Jeremy Hildreth
“Easter Island’s preternatural lonesomeness suggests the answers to two of archaeology’s greatest riddles: the giant and eerie stone carvings for which the island is renowned, and the ecological disaster that did the island in.”
That’s the lead-in to my Wall Street Journal story on Easter Island (“Before the Trees Disappeared”). For space, the Journal cut a few interesting asides and one paragraph where I quoted Jared Diamond (the Guns, Germs and Steel guy) from his chapter on Easter in his book Collapse.
Mr Diamond nicely, if a touch shrilly, sums up the story’s modern relevance: “Easter’s isolation makes it the clearest example of a society that destroyed itself by overexploiting its own resources….The parallels between Easter Island and the whole modern world are chillingly obvious. Thanks to globalization, international trade, jet planes, and the Internet, all countries on Earth today share resources and affect each other, just as did Easter’s dozen clans. Polynesian Easter Island was as isolated in the Pacific Ocean as the Earth [sic] is today in space….These are the reasons why people see the collapse of Easter Island society as a metaphor, a worst case scenario, for what may lie ahead of us in our future.”
In another excised aside, I’d mentioned that whilst Diamond and others — especially devoted environmentalists — have helped popularize this epic warning, and although archeologist William Mulloy first stated it in the 1960s, according to Sergio Rapu, the Easter Island archeologist whose Elderhostel charges I joined on a tour of the island, it was actually Margaret Thatcher who brought it to the world’s attention at the G8 summit in Houston in 1990. To the degree that Easter’s warning is a valid one for the whole of civilization, let’s give credit to [the conservative!] she who first raised the alarm.
The final aside, which I didn’t manage to work into my original draft, is the odd fact that Easter Island’s airstrip is apparently much longer than those at many major international airports: it was expanded to be used as an alternative landing place for the space shuttle! Ancient meets modern — and again, Easter’s isolation was the reason.
To see a cool experiment in how to make a giant stone head walk under its own power, watch this 7-second YouTube video.
Hello Jeremy, I actually was able to purchase the weekend journal and read your article. Amazing how you touched upon the environmental disaster combined with a “survival of the fittest” issue. I thought I knew so much about Easter Island, but after reading your article, I feel I now understand how this place developed its darkness and mystic. I am happy to read that there are descendants that are willing to reform their culture and hopefully one day revive this mysterious island to what it once was. Thank you for dining at my pizzeria last month. It was a pleasure meeting you and hope to see you again soon. Alec Yannoulis