a message for our future? the rapa nui (easter island) ecodisaster and...

A message for our future The RapaNui (Easter Island) ecodisaster andPacireg c island environments

Paul Rainbird

Abstract

The unique archaeological remains of Rapa Nui (Easter Island) in conjunction with its geographi-cal position have led to a special interest in this place What has become the orthodox understand-ing of the material remains especially the famous large carved stone torsos (moai) is that theyrepresent a physical manifestation of social competition that was a major causative factor in anecodisaster ndash the destruction of the indigenous palm forest This story of human-caused environ-mental disaster provided a topical warning as a microcosm of the earth in the environmentallyaware nal two decades of the last century Recent archaeological and palaeoenvironmental workon other Pacic islands although indicating signicant human-induced environmental change isproviding evidence that these were instigated by thoughtful human actors who were capable ofmanipulating their island homes in order to enhance or even make their potential for subsistenceand settlement Within this scenario the events that led to apparently major environmental changein Rapa Nui is one that is evident in the majority of Pacic islands In the vast majority of othercases these changes did not lead to the inevitable social competition and population collapse thathave been posited for Rapa Nui In this paper I question whether the Rapa Nui case is really sodifferent and argue that the ecodisaster occurs after and as a consequence of European contact

Keywords

Rapa Nui Easter Island ecodisaster contact Pacic environmental change

Our age is not more dangerous ndash not more risky ndash than those of earlier generations butthe balance of risks and dangers has shifted We live in a world where hazards createdby ourselves are as or more threatening than those that come from the outside Someof these are genuinely catastrophic such as global ecological risk nuclear proliferationor the meltdown of the world economy

(Giddens 1999 34)

At the n de milleacutenaire Anthony Giddens in Runaway World proposed that humans are realizing that environmental risks are as much due to their own practices as any

World Archaeology Vol 33(3) 436ndash451 Ancient Ecodisasterscopy 2002 Taylor amp Francis Ltd ISSN 0043-8243 print1470-1375 online

DOI 10108000438240120107468

uncontrollable lsquonaturalrsquo forces In this same period but talking of a pre-modern age thestory of environmental change on Rapa Nui (Easter Island in Chile as the Isla de PascuaFig 1) has become a cause ceacutelegravebre for many people who wish to see this island as a micro-cosm of possible world environmental catastrophe The popular version of this story hasreached a mass audience through Bahn and Flenleyrsquos Easter Island Earth Island wherethey argue that the people of Rapa Nui lsquocarried out for us the experiment of permittingunrestricted population growth proigate use of resources destruction of the environmentand boundless condence in their religion to take care of the futurersquo (Bahn and Flenley1992 213) This story so dominates public and non-specialist (sometimes specialist) under-standings of the history of Rapa Nui that the alternative stories and the greater context ofother Pacic island environmental histories can be heard only as a distant murmur In thispaper I shall review some of the alternative scenarios that have been proposed and usethese to contend that in comparison to other Pacic islanders the people of Rapa Nui werenot mere unthinking pawns in an environmental game where they had little choice butinstead decision-making actors with the ability and knowledge to manipulate a relativelyextreme environment for their own ends but whose voice was lost once their world wasdevastated by the arrival of Europeans to their island First I need to provide an outline ofthe popular story of the catastrophic collapse of Rapa Nui society

A message for our future

The orthodox model that is the popular story of Rapa Nui environmental and socialhistory has been around for some time (eg McCoy 1979 Kirch 1984) but Bahn andFlenley following Flenleyrsquos palaeoenvironmental research (see Flenley and King 1984Flenley et al 1991 Flenley 1993 1994) are responsible for bringing the story to broaderpublic attention

The scenario detailed by Bahn and Flenley is one that sees the human population ofRapa Nui as responsible for an environmental catastrophe leading to what has been termedcultural devolution (also see for example Thomas 1996 59ndash68) The environmentaldestruction is the loss of palm through forest clearance starting shortly after initial settle-ment and being virtually complete by AD 1400 (Plate 1) This process was the consequenceof clearing land of wood (mostly palm) for agriculture canoe building re setting andmost importantly the use of palm trunks as rollers for the transport of the moai statuesfrom their quarry sites to the coast where at least 230 were erected on stone platforms(Plate 2) The rats introduced by the settlers of Rapa Nui also served to inhibit regener-ation of the palms by eating their fruits Other apparently unexpected consequences ofthe forest clearance were soil erosion which removed the fertile soils reducing potentialfor agriculture and a change in the uvial regime leading to a reduction in available water

The pressures that forest removal placed on the islanders led to competition for fooda competition leading to further moai manufacture periods of starvation (and possiblycannibalism) inevitable ever-increasing warfare identied by the late development andincrease in obsidian points and later still a fragmentation of chiey society Eventuallymoai production ceases and is apparently replaced by the infamous lsquobirdman cultrsquo leadingto the neglect and toppling of the moai The cult of the birdman provides a method for

A message for our future 437

Fig

ure

1M

ap o

f th

e P

aci

c Is

land

s w

ith

isla

nds

men

tion

ed in

the

tex

t

one of the competing social groups in the fragmented system to gain power and privilegesthrough the athletic prowess of one of their members All this and an associated massivedecrease in population occurred by c AD 1680 according to chronological estimatesderived from genealogical information

This story of self-induced ecodisaster and consequent self-destruction of a Polynesianisland society continues to provide the easy and uncomplicated shorthand for explainingthe so-called cultural devolution of Rapa Nui society (eg Nile and Clerk 1996 Flenley1998) Kirch has most recently expressed this in an extensive review of the archaeologi-cal history of the Pacic islands where he states that

In the end the relations of power that underwrote the most incredible monuments theancient Pacic world has ever seen were not sufcient to survive the pressures they putupon the very ecosystem that those ideological symbols were meant to dominate andcontrol

(Kirch 2000 275)

The message for the future was clear according to Bahn and Flenley

One could stand on the summit and see almost every point on the island The personwho felled the last tree could see it was the last tree But he (or she) still felled it This iswhat is so worrying Humankindrsquos covetousness is so boundless Its selshness appears


Plate 1 The Rapa Nui landscape (photo courtesy of C E Watson)

to be genetically inborn Selshness leads to survival Altruism leads to death Theselsh gene wins The Easter Islanders no doubt believed their gods would nd asolution to the problem Nowadays we tend to rely on our gods of science and tech-nology But the islanders came unstuck in a big way and we could do the same

(Bahn and Flenley 1992 214 emphasis in original)

What message

A number of commentators have preferred to look for a basic environmental explanationfor the loss of forest proposed by Bahn and Flenley McCall (1993) postulated thatenvironmental perturbations within the Little Ice Age may have caused a drought severeenough to destroy the trees Orliac and Orliac (1998) prefer an ENSO (El NintildeoSouthernOscillation)-induced drought that led to lsquoa brutal and dramatic crisis famine high mortal-ity and profound social disarrayrsquo (1998 132) Hunter-Anderson has provided a detailedcritique of the orthodox model and nds that Bahn and Flenleyrsquos borrowing of the notion

440 Paul Rainbird

Plate 2 Moai statues at the quarrysite (photo courtesy of C E Watson)

of an universal lsquoselsh genersquo is when applied to Rapa Nui based on lsquopsycho-anthropo-logical fantasies about subsistence agriculture and its alleged ill-effects upon the environ-mentrsquo (1998 86)

Drawing on the evidence derived from a range of ethnographic studies Hunter-Anderson provides many examples of sustainable subsistence practices from plantmanagement through to soil erosion control Such sustainable management Hunter-Anderson argues would also have been extended to include the palm trees agro-forestrybeing a particular speciality of Pacic islanders She takes exception to the claim that palmwood was felled for canoe fabrication as it is generally avoided in the Pacic Certainlyin Canoes of Oceania Haddon and Hornell (1975 97) provide evidence that indicates thaton Rapa Nui boats were manufactured by skilfully patching together pieces of driftwoodMore important however are the two major causes for the loss of the palm forest as envis-aged in the scenario provided by Bahn and Flenley the use of logs for transporting themoai and the role of rats in destroying the reproductive capabilities of the palms througheating the fruits Hunter-Anderson regards the idea of the destruction of the forest toprovide material to transport the moai as ludicrous For a start she argues that logs areeasily stored for multiple transportation events Second she questions the frequency ofsuch events and nds that in regard to the statistics of chronology and number of moaitransported it is likely to be less than two per annum Such a gure she concludes isunlikely to provide a threat to the ecological balance of the palms

Hunter-Anderson contests Bahn and Flenleyrsquos identification of the Chilean Jubaeachilensis as the likely analogue for Rapa Nui palm Its distinct environmental settingshe suggests makes a more suitable present-day comparison the Juan australis palmwhich is an endemic species of the Juan Fernaacutendez Islands However in regard toJubaea chilensis she does find that rather than rats arresting the rates of reproductionof this palm they are actually known to help germination through their gnawing of thefruits Thus it is possible that the rats introduced by the first settlers may have assistedregeneration rather than hindered it as proposed by Bahn and Flenley Hunter-Andersonrsquos specific readings of the data provided by the cores upon which Flenley baseshis analyses is that the evidence for environmental change begins 3000 years ago longbefore humans are present on the island suggesting that lsquoprehistoric human actions hadnothing to do with the origin of these trendsrsquo (1998 94) She does go on to say thathumans lsquohad nothing to do with their continuance eitherrsquo and this is where Hunter-Anderson and I part company as she believes that the new arrivals would have adaptedto changing climatic conditions whereas as I explore below in relation to research else-where in the Pacific I expect that the environment was adapted to the needs and percep-tions of the new arrivals

Rapa Nui in Pacic context

Scholars have for many years recognized that the landscapes of the Pacic islands havealtered since initial human settlement Debate has considered two issues

1 Is landscape change a lsquonaturalrsquo or lsquoculturalrsquo product2 Is the landscape change a degradation of the environment or an enhancement


The rst question sets up a false dichotomy All landscape is cultural otherwise it cannotbe landscape and it cannot have meaning until it has been expressed in human terms (andthese perceptions are rarely those of the geomorphologist) This does not get us any closerto answering what processes are responsible for these changes Perhaps it is better torephrase the question and ask would these landscape changes have occurred if humanshad not settled on the islands The question of how far humans can be implicated inchanging their environment is not new and has long been a cause for debate in geogra-phy and related disciplines In 1955 an international symposium lsquoManrsquos Role in Chang-ing the Face of the Earthrsquo was held in Princeton (Thomas 1956) and even though thiswas at a time when the notion of a lsquodeculturized anthropologistrsquo was still accepted theoverall impression of one of the organizers was that the week-long conference constantlyrevolved around the question lsquoIs man part of nature or is he something different apartfrom nature a kind of organism with some control over his own destiniesrsquo (Bates 19561137ndash9) For the same conference Mumford (1956 1151) concluded that the reduction-ism of science which results in simplication needed to be replaced by a realization ofhumanityrsquos capacity for lsquoself-fabricationrsquo Subsequently these questions were directlyrelated to the Pacic at the 1961 Hawaii conference lsquoManrsquos Place in the Island Ecosystemrsquo(Fosberg 1963) That the question of human involvement in shaping the lsquonaturalrsquo environ-ment was still very much to the fore can be illustrated by two quotes

An attempt has been made to view human populations as neither more nor less thanpopulations of a generalized and exible species for in the most fundamental respectsman hardly differs from other animals His populations participate in ecosystems as dothe populations of other species they occupy particular positions in food webs as doothers and they are limited by factors little different from those that limit others

(Rappaport 1963 168ndash9)

There is impelling evidence that the Maori purposefully altered the texture of thesoils he used and in some places actually created a new M (for man) horizon on top ofexisting proles This he did by laboriously carting thousands of tons of sand and gravelin ax baskets to mix with or to bury existing top soils and thus improving the tillagedrainage and heating properties of the soil

(Cumberland 1963 194)

These conferences present a useful illustration of the diversity in geography prior to thelsquoQuantitative Revolutionrsquo or lsquoNew Geographyrsquo of the 1960s which as in Anglo-American archaeology pushed positivism and general models to the fore at the expenseof different interpretations (Gregory and Walford 1989)

It is clear then that for geographers at least there is a history of dispute over the roleof humans in relation to the environment Archaeology in the Pacic was only in theposition of having collected enough data to allow for interpretation at the time when thelsquoNew Archaeologistsrsquo were borrowing from the lsquoNew Geographersrsquo It should be of littlesurprise given the epistemological context that the models constructed for islandenvironments were ones of quantiable lsquoeco-systemsrsquo which allowed little room for thedifcult-to-quantify impact of human agency As in other humanities-related disciplinesthe study of geography and archaeology has moved on by learning from the 1960s and

442 Paul Rainbird

1970s experience of dehumanizing the world (see eg Gregory 1994) In their lsquonewrsquo(perhaps post-modern) eras these disciplines have returned to the less monotheisticposition illustrated by the conferences noted above For Pacic archaeology it was thiseasing of control over the direction of academic discourse that allowed for the reintro-duction of discussion regarding the role of people in transforming the island environment

In the Pacic region the islands of Near Oceania were being settled by at least 40000years ago (Spriggs 1997a) According to Enright and Gosden (1992 194) from at least20000 years ago and continuing on and through the Holocene there is evidence forhuman-induced landscape alterations in the palaeoenvironmental record of New IrelandResearch in New Guinea by palynologist Simon Haberle (1993 119) concluded that fromat least 30000 years ago the lsquorecords are compelling that the early inhabitants of theHighlands were actively manipulating the environment rather than playing a passiverolersquo Thus from as early as the late Pleistocene onwards there is evidence to support acausal link between human settlement and landscape transformation in the PacicAccepting that there is a relationship between environmental change and human agencyit is necessary to assess the evidence from the smaller Pacic islands over the last 3500years

Gosden (1989 Gosden and Webb 1994) and colleagues working on Lapita pottery sitesin the Arawe Islands off the south coast of West New Britain found evidence for signi-cant late Holocene landscape change They discovered that after 3500 years ago thehuman impact on the landscape can be observed through a great increase in soil erosionand accumulation as beach deposits similar changes have been noted at other contem-porary (Lapita) sites (Gosden et al 1989 573) This appears to be typical of the landscapetransformations experienced on many Pacic islands following initial human settlement

On the island of Aneityum in Vanuatu excavations by Spriggs (1981 1985 1986 19931997b) have shown that valley lling and coastal progradation through the movement ofsoil from the hills had created land suitable for settlements and agriculture by 1000 yearsago It appears that erosion began soon after initial settlement at approximately 2900years ago continuing sporadically until about 1600 years ago when increased alluvial sedi-mentation occurred He nds many other similar examples from other Pacic islands andrecognizes in relation to agricultural production and benets to settlement location thatlsquothese processes have led in many parts of the Pacic to landscape enhancement ratherthan degradationrsquo (Spriggs 1985 429) Spriggs was writing at a time when soil erosioncontinued to be regarded as detrimental to island environments but he further developedin iconoclastic vein by suggesting that the soil erosion was deliberately induced He stateslsquoIf intentionality was part of the process leading to hillslope erosion and valley inll-ing in Oceania as I suspect it must have been it is not as far as I know an intentionalityremembered and expressed in Pacic communities todayrsquo (1985 429 emphasis added)

The island of Mangaia in the Southern Cook Islands group also illustrates an interest-ing example of environmental change On this island Kirch and colleagues (1992) foundthat following human settlement at approximately 2000 years ago the palynology indi-cates that the central volcanic core became deforested This change in the vegetationresulted in destabilizing the soil which was consequently washed to the bottom of theslopes Here at the base of the slopes an upraised coral limestone escarpment (theMakatea) which encircles the central core of the island trapped the soil The consequent


creation of alluvial soils created a highly fertile environment that was utilized as elds andtaro swamps

Kirch et al (1992) interpret the landscape changes on Mangaia as humanly inducedenvironmental degradation However Kirch may have been closer to an understandingof these island transformations when discussing a similar movement of soil from theuplands to the coast following the human settlement of Tikopia a Polynesian outlier inMelanesia

[T]he net gain in land must be explained as a combination of geologic and culturalactions Such cultural practices as shoreline conservation were witnessed in thearchaeological record as frequent retaining walls of coral cobbles now buried in fossildune ridges I doubt the same pronounced gain in land would have beenachieved without the input from human actions [T]he positive repercussions oferosion and deposition for intensive agriculture cannot be overly stressed

(Kirch 1983 28 emphasis in original)

The importance of this statement is

1 The realization that environmental change can enhance the potential of the island forhuman subsistence and settlement

2 That these transformations cannot be considered a purely natural phenomenon3 The avoidance by Kirch of the question of whether the movement of soil to gain land

and provide fertile areas for agriculture was an intentional act on the part of theislanders

The examples presented above clearly show that in the Pacic humans have impactedupon their island environments to varying extents As Spriggs (1997b) notes the islandscertainly were not lsquoparadisersquo when rst settled as they probably lacked the essentialingredients to sustain human life with few edible plants and little in the way of non-marinefauna other than birds In this scenario settlers would quickly set about altering the earthof the island with introduced agricultural products and the breaking of the ground wouldincrease soil movement with potentially detrimental effects on reefs and lagoon as thesoil was redeposited on the shore What has not been satisfactorily addressed is the ques-tion prompted by Spriggs (1985) as to whether these landscape changes were a conse-quence of intentional actions by islanders to expand the island size and terrestrialsubsistence potential

My research has focused on the eastern Caroline Islands of Micronesia where thearchaeological and palaeoenvironmental evidence indicates signicant environmentalchange since human settlement (eg Athens 1995 Athens et al 1996 Rainbird 1994 19951999a) The scenario derived from the eastern Carolines is one of earliest human habi-tation taking place on the fringing reef in the form of stilt house settlements Archaeo-logical and geomorphological evidence from the Bismarck Archipelago has shown thatsuch settlements can create low energy coastal environments that trap silt and soil leadingto coastal progradation (Gosden and Webb 1994) In these circumstances soil is erodedfrom the slopes of the island as the introduced crops are planted following the removalof the non-productive endemic species The land created in the former lagoons or reef

444 Paul Rainbird

becomes productive land for subsistence crop planting and level land for house sites Onthe island of Kosrae it has been estimated that a remarkable 16 square kilometres ofcoastal lowland making up approximately 15 per cent of the current total land area of theisland did not exist prior to human settlement Athens (1995) attempts to show thatchanges in sea level allowed the build up of this land ideally suited to island settlementpurposes although his arguments have been shown to be convoluted and unconvincing(Rainbird 1995) In particular two sites one on Kosrae and one on a neighbouring islandof Pohnpei illustrate the efforts islanders will go to in order to enhance their islandenvironments

The sites of Leluh and Nan Madol on Kosrae and Pohnpei respectively have drawnmuch attention in the past due to their spectacular monumental architectural remainsdating to centuries prior to rst European reports in the rst half of the nineteenth century(Cordy 1993 Morgan 1988 Rainbird 1994) More interesting in the context of this paperis that they are both built on fringing reef ats both have the earliest archaeological datesfor human settlement of the islands and both have settlement built on a huge amount ofpurposefully constructed landll At Leluh Cordy (1993 256) estimated that 40ha wasconstructed landll while more recent work by Athens provides a revised gure of 27ha(1995 33) At Nan Madol the monumental architecture is constructed on the top ofninety-two articial islets whose construction started some 1500 years ago (Ayres 1993)These feats of civil engineering were a locally logical extension of island modication thatincluded valley inlling and coastal progradation and surely must be regarded as inten-tional acts If we can accept such practices as locally logical intentional acts then we oughtto ask how such practices became incorporated into the local corpus of landscape manipu-lation that is do we characterize such practices as independent innovation or ones thatderive from a long history as I have argued previously (Rainbird 1999a cf Spriggs 2001)of community observation and experience of various island environments and the prop-erties of soil movement and wave action among other things Arguing otherwise wouldsurely require a belief that each time an island was settled for the rst time the settlerswould need to re-invent the process of habitation Intentional acts can go wrong butdwelling without recourse to experience is not possible ndash lsquothe famous ahu [shrines] andmoai [of Rapa Nui] are an outgrowth of the Polynesian maraersquo (Lee 1992 8)

There is no doubt that Pacic islands had been used and apparently abandoned priorto European visits and it may be argued that the Rapa Nui community would have eventu-ally suffered the same fate However the abandoned islands termed lsquomystery islandsrsquo byBellwood (1978 352) may easily be regarded as resource poor when compared with RapaNui The majority of the deserted islands are characterized by the poor soil developmentof coral atolls or upraised limestone geology and all but the atoll of Christmas Island aremuch smaller in area than Rapa Nui Many may have been inhabitable only while part ofan inter-island voyaging network as suggested by Weisler (1996) for the south-east Poly-nesian interaction sphere of Mangareva Pitcairn and Henderson the latter two beingdeserted when rst reported by Europeans Irwin (1992 180) casts doubt on whethermany of the abandoned islands had supported permanent settlements at all Rapa Nuidoes not compare with these places


Returning to Rapa Nui

That Pacific islanders altered their environments over many centuries and even millen-nia surviving and subsisting in places where if they had not actively changed them theywould never have been able to continue an established process of island colonization inthis region If we can accept that drastic environmental change is the oniy means of long-term survival and a successful strategy at that in the Pacific why is it necessary to singleRapa Nui out What is different about Rapa Nui which is basically just another Poly-nesian island from a prehistoric perspective To answer this I propose returning toBahn and Flenley and highlighting some chronological inconsistencies in their orthodoxmodel

Van Tilburg (1994) an archaeologist with a long research interest in the moai nds thatthe orthodox view can be seen as a logical growth out of Darwinian notions of lsquoislands aslaboratoriesrsquo (cf Rainbird 1999b) She writes that lsquo[t]he metaphor for disaster is a projec-tion of Western values which emphasises the self-destruction of Rapa Nui culture over theactual near-annihilation of it by contact with the Westrsquo (Van Tilburg 1994 164) In this state-ment she refers to the disastrous consequences of contact between the Rapa Nui islandersand Europeans during a period that in its earliest phases witnesses the toppling of the moaistatues Bahn and Flenley (1992 165) state that from the historical evidence it appears thaton the arrival of the Dutch in 1722 lsquothe statue cult was still underwayrsquo This appears not tohave been the case in 1774 according to Cook Certainly La Peacuterouse in 1786 found thestatues overturned and people hiding in caves In 1722 the Dutch reported that the peopleof Rapa Nui lsquowere all unarmedrsquo but in 1774 a few clubs and spears were reported The datesfor obsidian point manufacture (the mataa) regarded as an archaeological indicator ofincreased warfare related to environmental stress in the orthodox model appear to supportthe historical observations Bahn and Flenley (1992 165) report that the mataa lsquorstappeared in the 15th or 16th century but really proliferated in the 18th and 19th centurieswhen they became the commonest artefact on the islandrsquo La Peacuterousersquos report of peoplehiding in caves has been substantiated by excavation which produced glass artefacts ofhistoric date leading to the conclusion that such practices occurred after 1722 (Bahn andFlenley 1992 170) The stone chicken sheds an indicator of strict control of subsistenceresources in a depleted and warring environment in the orthodox model are not reportedin the historical records until 1868 leading Bahn and Flenley (1992 170) to conclude thattheir construction must have started between 1786 and that date It is also the case that untilafter 1804 descriptions of subsistence activities appear to be generally very positive Euro-pean visitors reported plots of sweet potato sugar cane and banana plants tended with greatcare in square elds with furrows (Bahn and Flenley 1992 93ndash4)

It thus appears from the evidence presented by Bahn and Flenley themselves that themajority of the major indicators of apparent competition warfare and social disarrayapparently caused by islander-induced ecodisaster dates to the decades and centuriesfollowing initial European visits Such accrued historical and archaeological evidenceprovides indicators of the consequences of the contacts these encounters with difference(cf Rainbird 2000) that ensued starting with the visits of Roggeveen in 1722 andGonzaacutelez in 1770 and beyond Certainly it is now commonplace to consider the poten-tially devastating effect of introduced diseases recorded elsewhere in the Pacic (eg

446 Paul Rainbird

Moorehead 1966) In a study of skeletal remains from nearly 500 individuals dating tothe late prehistoric and early historic phases Owsley et al (1994) were able to conrmfrom the records that venereal disease most probably syphilis was an early introductionby Europeans to the island population However examination of trauma indicators ledthem to conclude that the lsquoimpression given by folklore and sporadic historical docu-mentation is of chronic lethal warfare Based on the osteological evidence thisconclusion is somewhat misleading Few fatalities were directly attributable toviolencersquo (Owsley et al 1994 174) We can be secure in the knowledge that the 1862forced removal of islanders for slave labour in Chile reduced the indigenous Rapa Nuipopulation from thousands (Forster (1996 264) in 1774 estimated only 900 inhabitantsof whom only about fty were women He does however comment that Roggeveen esti-mated many thousands in 1722 and Gonzaacutelez in 1770 a population of 3000) to a tiny 110by 1877 (McCall 1994 64)

Meacutetraux described the consequences of this slaving in no uncertain terms lsquoThe year1862 was decisive in the history of Easter Island It saw the end of its civilisation mostaspects of which have become for us since the middle of the nineteenth century as vagueand far-off as though we were separated from them by the mists of timersquo (1957 46) Ofthe 1000 removed

[o]nly fteen regained the island to the greatest misfortune of the population that hadbeen left behind shortly after their return smallpox the germs of which they hadbrought with them broke out and transformed the island into a vast charnel-houseSince there were too many corpses to bury in the family mausoleums they were throwndown clefts in the rock or dragged into underground tunnels

(Meacutetraux 1957 47)

Environmental change appears to play very little role in the social changes on EasterIsland although disease and items of material culture were not the only things introducedShortly after the rst visits by Europeans the consequences were making an obviousimpact on the island environment As Hunter-Anderson observes lsquoEuropeans not onlytook people away from their own island they introduced many destructive animalsincluding rabbits cows horses sheep goats and pigs The [islanders] could not protecttheir valuable saplings from the depredations of the alien beastsrsquo (1998 97)

Conclusion

McCall (1994) proposes that one of the destabilizing aspects of the earliest Europeanvisits was the introduction of foreign material goods and he states that lsquouncertaintyover the values of unfamiliar objects brought into question the loyalty and trust ofbrother and enemy and all the while the annual ceremony of Orongo becomes lesseffective in the face of feudsrsquo (1994 46) In this paper I hope to have shown that therewere many more destabilizing aspects to European contact with the islanders of EasterIsland

How isolated the islanders had become before the arrival of Roggeveen is a debatablepoint but not an issue that can be addressed in this paper As I have attempted to show


due to the impact of aliens of which Roggeveen and his crew were apparently the rst itis extremely difcult to reconstruct the last decades of the people of Rapa Nui prior totheir arrival As I have noted above Rapa Nui may have eventually gone the same wayas the Polynesian lsquomystery islandsrsquo but a re-reading of the evidence does not support sucha scenario Isolation if it existed does not necessarily equal self-destruction

Roggeveen noted the nonchalant behaviour of the rst islander to step aboard a Euro-pean ship and it may be the case that aliens such as these people on a Dutch ship wereexpected What was perhaps far less expected was the disease and the new expectationsof material goods and indeed altered expectations for the future After centuries ofsuccessfully crafting an island home from the fertile volcanic soils following in the longtradition over millennia of settlement in the Pacic islands the decimation of the popu-lation through illness and slavery and the destruction of the vegetation by introducedbrowsing animals brought rapid and drastic changes to Rapa Nui society These changescaused major ruptures in the oral traditions and the voice of those days prior to Europeancontact has been distorted or lost

Kirch notes that for Rapa Nui due to the impact of encounters with outsiders lsquoit hasfallen to archaeology combined with ldquosalvagerdquo ethnography to write a history of thisremote Polynesian islandrsquo (2000 270) Given this apparent responsibility it is importantthat great care be taken before scholars once again implicate the former inhabitants ofRapa Nui in a model of unwitting ecological disaster that serves as a microcosm of themodern world An alternative view and the one that perhaps ought to stand as the ortho-dox model until shown otherwise is that it was the collision with the modern world systemfrom the eighteenth century onwards that was directly responsible for the destruction ofa fertile environment and a rich and in part unique culture to one depopulated and suitedonly to sheep grazing as received in the present day Perhaps this should be the messagefor our future

Acknowledgements

I should like to thank Sarah Tarlow for stimulating my interest in pursuing this topic inrelation to Rapa Nui I thank Terry Bradford Andrew Fleming Erik Pearthree PeterRowley-Conwy John Terrell Sophy Thomas-Goodburn and the two anonymous refereeswho provided comments that helped improve this paper Thanks also to Claire Watsonfor providing the photographs All responsibility for views expressed in this paper remainsmy own

Department of Archaeology University of Wales Lampeter Ceredigion SA48 7ED

References

Athens J S 1995 Landscape Archaeology Prehistoric Settlement Subsistence and Environment ofKosrae Eastern Caroline Islands Micronesia Honolulu International Archaeological ResearchInstitute

448 Paul Rainbird

Athens J S Ward J V and Murakami G M 1996 Development of an agroforest on a Microne-sian high island prehistoric Kosraean agriculture Antiquity 70 834ndash46

Ayres W S 1993 Nan Madol archaeological eldwork nal report MS on le Historic Preser-vation Ofce Pohnpei State Federated States of Micronesia

Bahn P and Flenley J 1992 Easter Island Earth Island London Thames amp Hudson

Bates M 1956 Process In Manrsquos Role in Changing the Face of the Earth (ed W L Thomas)Chicago University of Chicago Press pp 1136ndash40

Bellwood P 1978 Manrsquos Conquest of the Pacic Auckland Collins

Cordy R 1993 The Lelu Stone Ruins (Kosrae Micronesia) 1978ndash1981 Historical and Archaeo-logical Research Asian and Pacic Archaeology Series 10 Honolulu Social Science ResearchInstitute University of Hawaii

Cumberland K B 1963 Manrsquos role in modifying island environments in the southwest Pacic withspecial reference to New Zealand In Manrsquos Place in the Island Ecosystem (ed F R Fosberg)Honolulu Bernice P Bishop Museum pp 187ndash205

Enright N J and Gosden C 1992 Unstable archipelagos ndash south-west Pacic environment andprehistory since 30 000 BP In The Naive Lands (ed J Dodson) Melbourne Longman Cheshirepp 160ndash98

Flenley J 1993 The palaeoecology of Easter Island and its ecological disaster In Easter IslandStudies (ed S R Fischer) Oxbow Monograph 32 Oxford Oxbow pp 27ndash45

Flenley J 1994 Pollen in Polynesia the use of palynology to detect human activity in the Pacicislands In Tropical Archaeobotany Applications and New Developments (ed J G Hather)London Routledge pp 202ndash14

Flenley J 1998 New data and new thoughts about Rapa Nui In Easter Island in Pacic ContextSouth Seas Symposium Proceedings of the Fourth lnternationaI Conference on Easter Island andEast Polynesia (eds C M Stevenson G Lee and F J Morin) Easter Island Foundation pp 125ndash8

Flenley J and King S 1984 Late Quaternary pollen records from Easter Island Nature 307 47ndash50

Flenley J King A S Teller J Prentice M Jackson J and Chew C 1991 The Late Quaternaryvegetational and climatic history of Easter Island Journal of Quaternary Science 6 85ndash115

Forster J R 1996[1778] Observations Made during a Voyage Round the World (eds N Thomas HGuest and M Dettelbach) Honolulu University of Hawaii Press

Fosberg F R (ed) 1963 Manrsquos Place in the Island Ecosystem Honolulu Bernice P BishopMuseum

Giddens A 1999 Runaway World How Globalisation Is Reshaping Our Lives London Prole

Gosden C 1989 Prehistoric social landscapes of the Arawe Islands West New Britain ProvincePapua New Guinea Archaeology in Oceania 24 45ndash58

Gosden C and Webb J 1994 The creation of a Papua New Guinean landscape archaeological andgeomorphological evidence Journal of Field Archaeology 21 29ndash51

Gosden C Allen J Ambrose W Anson D Golson J Green R Kirch P Lilley I SpechtJ and Spriggs M 1989 Lapita sites of the Bismarck Archipelago Antiquity 63 561ndash86

Gregory D 1994 Geographical Imaginations Oxford Blackwell

Gregory D and Walford R 1989 Introduction making geography In Horizons in HumanGeography (eds D Gregory and R Walford) London Macmillan pp 1ndash7

Haberle S 1993 Pleistocene vegetation change and early human occupation of a tropical moun-tainous environment In Sahul in Review Pleistocene Archaeology in Australia New Guinea andIsland Melanesia (eds M A Smith M Spriggs and B Fankhauser) Canberra The Australian


National University Research School of Pacic Studies OccasionaI Papers in Prehistory 24 pp109ndash22

Haddon A C and Hornell J 1975 Canoes of Oceania Bernice P Bishop Museum Special Publi-cations 27 28 and 29 Honolulu Bishop Museum Press

Hunter-Anderson R 1998 Human vs climatic impacts at Rapa Nui did the people really cut downall those trees In Easter Island in Pacic Context South Seas Symposium Proceedings of the FourthInternational Conference on Easter Island and East Polynesia (eds C M Stevenson G Lee and FJ Morin) Easter Island Foundation pp 85ndash99

Irwin G 1992 The Exploration and Colonisation of the Pacic Cambridge Cambridge UniversityPress

Kirch P V 1983 Manrsquos role in modifying tropical and subtropical Polynesian ecosystems Archae-ology in Oceania 18 26ndash31

Kirch P V 1984 The Evolution of Polynesian Chiefdoms Cambridge Cambridge University Press

Kirch P V 2000 On the Road of the Winds An Archaeological History of the Pacic Islands BeforeEuropean Contact Berkeley CA University of California Press

Kirch P V Flenley J R Steadman D W Lamont F and Dawson S 1992 Ancient environ-mental degradation National Geographic Research 8 166ndash79

Lee G 1992 Rock Art of Easter Island Symbols of Power Prayers to the Gods Institute of Archae-ology University of California Los Angeles Monumenta Archaeologica 17

McCall G 1993 Little Ice Age some speculations for Rapa Nui Rapa Nui Journal 7 65ndash70

McCall G 1994 Rapanui Tradition and Survival on Easter Island Honolulu University of HawaiiPress

McCoy PC 1979 Easter Island In The Prehistory of Polynesia (ed J Jennings) CanberraAustralian National University Press pp 135ndash66

Meacutetraux A 1957 Easter Island A Stone-Age Civilization of the Pacic (trans M Bullock) LondonDeutsch

Moorehead A 1966 The Fatal Impact An Account of the Invasion of the South Pacic LondonHamish Hamilton

Morgan W N 1988 Prehistoric Architecture in Micronesia Austin University of Texas Press

Mumford L 1956 Prospect In Manrsquos Role in Changing the Face of the Earth (ed W L Thomas)Chicago University of Chicago Press pp 1141ndash53

Nile R and Clerk C 1996 Cultural Atlas of Australia New Zealand and the South Pacic Factson File

Orliac C and Orliac M 1998 The disappearance of Easter Islandrsquos forest over-exploitation orclimatic catastrophe In Easter Island in Pacic Context South Seas Symposium Proceedings of theFourth International Conference on Easter Island and East Polynesia (eds C M Stevenson G Leeand F J Morin) Easter Island Foundation pp 129ndash34

Owsley D W Gill G W and Ousley S D 1994 Biological effects of European contact on EasterIsland In In the Wake of Contact Biological Responses to Conquest (eds C S Larsen and G RMilner) New York Wiley-Liss pp 161ndash77

Rainbird P 1994 Prehistory in the northwest tropical Pacic the Caroline Mariana and MarshallIslands JournaI of World Prehistory 8 293ndash349

Rainbird P 1995 Kosraersquos place in Pacic prehistory Archaeology in Oceania 30 139ndash45

Rainbird P 1999a The use of landscape in identifying potential sources of Caroline island coloni-sation In Le pacique de 5000 agrave 2000 avant le present Suppleacutements agrave lrsquohistoire drsquoune colonization

450 Paul Rainbird

(The Pacic from 5000 to 2000 BP Colonisation and transformation) Actes du colloque Vanuatu 31Juilletndash6 Aout 1996 (eds J-C Galipaud and I Lilley) Paris Eacuteditions de IRD Collection Colloqueset seacuteminaires pp 451ndash60

Rainbird P 1999b Islands out of time towards a critique of island archaeology Journal of Mediter-ranean Archaeology 12 216ndash34

Rainbird P 2000 lsquoRound black and lustrousrsquo a view to encounters with difference in ChuukLagoon Federated States of Micronesia In The Archaeology of Difference Negotiating Cross-cultural Engagements in Oceania (eds R Torrence and A Clarke) London Routledge pp 32ndash50

Rappaport R A 1963 Aspects of manrsquos inuence upon island ecosystems alteration and controlIn Manrsquos Place in the Island Ecosystem (ed F R Fosberg) Honolulu Bernice P Bishop Museumpp 155ndash70

Spriggs M 1981 Vegetable kingdoms Taro irrigation and Pacic prehistory PhD dissertationAustralian National University Canberra

Spriggs M 1985 Prehistoric man-induced landscape enhancement in the Pacic examples andimplications In Prehistoric Intensive Agriculture in the Tropics (Part I) (ed I S Farrington) OxfordBritish Archaeological Reports S232 pp 409ndash34

Spriggs M 1986 Landscape land use and political transformation in southern Melanesia In IslandSocieties Archaeological Approaches to Evolution and Transformation (ed P V Kirch)Cambridge Cambridge University Press pp 6ndash19

Spriggs M 1993 Island Melanesia the last 10000 years In A Community of Culture The Peopleand Prehistory of the Pacic (eds M Spriggs D E Yen W Ambrose R Jones A Thorne and AAndrews) Canberra The Australian National University Research School of Pacic Studies Occa-sional Papers in Prehistory 21 pp 187ndash205

Spriggs M 1997a The Island Melanesians Oxford Blackwell

Spriggs M 1997b Landscape catastrophe and landscape enhancement are either or both true inthe Pacic In Historical Ecology in the Pacic Islands Prehistoric Environmental and LandscapeChange (eds P V Kirch and T L Hunt) New Haven CT Yale University Press pp 80ndash104

Spriggs M 2001 Future eaters in Australia future eaters in the Pacic Early human environmentalimpacts Australian Archaeology 52 53ndash9

Thomas N 1996 Out of Time History and Evolution in Anthropological Discourse 2nd edn AnnArbor MI University of Michigan Press

Thomas W L (ed) 1956 Manrsquos Role in Changing the Face of the Earth Chicago University ofChicago Press

Van Tilburg J 1994 Easter Island Archaeology Ecology and Culture London British MuseumPress

Weisler M 1996 Taking the mystery out of the Polynesian lsquomysteryrsquo islands a case study fromMangareva and the Pitcairn Group In Oceanic Culture History Essays in Honour of Roger Green(eds J M Davidson G Irwin B F Leach A Pawley and D Brown) Dunedin New ZealandJournal of Archaeology Special Publication pp 615ndash29


uncontrollable lsquonaturalrsquo forces In this same period but talking of a pre-modern age thestory of environmental change on Rapa Nui (Easter Island in Chile as the Isla de PascuaFig 1) has become a cause ceacutelegravebre for many people who wish to see this island as a micro-cosm of possible world environmental catastrophe The popular version of this story hasreached a mass audience through Bahn and Flenleyrsquos Easter Island Earth Island wherethey argue that the people of Rapa Nui lsquocarried out for us the experiment of permittingunrestricted population growth proigate use of resources destruction of the environmentand boundless condence in their religion to take care of the futurersquo (Bahn and Flenley1992 213) This story so dominates public and non-specialist (sometimes specialist) under-standings of the history of Rapa Nui that the alternative stories and the greater context ofother Pacic island environmental histories can be heard only as a distant murmur In thispaper I shall review some of the alternative scenarios that have been proposed and usethese to contend that in comparison to other Pacic islanders the people of Rapa Nui werenot mere unthinking pawns in an environmental game where they had little choice butinstead decision-making actors with the ability and knowledge to manipulate a relativelyextreme environment for their own ends but whose voice was lost once their world wasdevastated by the arrival of Europeans to their island First I need to provide an outline ofthe popular story of the catastrophic collapse of Rapa Nui society

A message for our future

The orthodox model that is the popular story of Rapa Nui environmental and socialhistory has been around for some time (eg McCoy 1979 Kirch 1984) but Bahn andFlenley following Flenleyrsquos palaeoenvironmental research (see Flenley and King 1984Flenley et al 1991 Flenley 1993 1994) are responsible for bringing the story to broaderpublic attention

The scenario detailed by Bahn and Flenley is one that sees the human population ofRapa Nui as responsible for an environmental catastrophe leading to what has been termedcultural devolution (also see for example Thomas 1996 59ndash68) The environmentaldestruction is the loss of palm through forest clearance starting shortly after initial settle-ment and being virtually complete by AD 1400 (Plate 1) This process was the consequenceof clearing land of wood (mostly palm) for agriculture canoe building re setting andmost importantly the use of palm trunks as rollers for the transport of the moai statuesfrom their quarry sites to the coast where at least 230 were erected on stone platforms(Plate 2) The rats introduced by the settlers of Rapa Nui also served to inhibit regener-ation of the palms by eating their fruits Other apparently unexpected consequences ofthe forest clearance were soil erosion which removed the fertile soils reducing potentialfor agriculture and a change in the uvial regime leading to a reduction in available water

The pressures that forest removal placed on the islanders led to competition for fooda competition leading to further moai manufacture periods of starvation (and possiblycannibalism) inevitable ever-increasing warfare identied by the late development andincrease in obsidian points and later still a fragmentation of chiey society Eventuallymoai production ceases and is apparently replaced by the infamous lsquobirdman cultrsquo leadingto the neglect and toppling of the moai The cult of the birdman provides a method for


Fig

ure

1M

ap o

f th

e P

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c Is

land

s w

ith

isla

nds

men

tion

ed in

the

tex

t




(Kirch 2000 275)







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Conclusion







Acknowledgements



References


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Fig

ure

1M

ap o

f th

e P

aci

c Is

land

s w

ith

isla

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tion

ed in

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Conclusion







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References


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(Kirch 2000 275)







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Conclusion







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446 Paul Rainbird






Conclusion







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444 Paul Rainbird









446 Paul Rainbird






Conclusion







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450 Paul Rainbird

































444 Paul Rainbird









446 Paul Rainbird






Conclusion







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448 Paul Rainbird














































450 Paul Rainbird

























446 Paul Rainbird






Conclusion







Acknowledgements



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448 Paul Rainbird














































450 Paul Rainbird






















Conclusion







Acknowledgements



References


448 Paul Rainbird














































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Acknowledgements



References


448 Paul Rainbird














































450 Paul Rainbird






























































450 Paul Rainbird

















a message for our future? the rapa nui (easter island) ecodisaster and...

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