Justin Yap
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English 93 Shawna Ryan 06/25/08 Miniature Paradise, Easter Island Ever wondered about the history of Easter’s Island? What kind of animals and plants lived there and why all of a sudden did they disappear? Did something tragic happen along the way? Well, one man and a group of friends soon finds out as they head out onto Easter’s Island excavating. In “Easter’s End” written by Jared Diamond writes about his theory of Easter’s Island’s mystery and compares it to today’s society. Off of the Pacific Ocean is a miniature paradise known as Easter’s Island that has an area of 64 square miles. The island’s population is about 2,000 people and most of them happened to be Polynesians. The land was founded by Jacob Roggeveen on April 5th 1722 who is a Dutch explorer. Since it is off of the Pacific Ocean, the climate is rather mild and while having a few volcanoes, it makes the soil very fertile. The Polynesians craft was known to be bad and delicate since their canoes were basically built with small planks and timbers. They also lacked knowledge since their canoes always tends to be leaking in some sort and had to constantly bail out. Due to their lack of knowledge, the people couldn’t have gone off shore too far out so they were unable to expand their population, even if it was the nearest island; they were unable to do it. However, they were famous for their tall statues. Their statues were roughly 65 feet tall, weighing up to 270 tons and some of them
transported as far up to six miles. The stone platforms were also a famous feature since they were approximately 500’ x 10’ and only weighing up to 10 tons. With such statues, Roggeveen was Yap 2 amazed how they pulled this off since they did not have any equipment such as wheels, animals for labor, and no source of power except for their own human strength. Diamond wondered about the settlers on the island so he gathered people to find out what happened. The people that he gathered specialized into three different groups such as archeology, palynology, and paleontology. The archeologists discovered that the human activities were dated back to 400 A.D and that the statue’s eruption started in 1200 A.D. The archeologists’ theory for the statues was that it was made from a team of at least 100 people and used rope from a native tree, which is now almost extinct on the island, to make the statue in standing position. The palynologists discovered that the land was not a wasteland, but a subtropical forest with shrubs, grasses, etc. The palynologists discovered that the destruction of Easter’s island was from the human activities. The wood fires would burn the trees and shrubs. The HauHau tree, used for rope, started to dramatically decrease in numbers until there wasn’t enough to make rope. It also started to lose its natural sources since people kept planting gardens, building canoes, erecting statues, etc. The food started to decrease in supply since the animals started to become scarce as well; natural habitat was being disturbed. Once the food supply was no longer available, cannibalism occurred which than lead to the island’s population from 2,000 to none.
Diamond wondered why they didn’t stop and look around at what they were doing to the island. Even if someone did suggest stopping the disaster, people’s jobs would depend on it and would be outnumbered. He suggested that the island started to die slowly and not instantly. Diamond also suggested that each year there is more people which cause fewer resources on the Yap 3 face of the Earth. Diamond believes that history can save us and that we can prevent it. As to Easter’s Island, they had no history or information regarding about this outrage. He just hopes that the next generation will make a wise decision upon their fates.