϢereSpielChequers 14:15, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

thanks! :) swain (talk)

Can anyone confirm this sentence found in South American Links section, supposedly by Roggeveen: "They were "of all shades of colour, yellow, white and brown" (...)"? His journal does not mention that. It says: "(...) their natural hue is not black, but rather pale yellow or sallowish (...)". All the other quotes from Roggeveen seem to be al right, but this crucial one. Ćwiklińsky (talk) 10:46, 28 April 2019 (UTC)

Internecine

Use a better word, internecine does not mean "civil war", it is essentially a synonym for "fierce", "pyrrhic" and "mutually destructive" (which is why I thought it was redundant). You can have an internecine war between Greek city states and Persia for example, doesn't have to be the same group. I propose changing it to "fierce internal conflict", "internal dissidence", "friction among fellow islanders", "insurgency", "belligerence" etc etc. If you have a better idea, revert my edit. 99.236.221.124 (talk) 03:27, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Chilean Police

"On the 3rd December 2010, many Rapa Nui were evicted from their homes and Chilean police came and shot at them with pellet-shooting shotguns. Both civilians and police were injured. Many Rapa Nui were bleeding from head wounds."

This sentence seems to lack a balanced perspective. I imagine if Chilean police attacked anyone, there would be a reason, good or bad. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wdjunkin (talk • contribs) 08:52, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

The description of the BBC report was blatantly slanted, and I have replaced it with a more neutral and accurate description of the BBC report. Thanks for pointing it out. Beyond My Ken (talk) 12:30, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Dutrou-Bournier

I'm aware that the "arms dealer, gambler, bigamist, murderer, slave dealer, encourager of apostasy and alleged ship wrecker" bit is the first time those facts are noted in the article. Nevertheless, pulling them out to emphasize what a bad dude he was in his introduction is a pretty clear violation of NPOV - the only reason to do that is to inform readers that we're supposed to think of him as a villain. (If you doubt that, imagine how you'd react to an intro that was NPOV in the opposite direction - "Dutrou-Bournier, Crimean war veteran, master mariner, and visionary entrepreneur...") Leave it as a neutral description, and any readers who aren't sociopaths can come to the conclusion that Dutrou-Bournier was a terrible person on their own. As it is, it's not even clear how all the misdeeds listed are even relevant - the actual description of what he did on Easter Island doesn't say anything about gambling, for instance. 24.20.5.119 (talk) 02:36, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

You don't achieve neutrality by removing valid but perhaps overblown descriptive terms and replacing them with nothing. As of now, the reader has no idea who this person is. I'm going to replace the text with something more straightforward. Beyond My Ken (talk) 02:42, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

See what you think, I added some background, without getting all tabloid about it. Beyond My Ken (talk) 02:54, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Easter Island Syndrome

The redirect Easter Island Syndrome, currently targetted at this article, has been nominated at RfD. In the discussion it has been proposed that mentioned of the syndrome be added to this article or to William E. Rees and the redirected retarggetted to that mention. You are invited to comment at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2014 September 21#Easter Island Syndrome. Thryduulf (talk) 15:53, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

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Destruction of society and population

Far too much of this page, especially this section is speculative without making it clear that it is speculative or providing alternative conclusions and their evidence. Recent evidence does not support the conclusion that "events that contributed to the downfall and collapse of the Easter Island society can be attributed to the rapid deforestation during the time of moai-construction". For example, Rapa Nui even long after deforestation, was agriculturally plentiful and described as having man-made fruit groves by both initial explorers and the oral traditions of the people themselves. The civilization peaked almost 100 years after most of the old growth palm were already gone. There is no evidence that cannibalism or warfare ever occurred. There is also no real evidence that palms were ever used to transport statues or played a roll in why they were cut down. Too much of these article is based on flawed Western conclusions influenced by cultural and colonial bias that do not hold up to any scientific, archeological, or historical scrutiny.

"The Easter Island palm was used by settlers for means of constructing agricultural tools for their society and aiding in the transport of the Island's statues." A speculative statement made as if it was a fact when in reality the most evidence-driven conclusion is that the statues were "walked" upright using ropes. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.196.35.240 (talk) 21:22, 26 October 2021 (UTC)