1. Discuss two environmental factors that lead to population increases on the island?
2. Discuss two cultural practices that eventually lead to the collapse of the ecosystem on Easter Island?
3. Define sustainable development and discuss what changes in cultural practices would have been necessary in order to prevent the collapse?
4. What archaeological evidence has been found to support this theory of population increase, environmental degradation and collapse?
5. Make one comparison between this ecosystem and society and our society today.
References:
Easters End, Discover August 1995
http://discovermagazine.com/1995/aug/eastersend543/?searchterm=Easter's%20End
NOVA: Easter Island
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/easter/
Film: Easter Island in Context: From Paradise to Calamity
http://www.films.com/id/4697/Easter_Island_in_Context_From_Paradise_to_Calimity.htm
12 comments:
Easter Island had a population explosion around 1200 due to enviornmental factors such as its mild climate and fertile soil. The island’s location is slightly below the equator making it subtropical with very agreeable weather for a variety of wildlife. Also, the soil is made from volcanic ash, making it optimum for growth. With such convienient conditions, Easter Island naturally had a boost in population.
On Easter Island, cultural practices such as Moai statue building and canoe carving helped lead to the collapse of an entire ecosystem. Moai statues were colossal stone figures, weighing an average of 14 tons, which represented high-ranking males, such as spirits or political figures. The construction of these mind-boggling statues was both strenuous and demanding on the environment. To drag these massive statues from quarries to locations around the tiny island, paths had to be cleared. Many forests were destroyed in the process of transporting and erecting the Moai statues. Also, the native trees, such as the hauhau tree and toromiro tree, were being hastily used to build canoes for the rapidly growing population. Suddenly, the inhabitants were cutting down the trees faster than they could regenerate. This resulted in extreme deforestation and ultimate extinction of many of the native vegetation of the island leading to starvation and loss of biodiversity through habitat loss.
Sustainable development is defined as complementing human necessities with the protection of the natural surroundings in order to insure the continued availability of these necessities. One of the major problems that lead to the collapse of Easter Island was the drastic deforestation. Island inhabitants needed to be more wary of the excessive destruction of the native trees and insure that the amount being ruined was less than the amount being regenerated. Researchers have proven that the population of Easter Island quickly grew out of control and natural resources became unavailable. The amount of people living in the area was too large for the products of the tiny island. By keeping the population in check, resources would have had the opportunity to replenish.
Researchers in the fields of “archeology, pollen analysis, and paleontology” have found evidence to support the theory of population increase, environmental degradation and collapse on Easter Island. Archeologists searched to find how the massive Moai statues could have been constructed as well as why they were destroyed. Pollen analysis, which involves taking a sample of sediment from a natural water supply and analyzing the deposits, helped to identify the plant species that were once on the island. Interestingly, the pollen analysis showed that Easter Island was not the harsh environment that was commonly assumed. The island was a subtropical rainforest, complete with a variety of trees, shrubs, and bushes. Paleontologists discovered garbage dumps of animal bones such as porpoise and seabirds, showing that the islanders had ample amount of both vegetative and meaty nourishment. However, the amount of porpoise and other animal bones began to decline rapidly, being replaced by human bones and then eventually disappeared altogether. This suggests the decline of the civilization around 1500 determined by carbon dating, caused by the extinction of food sources. Easter Island was complete with “fertile soil, abundant food, [and] bountiful building materials” which were destroyed due to the flux of population and abuse of the environment.
The Easter Island should serve as an example to the rest of the world and today’s society in regards to the depleting ecosystem. Easter Island is like a smaller version of our world, the mounting population and dwindling resources that affected the little island so intensely are now upsetting the earth as a whole. Our ecological footprints are far exceeding the earths capacity. If Easter Island was more humble with its resources, the culture might still exist. Hopefully civilization in general will not have the same outcome. What happens to humanity when we have used up our given terrain? Just like the Easter Islanders, once we run out of resources there is no where else to go. Unless we divert from the path parallel to Easter Island society, civilization as a whole will die out.
One of the factors that contributed to Easter Islands population increase was its location on the globe. It sits 27 degrees south which is the same amount of degrees south as Houston is north of the equator. Because of its distance to the equator the Island gets nice warm temperatures which provides ample sun light for plants and animals to healthfully survive. Another environmental factor that led to Easter Island's population increase is the fertility of the soil. Because of its "volcanic origins" the soil is very fertile which makes it very easy for plants and trees to flourish.
A major cultural practice that required an enormous supply of resources and even more man power was the building of the Easter Island statues. These statues were giant male bodies from the torsoe up that were called Moai by the inhabitants. They spanded anywhere from 33 to 65 feet long and weighed anywhere from 82 to 270 tons. The materials used to create such statues they used the stone from Rano Raraku (norht east end of the Island), the red clay from Puna Pau (south west part of the island) and they got stone carving tools from Aroi(north west part of the Island). And because they built nearly 900 of these massive statues this would require a lot of resources off the island that took long periods of time to regenerate; therefore, leadind to the collapse of the ecosystem on Easter Island. In order to farm for food and stuff they needed to clear out much of the forest in order to have room to farm and grow food for the inhabitants to live off of.
Sustainable development is defined as balancing the fulfillment of human needs with the protection of the natural environment. ONe thing the inhabitants could have done was they could have not been so extravagent with their Moai. If they only made a couple dozen or so of them then that way they don't use up the natural resources quite to the extent as they did by building over 900 statues.
Using Radio Carbon dating scientists were able to identify that these Inhabitants in fact were dated as early back as 400-700 A.D. And with their knowledge of the statues being built around 1200-1500 they can conclude that the population must have increased or else they would not have been able to pull off such a remarkable task. Using pollen analysis as well as radio carbon dating, scientists were able to figure out what typr of species of plant lived at what point in time. They do this by taking the "more ancient" deposits and using radio carbon dating methods to determine the age and also under a microscope count and identify the different pollen grains which would lead them to believe which plants lived in each time period. And finally Pollen records show that trees and plants were being taken down and cleared out from the area as soon as the year 800 A.D. Using these different methods they were able to determine signs of population increase, environmental degradation, and collapse.
The massive statues that they buillt hundreds of are just like our sky scrapers and massive cities. Today cities are all expanding in size; therefore, we are using lots of natural resources in order to continue to build more coporate buildings, hotels, and sky scrapers.
There were two environment factors that lead to an increase in the population; fertile soil and its location on the Earth. Easter Island is 27 degrees south of the equator giving it a subtropical and mild climate creating a good environment for habitation and wildlife, while the island’s volcanic origins create the fertile soil on the island, allowing for good growth of crops.
The people on Easter Island depended heavily on the trees that grew on the island, so heavily that they cut all of them down, collapsing the forest ecosystem. They used the hauhau trees to make rope, so they could move and erect the statues; they used the now extinct Easter Island palms to build canoes, and used the toromiro trees for burning. The people on the Easter Island not only depended on the forest heavily, they also depended heavily on the wildlife. They hunted many of the animals found on and around the island, such as the land birds, the sea birds, shellfish, and the porpoises. By the time the people of the island were running out of trees to build canoes out of, the land and sea birds were all but gone, and the porpoises were getting harder and harder to catch due to the amount of trees that they had left.
Sustainable development is fulfilling the needs of humans while balancing the protection of the environment, so over-harvesting and extinction of wildlife is prevented. In order to prevent the collapse the people of Easter Island should have only cut down the trees that were absolutely necessary, for instance instead of cutting down lots of trees to make a surplus of canoes, they should have just cut down trees to replace a broken canoe. For the wildlife, they could have just hunted enough for that meal. The article says that they built up a food surplus, if they hadn’t done that, the ecosystem would have been better off.
Radiocarbon dating used on pollen spores from the island proved that the island was once a natural paradise full of trees, but after the people got there, the amount of trees around the island declined rapidly. This can only be explained by an increase in the number of people. As the trees started to decrease, the wildlife that lived in the forest started to decrease and after a couple hundred years, the amount of trees dwindled down to almost nothing, taking the ecosystem with it.
The ecosystem and society on Easter Island is a lot like the ecosystem and society in the USA. We think that the resources are unlimited and don’t pay attention to the damage that we are causing to the ecosystem around us.
Brittany: It looked good but just use spell check.
Tyler: Proof read what you read and you will catch a lot of mistakes. Also use spell check, and I recommend restating the question in your answer to make it clearer.
Eric: Maybe just restate the question on some answers.
1) Two environmental factors that lead to population increase on Easter Island are extremely fertile soil and a mild climate. A mild climate and fertile volcanic soil made Easter Island ideal for agriculture. This leads to excess food supplies capable of supporting a large population. Also the mild climate, as well as being great for agriculture, doesn't require a lot of effort to survive in it. The reasonable warm winters did not kill a lot of people and added to a high survivability rate making Easter Island's population able to increase.
2) Two cultural practices that lead to the collapse of Easter Islands' ecosystem are the building of huge statues and cutting down all of the native palm trees. By building and transporting the huge statues called Moai the people slowy destroyed the environment. The erected Moai could weigh up to 82 tons, and by rolling them continually over the landscape the statues weight would eventually smash all life from the ground. Also the steady deforestaion of the native palm trees for canoes and rollers contributed to the ecosystem collapse. By using every tree until they were extinct the island became devoid of major plant life. Excpt for grasses and small shrubs Easter Island’s ecosystem had changed from a forest to grassland.
3)Sustainable Development is the practice of letting the environment recover after we use or destroy resources. If the islanders would have allowed some palm trees to regrow before cutting them all down they could have survived. To do this they would have had to cut back on the Moai building. Also if the bird populations would have been allowed to replenish the islanders would not have run out of food and starved.
4) Archaeological evidence shows that the theory of population increase, environmental degradation and collapse is ture by examining the bones in ancient garbage heaps. Early on, when the society was flourishing, the people were feasting on seabirds and Proposes. As we look forward in time there are less and less bird and propos bones in the islanders' diet because there are no more trees to make canoes to go fishing in. later in history there are no bones in garbage heaps suggesting the food sources were gone. The decline of the population conincied with the destruction of food sources.
5) One comparison between Easters' ecosystem and society and our ecosystem and society is that most of the big businesses seem to disregard the environment like the islanders did. They use up resorces without second thought about how they are effecting the environment. Without properly protecting our resources we will end up like the islanders, extinct!
Conner- you could mabye on number two add another reason being that all of the wildlife went away. Also, you misspelled porpoise a couple of times in your reply. Other than that its good!
The two main factors that lead to population increases on the island were fertile soil and a nice, mild climate. The mild climate comes from the longitude and latitude at 27 degrees south of the equator, which is the same as Houston, TX to the north. The fertile soil was a great contributor to the agriculture and food along the island. The volcanic origins of Easter Island made the soil extremley fertile. Both of these factors contributed to the agricultural success of the island.
The two cultural practices that lead to the downfall of the ecosystem on Easter Island are the deforestation of trees as well as the extinction and scarceness of the wildlife. Since the people of Easter Island depended mostly on trees, they had to cut mostly all of them down. This ended up ruining their culture and way of life because without trees, the natives could not build canoes to fish, transport or erect statues, or even burn the trees for warmth and food purposes. Another reason for the loss of trees on the island was the fact that the rats were chewing the trees so they could no longer germinate. The wildlife was directly affected by the deforestation on the island. A couple of reasons are that the "shellfish were overexploited" and the porpoise could no longer be hunted because of the lack of water transportation. This eventually led to half to the seabird species, as well as many other wildlife on the island, being wiped out.
Sustainable Development is an act that we should use more often in this world today. The exact definition of the word is "any construction that can be maintained over time without damaging the environment". If the natives to Easter Island would have just tried and let the hauhau tree regrow, than the mysterious colony might still be running today. Also, if they let the flora and trees regrow, birds and wildlife would not have been diminished to nothing. Another idea they could have used is to not build all of the statues at the same time for the purpose of saving trees.
The archeological evidence that has been found to support the theory of population increase, environmental degrading, and collapse is in radiocarbon dating as well as pollen analysis. The experts date the bones of porpoises as well as other objects that they can gain data from. Also, by examining "tens of thousands of pollen grains under a microscope", scientists can find the flora species that existed on the island back in the days of the original natives. These two ways of solving the past supports the population increase idea. Even the visual aspect of the island today will tell you that the deforestation on the island led to the collapse of the island.
One comparison that I can make between the Easter Island and today�s world is the lack of knowledge about conserving our earth. We use resources more than we should but we don�t even care about the consequences. The island is just like the town in the Lorax movie. At first, it was a beautiful world but after the overuse of the main products, their world became bare and full of no wildlife. Our entire world should take notice of what happened on Easter Island and prevent it from happening on our world.
Two environmental issues that lead to the increased population on Easter Island were one, the change in climate. Over time the weather changed and the soil became richer in nutrious. With this occurance, Easter Island became a place for humans to gather and cultivate crops because of the rich soil. Easter Island's location also helped, because it is just below the equator the weather is favorable for growing. All of these conditions combined make for a very comparable location for humans to gather.
Two of the destructive behaviors of the native people of Eastern Island had to do w/ the native palm trees on the island. The natives had a behavior that consisted of them ereceting large statues. These statues needed to be transported after they were carved and to do so, native palm trees were used as carts and "railroad" tracks. Large amounts of these trees were cut down and this is refered to as deforestation which can be very harmful to the enviroment. These large statues also destroyed the earth that they were being transported over. No longer was the earth undisturbed, erosion and other problems arose from the moving of these large statues over the land. It seems silly that just some statues could be a factor in the downfall of a society, but they can.
Sustainable developement is the protecting of humans needs as well as the enviroment's needs. A perfect balance so that everyone and everything can live in harmony. The native people of Easter Island would have needed to cut down on their use of the native palm trees. If they spent less time on their statues and used their resources more conservatively they would never have been faced with deforestation.]
Evidence has been found to suggest that there was an increase in population, then a degredation of the environment and finally the collapse of Eastern Island. Pollen analysis was done on Eastern Island, and it was discovered that indeed the island was a tropical climate at one point with tropical plants. With this tropical climate came people who used the natural resources to make a life for themselves. But they did not preserve these resources like the palm trees very well and lost everything because of it. Easter Island was turned from a lush land of oppurtunity to a baren land of only stone statues.
Easter Island's environmental issues mirrors some of our own issues that we are facing in our time such as the overuse of our natural resources. If we do not start to limit our use of these materials we will end up just like the people of Easter Island. Without a place to make home and no rich soil to grow food.
Environmental factors lead to the population explosion on Easter Island. Some of these environmental factors include the mild, comfortable climate to live in which also means that animals can thrive there, which leads to more chances to get food. Another factor is that the soil was easy to plant in because it was moist and thick. Easter Island had many factors including a perfect set up for a thriving and living community.
Since it was it’s own island and culture, they had many traditions that they followed which did add to the collapse of the city. They would have Maoe statue building which ruin resources and also they would cut down trees to make canoes, which seems like a good idea until they realized that their amount of trees were depleting. Also since they were making these things they had to make room for them which slowly started hurting the land they were living on. They had to clear out spaces for the monuments also ways to move these monuments from place to place. And since these things were being made, the population was still growing so the demand for these resources was higher. Not unlike many cultures now they were cutting down trees, killing plants, therefore ruining the animal’s homes and food. They also did not realize that if they did not slow down on the production, then they would eventually kill themselves off, which ended up happening.
Sustainable development is “any construction that can be maintained over time without damaging the environment” (dictionary.com). The people living on Easter Island needed to realize that they were tearing down all of the trees, but not letting enough grow to keep their resources available. They were taking down entire forests without planting more. They were becoming unaware and did not care about their ecosystem and their industry grew to the point of no return. They needed to make sure that they had enough plants still growing to keep them alive.
Researchers have studied archeological factors of the population increase, environmental degradation and collapse for the island. There is a lot of proof saying that there was a way for the society to save themselves. They did studies where they could prove that there were at one time plants on the island and that they did survive off the earth. There were many forests, grass, bushes, and other types of plants. The researchers also proved that the people on the island were meat eaters by finding many bones of animals. The scary part about it was that after the bones of the animals, the researchers found what appeared to be human bones. We assume that after the humans killed the plants and kept eating the animals, eventually there was no more animals and the ones that were there could not keep themselves alive because there was no food. After the animals were all killed the people had no other choice then cannibalism.
There are many comparisons between Easter Island’s ecosystem and society and ours today. We are killing lots of our trees and taking down many rain forests right now. Many people are saying that we are endangering ourselves by doing this, but some people are too ignorant to listen and believe them. They think that the earth is just one big unlimited resource that we can use to our benefit forever. But, our earth’s natural resources are depleting fast and we must face with the fact that we cannot live on this earth forever with the way that we are living. We must be more careful with the forests and animals in this world or we will almost undoubtedly end up like the people on Easter Island and have to eat each other. Survival of the fittest will no longer just apply to animals in nature, but also to all the people of the world.
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