Rapa Nui’s Failed Civilization

This week I’ve learned of societal collapse. In this particular case study we’ve focused on Easter Island, an island in the southeast Pacific that is one of the most isolated and mostly uninhabitable of any of the Polynesian island settlements. But somehow the Rapa Nui or clan of Hotu Matu made it happen when they first settled upon it. They didn’t have much to work with but somehow they made it work. Yet as advanced as they were at the time with what they’ve had they still failed as a civilization centuries later.

The Rapa Nui might’ve possibly been able to live on as a society even to this day if they would’ve done things differently. As stated in Catrine Jarman’s article, if it weren’t for the Polynesian rats that have been brought in on the island they may have still been able to have an abundance of trees to live comfortably. As she explains the rats’ new diet became that of palm nuts and tree saplings so they fed off either of those until the trees weren’t able to grow back and replenish themselves. They didn’t know about this and as a result ran out of timber for their use. As for the warfare that went on between any of the clans on the island she said it was brought about because of the enslavement of their people. What I mean is whatever remaining people were left from the diseases, destruction of property, and enforced migration of the slave traders that came they had to fight for whatever was left behind which was food, shelter, and status between the clans.

Yet there seems to be hundreds more articles and stories of how the Rapa Nui civilization started and came to an end. Most of them must be similar in nature because in Jarman’s article she seems to argue similar subject matter in other people’s stories such as Ponting’s. He talks about the scarce resources there already were and claims they must have, “realized that their very existence depended on the limited resources of a small island.” So did they know? I think it was just a fluke in their logic of thinking they were able to live with the resources they had. They didn’t know that the island wouldn’t have the conditions to grow any of their food sources except the sweet potato. Yet at least they made it work for the few centuries they lived.