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Case Study: Easter Island: Lorax. Around 800 AD, Polynesians Travelling Across The Pacific

The document summarizes the history of Easter Island and the collapse of its civilization. It describes how Polynesians arrived around 800 AD and thrived for centuries with a population of 10,000-15,000. Around 1600, the population began collapsing rapidly to 2,000 due to deforestation and soil erosion from cutting down all the trees. A team of scientists will now analyze sediment cores to determine if soil nutrient depletion coincided with and contributed to the population collapse and downfall of their society.

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Errin Campbell
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43 views2 pages

Case Study: Easter Island: Lorax. Around 800 AD, Polynesians Travelling Across The Pacific

The document summarizes the history of Easter Island and the collapse of its civilization. It describes how Polynesians arrived around 800 AD and thrived for centuries with a population of 10,000-15,000. Around 1600, the population began collapsing rapidly to 2,000 due to deforestation and soil erosion from cutting down all the trees. A team of scientists will now analyze sediment cores to determine if soil nutrient depletion coincided with and contributed to the population collapse and downfall of their society.

Uploaded by

Errin Campbell
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Case Study: Easter Island

"Today, Easter Island (also known as Rapa Nui) is a primarily pastoral


(grassland) island in the south-eastern Pacific Ocean, some 3,600
kilometres west of Chile.

The story of Easter Island reads like a pre-industrial version of The


Lorax. Around 800 AD, Polynesians travelling across the Pacific
Ocean arrived on Easter Island. The islanders thrived for several
hundred years, with a population estimated at around 10,000 to 15,000
at its peak.

At some point in their history, probably around 1600, the population began to collapse, their
numbers quickly dropping to around 2,000. Popular theory is that the islanders cut down all the
trees to use as fuel and building materials, and to move the huge statues from the quarry to their
positions around the island. As well as using all the precious wood resource,
the deforestation resulted in accelerated soil erosion. As the collapse continued, they were
plagued by civil war over resources, cannibalism and, towards the final decades of their
dwindling civilisation in the 19th century, smallpox brought by explorers, raids by slave ships,
and tuberculosis brought by a missionary. However, the exact nature of the initial cause of the
sudden collapse and how the community overshot the capacity of the island to sustain life has
remained a mystery.

“Easter Island developed a remarkable agricultural civilisation that was capable of erecting stone
statues weighing up to 80 tonnes each. However, while the clans on Easter Island were
competing to build the most impressive statues, we suspect their populations overshot the
carrying capacity of their fragile soils.”

Dr Baisden and his colleagues believe it is possible that soil nutrient depletion coincided with the
island’s population reaching a maximum.

If the same situation occurred today, Dr Baisden says the population would either migrate from
the island or top-dress with industrial fertilisers.

The scientists from New Zealand, Australia and the US will use a range of scientific techniques
to reconstruct the biogeochemistry of collapse to see if it occurred at the same time as soil
nutrient depletion. In craters where settlement occurred, they will collect about a dozen sediment
cores for analysis in New Zealand. The aim is to precisely determine the timing of changes in
plant, animal and human populations, as well as soil fertility.

They will examine plant microfossils such as pollen and starch grains, nitrogen isotopes,
the DNA of native forest species and steroid biomarkers from humans, animals and plants.

Dr Baisden says they want to know if Easter Island’s collapse holds lessons for modern society.
“If the Easter Islanders overshot the carrying capacity of their soils, there’s a strong parallel to
the current financial crisis, in which Wall Street overestimated the returns from the housing
market.”

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