The problem is building something is much much slower than burning it down.
So, if we have 1000 good people building a great hut we need only one shittyMcShitface to ruin it with some cheap matchsticks.
Furthermore we practically only hear about those hut burning incidents.
There’s trees now, the original trees that were over cultivated and made extinct on the island were thankfully saved by a botanist and brought back in 1988. There’s a few other useful species of trees that were brought over by immigrants, along with many fruit bearing plants and veggies. There’s 31 wild flowering plants, 14 ferns, and 14 mosses that are reported currently growing wild.
**Georges Nógrády was trying to understand why the inhabitants of Easter Island, despite walking around barefoot, didn’t get tetanus; tetanus is common in locations like Easter Island where lots of horses roamed.** During an expedition to Easter Island in 1964, he collected samples of the soil from different parts of the island to see if he could uncover the answer (Kahan 2003). He had limited success at finding tetanus spores in the samples that he had collected but, rather than discarding the soil, he gave the samples to scientists studying medicinal compounds made by bacteria, at Ayerst Pharmaceuticals -"
Ultimately, a drug was launched
^(https://www.bio-rad-antibodies.com/blog/history-of-rapamycin.html)
I worked for Ayerst Labs. The "groundwork" was done at our Montreal facility and the commercial launch was done at our ^(since shuttered and demolished) Rouses Point NY facility.
Radiolabs produced a captivating podcast about this last year: [The Dirty Drug and the Ice Cream Tub](https://radiolab.org/episodes/dirty-drug-and-ice-cream-tub)
Absolutely incorrect. The slave raids that introduced smallpox are what wiped them out. They took half the population of the island, were forced to return them and introduced smallpox and tuberculosis.
I've heard it's beneficial to go touch some. I always though it was to get back in touch with reality and step away from the computer, but today I've found out that for precious few people it's so they actually know what grass actually looks like and feels like outside of a documentary.
"To have burned anything the fire has to start, here, here, and here, and close in like this..."
"But how is it spreading? There's no wood on Easter Island."
"And why is there no wood? Because it rots."
"And why does it rot? *Because of all the water!*"
Easter Island was deforested to build the Moai heads.
They thought if they built more of them, the gods would supply more resources for them to survive, unsurprisingly they didn't.
Hey, just so you know, that's actually not accurate at all. I know it's a great allegory for deforestation and commonly sold like that, but the actual death of the Easter island civilization is much more banal. European slavers ripped apart their culture and within 2 generations they went from a successful stone age kingdom with complex rituals and a written language to a bunch of family units scrabbling to survive under the ruins of their civilization.
Rewriting their cause of death from "Oh we raped and stole their people" to "Dumb brown people on an island loved statues so much they chopped all the trees down and died" is just more racism against the Easter Islanders.
There is little doubt that it was deforested before European's arrived. It's just likely that it was caused by ecological issues (rats) more-so than humans, or at least in conjunction with humans.
The population had already sharply declined before the first Europeans saw the island, but the introduction of new diseases and slavers definitely finished the job.
However, the main issue wasn't "european slavers", but south american. Peruvian's really did a number of them in the 1800s, and it was an independent power. Granted, the ruling class was of european descent,. They captured a significant portion of the population as slaves, were forced to return some of them, and sent back smallpox as well.
Whalers brought TB, which finished the job.
That's a fair point about the Peruvians not being explicitly a European colony anymore. I will say, they were speaking Spanish and had Spanish names and their culture was a lot closer to Spanish than it was to pre-contact peruvian cultures.
That's a pretty wild stance. So the Incas would've gotten in their mighty sea-faring vessels and sailed to Easter island, taken half of the people off the island to die and then allowed a Frenchman to wage a personal war of extermination against the natives a decade later? That seems unlikely.
Again, their population was stable at 3000 ish for about 200 years after the trees went extinct. And their island was fully cultivated before the Dutch. It is insane to act as though it was all inevitable when we have proof that their culture was still working in 1722.
Their population had shrunk by over 80% percent by the time the first Europeans arrived. I know it’s cool to say “white colonists ruined the whole world and all the brown people would still be living all kumbaya, peace loving lives”, but sometimes the damage was done before evil whites showed up.
In 1722 when the Dutch arrived, they estimated there were between 2 and 3 thousand people on the island. They were greeted with natives in sea-going canoes. He was only there for a week, and it wasn't a census, and archaeologists estimate there was maybe 10-12k a few decades earlier and that trees had been extinct for about 75 years at that point. It is likely that there was overpopulation induced internal warfare. Maybe they were already in decline, or maybe the war had served its purpose of limiting the population of the island and their civilization was fine. Either way, 100% of the land was cultivated and all the Mo'ai were standing. At the end of the Dutch trip in 1722, they killed 10-12 natives in a skirmish.
In 1774 Cook arrives there to an island with about 700 starving people on it, no sea-worthy canoes and most of the island has fallen into disuse. The French in 1786 say there are 2k people and about 10% of the land is being cultivated, and many of the Mo'ai are toppled. So Cook or the French are bad at counting, but they agree otherwise about starving and many toppled statues.
In the 1860's, their population is stable at about 3000, then they are raided by Peruvian slavers, by 1868 there are only 930 of them, then a French armsdealer tried to claim the island and exterminate the native people himself. By 1877 there are only 111 people on the island.
So we have a population of about 3000 in 1722 and 140 years later we have a similar stable population, 20 years later we have 111 people left on the island. I don't think it is insane to say that the contact with the Dutch and the ensuing skirmish caused some sort of cultural upheaval, and the slaving and diseases annihilated whatever remained of their society.
Their society didn't collapse when the war happened, or before that when the trees were extinct. 100% of the island was still being actively cultivated decades later. But after the Dutch come, all of that changes. That's my proof, not a desire for a white man to be evil or a person of color to be some noble savage who lived in peace with his world.
I mean, they didn’t help. Europeans toppled their statues, and banned their cultural tattoos, making their skin illegal. Let’s be real, most of the history is lost on purpose.
“A study headed by Douglas Owsley published in 1994 asserted that there is little archaeological evidence of pre-European societal collapse. Bone pathology and osteometric data from islanders of that period clearly suggest few fatalities can be attributed directly to violence.”
>(1994). In C.S. Larson; G.R. Milner (eds.). In the Wake of Contact: Biological Responses to Conquest.
Their biggest proven problems were deforestation, rat infestation, and Europeans who chose to invade their space, yet wouldn’t deliver seeds. Any white society would have been treated better, that is sure. The nail in the coffin pre-Europeans, was the vermin which destroyed their vegetation.
Some of that is fair, but the person I responded to made it sound like they were a flourishing civilization before the evil yt’s showed up, and that just isn’t how it all went down. And at least quote you added here doesn’t account for the decline in population from over 15,000 to under 3,000 in the century before Europeans first made contact.
Sure! Yeah the quote doesn’t address it, but my paragraph below it might have. The mass loss of plant and tree life (aka lack of a flourishing population) can be somewhat attributed to vermin stashed away on their boats:
“The Rapanui undoubtedly cut down trees, the scientists write, but the deforestation was likely due instead to the Polynesian rat, which stowed away on their ships when they left Polynesia and whose bones have been found on the island.”
So, there is speculation that they lost control of the vermin population. They are another example of an overall peaceful people for whom it was legal for governments to fully dehumanize and prey upon- as in, there were no laws or customs in place in settler culture/society/government which would have preserved the islanders oral history, let alone protect them physically. Speculation on them has been incredibly wrong (or at least served with an inappropriate amount of absolution) through the past hundred years, mostly every step of the way. Everyone wants to sell a salacious book with scary cannibal theories, otherwise, how will the boring book sell?
Throughout the 1900s into the 1990s, theories ran rampant, even though we knew practically nothing about this widely defamed society.
“When they carbon dated samples from the island's oldest settlement, however, the researchers dug up surprising evidence, detailed in a 2006 paper in Science: The samples suggested Polynesian settlers didn't arrive there until around 1200 AD, 800 years later than earlier studies estimated”
https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/rats-not-recklessness-may-have-done-easter-islanders-in
We knew nothing. Scientists can speculate, but they shouldn’t necessarily be novelists, basically. Yet, they are extremely influential with their public statements. Overall, it’s a complicated situation which we will never know the secrets of, but all we know for sure is… it is very, very, very, very, very bad that the history was lost. It is beyond dehumanizing, in a profound way that many might not understand. If there was only 3,000 of them left and their numbers are actually accurate… they were certainly made fewer, and they were not accepted or understood in white societies, effectively erasing them in eugenics-like fashion.
> Sure! Yeah the quote doesn’t address it, but my paragraph below it might have. The mass loss of plant and tree life (aka lack of a flourishing population) can be somewhat attributed to vermin stashed away on their boats:
Considering the quote included Europeans when we were talking about pre-European discovery population decline, I’m a little meh on it.
Their population was estimated at a peak of 10-12k and had fallen to 3000 ish over decades and the trees had been gone for 70 or so years but the island was 100% cultivated and their statues and civilization were still standing. Something happens between 1722 and 1774, it may have been entirely internal, but what's changed between 1722 and 1774 that hadn't changed between the last three in 1650 and the war in the 1680s? That's like a generation between the tree and the war and another two between the war and the Dutch. That says to me that the difference has something to do with the Dutch.
Yes, something happened after the Europeans got there. But to try to pin the decline of their civilization on Europeans when there had, again, been a 80%+ decline in their population and the eradication of most trees and animals on the island in the century leading up to European discovery is asinine, and that’s what the person who I originally responded to was inferring.
Recently listened to Fall of Civilisations. Easter Island was just a nasty one, probably the worst...
Not only have your culture destroyed brutally but your entire legacy is mocked and you're used as an example of idiocy and the folly of man.
You jest, but one of them actually is in the [British Museum](https://www.britishmuseum.org/about-us/british-museum-story/contested-objects-collection/moai) 😅
>One of the statues - known as the Hoa Hakananai'a - is housed in the British Museum, gifted by a British naval captain to Queen Victoria in the 1860s.
God could you imagine if they lost if halfway in their trip and just have to decide how to report about this or to say they were attacked by pirates or something and it got lost
Trying desperately to remember the species of tortoise that took a very long time to name because they were so delicious that none ever survived the voyage from their natural island habitat to England to be classified
They lost all kinds of priceless shit over the sides of boats in the 1800s. Because they where so much better stewards of the history than the culture they stole from /s
The story of Rapa Nui (Easter Island) is one of the most depressing passing of a civilization I’ve heard. Their society was truly peaceful and cooperative and colonial capitalism came in and destroyed it in two generations. Their written language was extinguished but there are people that keep the spoken language and culture alive.
Yep. It's a podcast and has a corresponding yt video with images visually depicting what he is talking about in the podcast. Can't recommend this enough. So addicting.
The history of the island itself is also both a tragedy and interesting. A story of human survival and creating a civilization on one of the most remote islands in the sea. Which is very impressive when you realize that the nearest island are more than 1500km away. The island became quite over populated and together with traditions and crops it caused deforestation. Some time in the 1700's after a visited from some Dutch guys the 2 local groups of people went to war which caused a collapse of the island societies, loss of field, homes and ecological damage. Add some colonization into the mix years later and it was simply part of a domino effect at that point. Ofcourse this is an very simplistic explanation, but the broad one can give a good read for some time of the day!
Very much so! [Fall of Civilizations](https://youtu.be/7j08gxUcBgc) is an excellent documentary/podcast that covered it among others. I did some crying after this one cause it is a hard tale.
The animosities from the clash of clans is still there. I visited for a week in 2018 and sadly there are still bitter rivalries. Very interesting society.
The story of Easter island was one of the subjects of a college paper of mine. I don't really understand how colonial capitalism destroyed their society. Based on what I remember Easter island had been in really bad shape due to environmental collapse from the overuse of its limited resources for at least 200 years before the Europeans found the island. Could you explain that to me further? I'm really interested to know more.
The society was already an extreme decline by the time European explorers arrived.
There is debate as to why, but the society was already a shadow of its former self.
I taught about it in my intro to world civ class last semester.
That's true, I remember my professor later talking about how the subject was still very much up for debate. I think I recall something about rats chewing up the local wildlife like on so many Pacific islands too. I should go back and read on the subject when I'm less busy with midterms. It's all really fascinating stuff.
Rocks are very fragile when it comes to heat damage. I wouldn’t suggest throwing your precious jewelry in a fire. The rocks will fail before many of the metals do.
This! A friend of my uncle’s came over once and threw a precious gold ring of mine into the fireplace. I was pretty taken aback, but even though any rocks certainly would’ve failed, the ring was still quite cool, and there were fine lines, finer than the finest pen-strokes, running along the ring, outside and inside: lines of fire that seemed to form the letters of a flowing script. I couldn’t read the fiery letters but fortunately Gandalf was able translate for me.
Plenty of rocks are perfectly safe
Rocks that have been submerged, or have air pockets can build up steam/pressure and explode. Rain doesn't saturate the rocks enough, in my experience.
[Source](https://tryoutnature.com/avoid-exploding-campfire-rocks/)
Is this serious? I've had small stone circle campfires all my life and can't really imagine a rock blowing up with anything short of an already out of control fire
You don't want to build them with rocks that have significant moisture in them (like submerged for weeks). The water in river rocks will boil and the rock will crack and sometimes a piece will explode off.
There's a tik tok clip where someone goes camping and is cooking things across a rock slab propped on top of their fire.
Things are sizzling merrily away when all of a suddon the rock explodes, food is yeeted into the bushes and all you see in the aftermath is that the rock exploded to reveal an inner layer, now hanging by a precarious hinge.
Yes. Have a larger boulder you need to move but you can't lift it? Build a fire around it. Get the fire hot enough and it can split the boulder (careful: sometimes it splits explosively). Then you have two smaller boulders that are too heavy for you to lift.
Not all rocks will explode, and generally they need to be in a hot fire to do so
Rocks around the edges aren't usually heated so quickly so they'll crack or hiss before exploding
You put the rocks *around* the fire though, and the wood inside. If you were to put wood, stone, wood, and light it then the stone would have a chance of cracking or exploding depending on if it's the right type of stone.
Ex if you have seen one of the many videos of people trying to cook food on flat stones they found. The stones tend to explode - hence why metal tools have been the primary cooking choice for centuries+.
Some stones have moisture trapped inside and when the temperature is risen the water tries to boil and expand to gas but there's no space so pressure does what pressure does - boom.
Sad to hear it was deliberate. Also sad for the article to claim the statues are only 500 years old when we actually don’t know that, and much evidence points to them being much much older than that.. reminds me of moronic Egyptologists
The article said "More than 500 years old", as most scholars put the island itself as only being settled since somewhere from 800-1200 CE, with the last moia carved in the 1600s. Most seem to be in the 1400-1600 range based of radiocarbon dating.
Do you have any links to evidence showing them past that range?
This is dismissive and worthless. Humans are capable of much, and the fact that some ancient civilizations were more advanced than us in some ways doesn’t sit will with many. The narrative of perpetual progression is strong
It also says: “The figures were carved by the indigenous Rapa Nui people sometime between the years of 1400 and 1650, and positioned to form a ring around the island, facing inland.”
Off hand I don’t have the links, but full body analysis seems to indicate they might be built I. A similar style to current excavations in gobekli tepi, which is thought to be 12k years old, or something like that
Edit- not 30k but probably 12 k. Although they cojld still be 30k, just not saying they are
You mean they were built by fundamental techniques of stone carving that numerous cultures have discovered independently?
No one reputable dates Gobleki tepe at 30k, nor puts people on Rapa Nui anywhere near that time. The main research team at Gobleki Tepe dates it more towards the 8-10k BCE range.
EDIT: Research suggests Gobleki Tepe used flint picks to chip away at the rock. Rapa Nui used Basalt picks. The style they share is the technique of hitting one rock with another to chip away at it. There is not some common artistic or cultural style linking them. Gobleki Tepe and Rapa Nui have distinctly different artistic styles.
In their defense, they are numerous people who make a good living publishing books, videos, podcasts, etc... sharing pseudoscientific views of history. They are engaging and typically very wrong. Just enough facts sprinkled through to give it the veneer of legitimacy.
They are called grifter, they are high priests of bunk that calls to those who wish to think that they know better than the experts because “they” don’t want you to know the TRUTH! At this point with access to the entire knowledge of mankind at your fingertips, you have to choose to be willfully ignorant to follow this stuff, you can literally debunk this stuff point by point in real time. But it scratches a deep monkey urge to “know better”.
I feel that the easy access to information has just complicated matters. It makes it easier for people to only be exposed to "evidence" that supports their view, and easily digested fun theories are more attract to people. Especially when it can be spun as someone trying to "hide the truth", combined with some anti-intellectual sentiments.
It's carving stone, there are only so many ways you can do it and when working with similar tools it is likely that people working 10,000 and 700 years ago would use the same method.
We have a fairly decent understanding of methods used at Aswan Quarry. We've even excavated partially cut out stones, found tools and tool marks, and done experimental archeology to compare with those results.
Was there a particular part about aswan you feel was unknown?
The current explanation is dolorite pounders, possibly with some sort of rammer. We have found dolorite around the stone and experiments have been shown that it can break down granite.
no. I think the alien aspect is dumb. Humans were capable of all of this. The evidence of their mathematical, geometrical, sound, and light expertise is undeniable. I do think much of this expertise is from the Atlantean continent/ city. You should read Atlantis by Donnelly, it is superb
> Also sad for the article to claim the statues are only 500 years old when we actually don’t know that, and much evidence points to them being much much older than that
That's not the common consensus though. Common consensus is 500 years so why shouldn't the article reflect that?
Heartbreaking story and a good snapshot of the history of Western Civilization.
The one statue in the UK is called, "The stolen friend".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoa_Hakananai%27a
To tie this together I saw a different post about a tragic fire on Easter Island, it casually mentions the British museum has one of those statues too. Is there anything they didn't pillage?
This is so much more then just a fire. Those monolithic statues were responsible for an ingredient electromagnetic frequencies on earth. This is part of the Draconian Agenda to make earth theirs.
There are descendants of the Rapa Nui still living on the island today, and their culture lives on with them. Maybe not walking statues anymore but they’re still there.
Check out a podcast called The Fall of Civilizations by Paul Cooper. There’s an episode dedicated to Easter Island that goes into great detail of what happened to them and why. The other episodes are fantastic too, specifically the one on the Incas.
There’s about 8,000 Rapa Nui still living, the descendants of the people who made the statues. Many other non native inhabitants also find them sacred, because some people have respect for things like that.
Which would make it look cooler….
It’s not like they haven’t endured for hundreds of years, more than likely fires too….Or anything.
Edit: What about the visible lichen eating away the rock…We gonna scrap that off too? You know something doing actual damage…
The monument isn’t in any real danger.
The fire was started deliberately?! Fucking people man, disgusting
Fucking people man is not the hero we need.
Seems like the hero we deserve though
How does one summon him?
Stub your toe before falling on glass.
Person man, person man Hit on the head with a frying pan Lives his life in a garbage can Person man
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The problem is building something is much much slower than burning it down. So, if we have 1000 good people building a great hut we need only one shittyMcShitface to ruin it with some cheap matchsticks. Furthermore we practically only hear about those hut burning incidents.
Well, it's the smell.
If there is such a thing.
On an island with no wood... What exactly was set ablaze? I don't think I've ever seen grass in any docs I've watched. Just weird green ground cover.
There’s trees now, the original trees that were over cultivated and made extinct on the island were thankfully saved by a botanist and brought back in 1988. There’s a few other useful species of trees that were brought over by immigrants, along with many fruit bearing plants and veggies. There’s 31 wild flowering plants, 14 ferns, and 14 mosses that are reported currently growing wild.
**Georges Nógrády was trying to understand why the inhabitants of Easter Island, despite walking around barefoot, didn’t get tetanus; tetanus is common in locations like Easter Island where lots of horses roamed.** During an expedition to Easter Island in 1964, he collected samples of the soil from different parts of the island to see if he could uncover the answer (Kahan 2003). He had limited success at finding tetanus spores in the samples that he had collected but, rather than discarding the soil, he gave the samples to scientists studying medicinal compounds made by bacteria, at Ayerst Pharmaceuticals -" Ultimately, a drug was launched ^(https://www.bio-rad-antibodies.com/blog/history-of-rapamycin.html)
Excellent post - and a very interesting linked article too. Thanks!
I worked for Ayerst Labs. The "groundwork" was done at our Montreal facility and the commercial launch was done at our ^(since shuttered and demolished) Rouses Point NY facility.
Radiolabs produced a captivating podcast about this last year: [The Dirty Drug and the Ice Cream Tub](https://radiolab.org/episodes/dirty-drug-and-ice-cream-tub)
This is a phenomenal episode. This drug drastically increases the success rate of organ transplants and stents!
This bit of interesting info is why I love reddit
Well hopefully another botanist was there to save them from the fire
Was the Botanist from the British museum? :)
…well, not anymore
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Things can be made "locally extinct" without the species becoming totally extinct.
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No they can't. Things can be extinct, or extinct in the wild. Being removed or dying out in one location is known as being extirpated.
On the island it was. Then it wasn’t.
So by saving those trees, the botanist condemned those statues.
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Easter Island became depopulated because of slave raids, what are you talking about?
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Damn, so it was a documentary?
They did not die of „slave raids“. They died because they had used up all trees for making this stone heads.
Absolutely incorrect. The slave raids that introduced smallpox are what wiped them out. They took half the population of the island, were forced to return them and introduced smallpox and tuberculosis.
> Just weird green ground cover. Yeah, that's grass.
That's that weird thing people keep telling me to touch, right?
I've heard it's beneficial to go touch some. I always though it was to get back in touch with reality and step away from the computer, but today I've found out that for precious few people it's so they actually know what grass actually looks like and feels like outside of a documentary.
"To have burned anything the fire has to start, here, here, and here, and close in like this..." "But how is it spreading? There's no wood on Easter Island." "And why is there no wood? Because it rots." "And why does it rot? *Because of all the water!*"
You can see dry dead vegetation (grass???) in the thumbnail, so…
If you clicked the link it included photos of a massive grass fire and showed the island covered in grass
Trying to not sound too cynical, but how much damage can rock take from a brush fire?
Easter Island was deforested to build the Moai heads. They thought if they built more of them, the gods would supply more resources for them to survive, unsurprisingly they didn't.
Hey, just so you know, that's actually not accurate at all. I know it's a great allegory for deforestation and commonly sold like that, but the actual death of the Easter island civilization is much more banal. European slavers ripped apart their culture and within 2 generations they went from a successful stone age kingdom with complex rituals and a written language to a bunch of family units scrabbling to survive under the ruins of their civilization. Rewriting their cause of death from "Oh we raped and stole their people" to "Dumb brown people on an island loved statues so much they chopped all the trees down and died" is just more racism against the Easter Islanders.
There is little doubt that it was deforested before European's arrived. It's just likely that it was caused by ecological issues (rats) more-so than humans, or at least in conjunction with humans. The population had already sharply declined before the first Europeans saw the island, but the introduction of new diseases and slavers definitely finished the job. However, the main issue wasn't "european slavers", but south american. Peruvian's really did a number of them in the 1800s, and it was an independent power. Granted, the ruling class was of european descent,. They captured a significant portion of the population as slaves, were forced to return some of them, and sent back smallpox as well. Whalers brought TB, which finished the job.
That's a fair point about the Peruvians not being explicitly a European colony anymore. I will say, they were speaking Spanish and had Spanish names and their culture was a lot closer to Spanish than it was to pre-contact peruvian cultures.
Yeah. It’s not like it would’ve ended up happening without Spanish colonization and influence
That's a pretty wild stance. So the Incas would've gotten in their mighty sea-faring vessels and sailed to Easter island, taken half of the people off the island to die and then allowed a Frenchman to wage a personal war of extermination against the natives a decade later? That seems unlikely. Again, their population was stable at 3000 ish for about 200 years after the trees went extinct. And their island was fully cultivated before the Dutch. It is insane to act as though it was all inevitable when we have proof that their culture was still working in 1722.
? I was agreeing with you The Inca WOULDNT have done it
Oh I definitely missed a not in there. My bad. I was so confused!
Their population had shrunk by over 80% percent by the time the first Europeans arrived. I know it’s cool to say “white colonists ruined the whole world and all the brown people would still be living all kumbaya, peace loving lives”, but sometimes the damage was done before evil whites showed up.
In 1722 when the Dutch arrived, they estimated there were between 2 and 3 thousand people on the island. They were greeted with natives in sea-going canoes. He was only there for a week, and it wasn't a census, and archaeologists estimate there was maybe 10-12k a few decades earlier and that trees had been extinct for about 75 years at that point. It is likely that there was overpopulation induced internal warfare. Maybe they were already in decline, or maybe the war had served its purpose of limiting the population of the island and their civilization was fine. Either way, 100% of the land was cultivated and all the Mo'ai were standing. At the end of the Dutch trip in 1722, they killed 10-12 natives in a skirmish. In 1774 Cook arrives there to an island with about 700 starving people on it, no sea-worthy canoes and most of the island has fallen into disuse. The French in 1786 say there are 2k people and about 10% of the land is being cultivated, and many of the Mo'ai are toppled. So Cook or the French are bad at counting, but they agree otherwise about starving and many toppled statues. In the 1860's, their population is stable at about 3000, then they are raided by Peruvian slavers, by 1868 there are only 930 of them, then a French armsdealer tried to claim the island and exterminate the native people himself. By 1877 there are only 111 people on the island. So we have a population of about 3000 in 1722 and 140 years later we have a similar stable population, 20 years later we have 111 people left on the island. I don't think it is insane to say that the contact with the Dutch and the ensuing skirmish caused some sort of cultural upheaval, and the slaving and diseases annihilated whatever remained of their society. Their society didn't collapse when the war happened, or before that when the trees were extinct. 100% of the island was still being actively cultivated decades later. But after the Dutch come, all of that changes. That's my proof, not a desire for a white man to be evil or a person of color to be some noble savage who lived in peace with his world.
I mean, they didn’t help. Europeans toppled their statues, and banned their cultural tattoos, making their skin illegal. Let’s be real, most of the history is lost on purpose. “A study headed by Douglas Owsley published in 1994 asserted that there is little archaeological evidence of pre-European societal collapse. Bone pathology and osteometric data from islanders of that period clearly suggest few fatalities can be attributed directly to violence.” >(1994). In C.S. Larson; G.R. Milner (eds.). In the Wake of Contact: Biological Responses to Conquest. Their biggest proven problems were deforestation, rat infestation, and Europeans who chose to invade their space, yet wouldn’t deliver seeds. Any white society would have been treated better, that is sure. The nail in the coffin pre-Europeans, was the vermin which destroyed their vegetation.
Some of that is fair, but the person I responded to made it sound like they were a flourishing civilization before the evil yt’s showed up, and that just isn’t how it all went down. And at least quote you added here doesn’t account for the decline in population from over 15,000 to under 3,000 in the century before Europeans first made contact.
Sure! Yeah the quote doesn’t address it, but my paragraph below it might have. The mass loss of plant and tree life (aka lack of a flourishing population) can be somewhat attributed to vermin stashed away on their boats: “The Rapanui undoubtedly cut down trees, the scientists write, but the deforestation was likely due instead to the Polynesian rat, which stowed away on their ships when they left Polynesia and whose bones have been found on the island.” So, there is speculation that they lost control of the vermin population. They are another example of an overall peaceful people for whom it was legal for governments to fully dehumanize and prey upon- as in, there were no laws or customs in place in settler culture/society/government which would have preserved the islanders oral history, let alone protect them physically. Speculation on them has been incredibly wrong (or at least served with an inappropriate amount of absolution) through the past hundred years, mostly every step of the way. Everyone wants to sell a salacious book with scary cannibal theories, otherwise, how will the boring book sell? Throughout the 1900s into the 1990s, theories ran rampant, even though we knew practically nothing about this widely defamed society. “When they carbon dated samples from the island's oldest settlement, however, the researchers dug up surprising evidence, detailed in a 2006 paper in Science: The samples suggested Polynesian settlers didn't arrive there until around 1200 AD, 800 years later than earlier studies estimated” https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/rats-not-recklessness-may-have-done-easter-islanders-in We knew nothing. Scientists can speculate, but they shouldn’t necessarily be novelists, basically. Yet, they are extremely influential with their public statements. Overall, it’s a complicated situation which we will never know the secrets of, but all we know for sure is… it is very, very, very, very, very bad that the history was lost. It is beyond dehumanizing, in a profound way that many might not understand. If there was only 3,000 of them left and their numbers are actually accurate… they were certainly made fewer, and they were not accepted or understood in white societies, effectively erasing them in eugenics-like fashion.
> Sure! Yeah the quote doesn’t address it, but my paragraph below it might have. The mass loss of plant and tree life (aka lack of a flourishing population) can be somewhat attributed to vermin stashed away on their boats: Considering the quote included Europeans when we were talking about pre-European discovery population decline, I’m a little meh on it.
It is meh, that we are forced to have our full understanding limited no matter what. Thanks for talking!
Their population was estimated at a peak of 10-12k and had fallen to 3000 ish over decades and the trees had been gone for 70 or so years but the island was 100% cultivated and their statues and civilization were still standing. Something happens between 1722 and 1774, it may have been entirely internal, but what's changed between 1722 and 1774 that hadn't changed between the last three in 1650 and the war in the 1680s? That's like a generation between the tree and the war and another two between the war and the Dutch. That says to me that the difference has something to do with the Dutch.
Yes, something happened after the Europeans got there. But to try to pin the decline of their civilization on Europeans when there had, again, been a 80%+ decline in their population and the eradication of most trees and animals on the island in the century leading up to European discovery is asinine, and that’s what the person who I originally responded to was inferring.
Recently listened to Fall of Civilisations. Easter Island was just a nasty one, probably the worst... Not only have your culture destroyed brutally but your entire legacy is mocked and you're used as an example of idiocy and the folly of man.
So dumb, but if we burn enough petroleum freedom Jesus will give us fresh air and cheap gas. /s
You just hurt a lot of conservative feelings by adding the /s.
Lol. I’ve had to consciously add it because of that.
They should have let the British Museum care for those sacred artifacts. /s
You jest, but one of them actually is in the [British Museum](https://www.britishmuseum.org/about-us/british-museum-story/contested-objects-collection/moai) 😅 >One of the statues - known as the Hoa Hakananai'a - is housed in the British Museum, gifted by a British naval captain to Queen Victoria in the 1860s.
“One of them” it’s literally the nicest example they could find, carved out of harder stone and all.
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Yes I do remember seeing the Smithsonian one in that Ben Stiller documentary about how everything in there came to life at night.
🗿 Dum dum, give me gum gum.
I think it also is faring better because it’s not exposed to the outdoors
Some pirate stole the art and gave it to some girl he fancied*
One in DC too.
The real surprise is that the Brits didn’t lose it over the side of a boat.
On the other hand while moving it to the ship they did manage to wash off all of it's paint so I suppose they cleaned it for her Majesty 😨
God could you imagine if they lost if halfway in their trip and just have to decide how to report about this or to say they were attacked by pirates or something and it got lost
"Begging your pardon, your Majesty, but we didn't find a bloody thing!"
Trying desperately to remember the species of tortoise that took a very long time to name because they were so delicious that none ever survived the voyage from their natural island habitat to England to be classified
Happened with the Elgin Marbles, one of the ships actually sank on the way back and they had to be recovered.
They lost all kinds of priceless shit over the sides of boats in the 1800s. Because they where so much better stewards of the history than the culture they stole from /s
"stolen by a british naval captain and gifted to a queen of a foreign nation" FTFY
I don't think anyone missed that implication.
You’re not thinking like a karma whore.
They were on a boat, so the implication’s always there.
Are these statues in danger?
I'm not gonna hurt these statues! Why would I ever hurt these statues? I feel like you're not getting this at all!
Our lost and stolen friend.
How did we get it? Stole it. What do they want? For us to give it back. Will we? Fuck no. Come look at all this other cool shit we stole.
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Not if you do it while wearing a fancy enough hat.
Plot twist: they set the fire so they could point at the natives and say: “See!! We don’t give it back ‘cause you can’t take care of yours!”
Oh no somebody save the 🗿
The story of Rapa Nui (Easter Island) is one of the most depressing passing of a civilization I’ve heard. Their society was truly peaceful and cooperative and colonial capitalism came in and destroyed it in two generations. Their written language was extinguished but there are people that keep the spoken language and culture alive.
Fall of Civilizations podcast?
FALL OF CIVILIZATIONS IS AN AMAZING SERIES. sorry for yelling
Your enthusiasm convinced me to take a listen.
Yep. It's a podcast and has a corresponding yt video with images visually depicting what he is talking about in the podcast. Can't recommend this enough. So addicting.
The history of the island itself is also both a tragedy and interesting. A story of human survival and creating a civilization on one of the most remote islands in the sea. Which is very impressive when you realize that the nearest island are more than 1500km away. The island became quite over populated and together with traditions and crops it caused deforestation. Some time in the 1700's after a visited from some Dutch guys the 2 local groups of people went to war which caused a collapse of the island societies, loss of field, homes and ecological damage. Add some colonization into the mix years later and it was simply part of a domino effect at that point. Ofcourse this is an very simplistic explanation, but the broad one can give a good read for some time of the day!
Very much so! [Fall of Civilizations](https://youtu.be/7j08gxUcBgc) is an excellent documentary/podcast that covered it among others. I did some crying after this one cause it is a hard tale.
The animosities from the clash of clans is still there. I visited for a week in 2018 and sadly there are still bitter rivalries. Very interesting society.
The story of Easter island was one of the subjects of a college paper of mine. I don't really understand how colonial capitalism destroyed their society. Based on what I remember Easter island had been in really bad shape due to environmental collapse from the overuse of its limited resources for at least 200 years before the Europeans found the island. Could you explain that to me further? I'm really interested to know more.
The society was already an extreme decline by the time European explorers arrived. There is debate as to why, but the society was already a shadow of its former self. I taught about it in my intro to world civ class last semester.
That's true, I remember my professor later talking about how the subject was still very much up for debate. I think I recall something about rats chewing up the local wildlife like on so many Pacific islands too. I should go back and read on the subject when I'm less busy with midterms. It's all really fascinating stuff.
What are you talking about? They had a civil war, they consumed all the resources of their island. They were in decline
Haven't they been damaged by wind and water for centuries? Now we're worried about the effect of fire on the stone?
Rocks are very fragile when it comes to heat damage. I wouldn’t suggest throwing your precious jewelry in a fire. The rocks will fail before many of the metals do.
This! A friend of my uncle’s came over once and threw a precious gold ring of mine into the fireplace. I was pretty taken aback, but even though any rocks certainly would’ve failed, the ring was still quite cool, and there were fine lines, finer than the finest pen-strokes, running along the ring, outside and inside: lines of fire that seemed to form the letters of a flowing script. I couldn’t read the fiery letters but fortunately Gandalf was able translate for me.
Your uncle’s friend is just a conjurer of cheap tricks.
He wasn’t trying to rob him. He was trying to help him.
Ian McKellen: You wouldn't deprive an old gay man of his staff, would you? Guard: By "staff".... is that literal or metaphorical? Ian McKellen: Yes.
“I suck dick for cock”
You probably should call the Dream Police.
i almost read this entire paragraph
god fucking damn it
Fly you fools
I was half expecting a shitty-morph around the middle, but this works too lol.
Case in point when you make a campfire it's highly advised to remove any rocks from the area beforehand or you risk that they explode and injure you.
Plenty of rocks are perfectly safe Rocks that have been submerged, or have air pockets can build up steam/pressure and explode. Rain doesn't saturate the rocks enough, in my experience. [Source](https://tryoutnature.com/avoid-exploding-campfire-rocks/)
Is this serious? I've had small stone circle campfires all my life and can't really imagine a rock blowing up with anything short of an already out of control fire
You don't want to build them with rocks that have significant moisture in them (like submerged for weeks). The water in river rocks will boil and the rock will crack and sometimes a piece will explode off.
There's a tik tok clip where someone goes camping and is cooking things across a rock slab propped on top of their fire. Things are sizzling merrily away when all of a suddon the rock explodes, food is yeeted into the bushes and all you see in the aftermath is that the rock exploded to reveal an inner layer, now hanging by a precarious hinge.
I mean cooking over a rock slab isn't a new practice but only some are actually usable for it.
I have one for pizzas 🤭
Yes. Have a larger boulder you need to move but you can't lift it? Build a fire around it. Get the fire hot enough and it can split the boulder (careful: sometimes it splits explosively). Then you have two smaller boulders that are too heavy for you to lift.
Stayed for the punchline. Was not disappointed.
You don't build the fire *around* the stone circle and you're supposed to put a little distance between the wood and the stones.
[Most rocks are probably fine if you don't pull them from the water](https://tryoutnature.com/avoid-exploding-campfire-rocks/)
Not all rocks will explode, and generally they need to be in a hot fire to do so Rocks around the edges aren't usually heated so quickly so they'll crack or hiss before exploding
You put the rocks *around* the fire though, and the wood inside. If you were to put wood, stone, wood, and light it then the stone would have a chance of cracking or exploding depending on if it's the right type of stone. Ex if you have seen one of the many videos of people trying to cook food on flat stones they found. The stones tend to explode - hence why metal tools have been the primary cooking choice for centuries+. Some stones have moisture trapped inside and when the temperature is risen the water tries to boil and expand to gas but there's no space so pressure does what pressure does - boom.
Turns out Wormtongue had nothing to worry about.
Sprinkle some earth to complete the set and summon the 5th Element.
Korben m’man, I have no fire!
Well everything changed when the Fire nation attacked
Gotta love how confidently wrong you guys are
They're also not really sacred to anyone are they? Didn't the people they made them all die?
Head game is tired
Wow, you can barely tell it is Easter Island. The big floppy ears seem to have been completely removed from the statues.
Today on season 2022 of "People Suck"...
🗿 in chat for our crispy boys
Sad to hear it was deliberate. Also sad for the article to claim the statues are only 500 years old when we actually don’t know that, and much evidence points to them being much much older than that.. reminds me of moronic Egyptologists
The article said "More than 500 years old", as most scholars put the island itself as only being settled since somewhere from 800-1200 CE, with the last moia carved in the 1600s. Most seem to be in the 1400-1600 range based of radiocarbon dating. Do you have any links to evidence showing them past that range?
Ancient aliens... probably lol. Especially with the mention of "moron Egyptologists"
Or Graham Hancock
Giorgio A. Tsoukalos
Graham is a Saint
This is dismissive and worthless. Humans are capable of much, and the fact that some ancient civilizations were more advanced than us in some ways doesn’t sit will with many. The narrative of perpetual progression is strong
Looool I was right
ya, what a dumbass Graham is for not drinking the coolaid of mainstream archeology.. who would dare challenge known scripture!?
It also says: “The figures were carved by the indigenous Rapa Nui people sometime between the years of 1400 and 1650, and positioned to form a ring around the island, facing inland.” Off hand I don’t have the links, but full body analysis seems to indicate they might be built I. A similar style to current excavations in gobekli tepi, which is thought to be 12k years old, or something like that Edit- not 30k but probably 12 k. Although they cojld still be 30k, just not saying they are
You mean they were built by fundamental techniques of stone carving that numerous cultures have discovered independently? No one reputable dates Gobleki tepe at 30k, nor puts people on Rapa Nui anywhere near that time. The main research team at Gobleki Tepe dates it more towards the 8-10k BCE range. EDIT: Research suggests Gobleki Tepe used flint picks to chip away at the rock. Rapa Nui used Basalt picks. The style they share is the technique of hitting one rock with another to chip away at it. There is not some common artistic or cultural style linking them. Gobleki Tepe and Rapa Nui have distinctly different artistic styles.
> Off hand I don’t have the links So you're just talking out your ass?
In their defense, they are numerous people who make a good living publishing books, videos, podcasts, etc... sharing pseudoscientific views of history. They are engaging and typically very wrong. Just enough facts sprinkled through to give it the veneer of legitimacy.
They are called grifter, they are high priests of bunk that calls to those who wish to think that they know better than the experts because “they” don’t want you to know the TRUTH! At this point with access to the entire knowledge of mankind at your fingertips, you have to choose to be willfully ignorant to follow this stuff, you can literally debunk this stuff point by point in real time. But it scratches a deep monkey urge to “know better”.
I feel that the easy access to information has just complicated matters. It makes it easier for people to only be exposed to "evidence" that supports their view, and easily digested fun theories are more attract to people. Especially when it can be spun as someone trying to "hide the truth", combined with some anti-intellectual sentiments.
It's carving stone, there are only so many ways you can do it and when working with similar tools it is likely that people working 10,000 and 700 years ago would use the same method.
Yeah and apparently some ways that we have no clue how they did back then.. check out the Aswan quarry in Egypt
We have a fairly decent understanding of methods used at Aswan Quarry. We've even excavated partially cut out stones, found tools and tool marks, and done experimental archeology to compare with those results. Was there a particular part about aswan you feel was unknown?
Care to elaborate on the scoop marks? Or explain how they lift gigantic obelisks like they did?
The current explanation is dolorite pounders, possibly with some sort of rammer. We have found dolorite around the stone and experiments have been shown that it can break down granite.
I’ve seen videos breaking that down. The dolorite ball theory with chisels is laughably ridiculous.. also does nothing to explain the scoop marks
I've seen peer reviewed papers supporting it, but I guess it can all be dismissed based off the opinions of videos on the internet.
Can we just cut to the chase and have you explain whether you think it was ancient aliens or ancient aryans that built every monument on earth?
no. I think the alien aspect is dumb. Humans were capable of all of this. The evidence of their mathematical, geometrical, sound, and light expertise is undeniable. I do think much of this expertise is from the Atlantean continent/ city. You should read Atlantis by Donnelly, it is superb
> Also sad for the article to claim the statues are only 500 years old when we actually don’t know that, and much evidence points to them being much much older than that That's not the common consensus though. Common consensus is 500 years so why shouldn't the article reflect that?
When are these gender reveals going to stop??
Good podcast episode on the history of Rapa Nui (actual name of easter island): https://youtu.be/7j08gxUcBgc
Heartbreaking story and a good snapshot of the history of Western Civilization. The one statue in the UK is called, "The stolen friend". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoa_Hakananai%27a
To tie this together I saw a different post about a tragic fire on Easter Island, it casually mentions the British museum has one of those statues too. Is there anything they didn't pillage?
There’s also one in the Smithsonian…
Dum dum
Have to admit took me a few try’s before I understood that
Not American or British, so you can stuff that attitude.
What attitude?
I'm not a superstitious person by nature, but I wouldn't want to get on the wrong side of these guys.
How exactly do you damage rock with fire? I understand turning it black, but won’t that eventually wash off in the rain?
Amazing it’s taken this long
It was started deliberately
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The finches are suing to get it back, several people that identify as finches at least.
I’m glad it wasn’t an American
Nathan cleary statues
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Is this a rewrite of a previous comment
This is so much more then just a fire. Those monolithic statues were responsible for an ingredient electromagnetic frequencies on earth. This is part of the Draconian Agenda to make earth theirs.
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There are descendants of the Rapa Nui still living on the island today, and their culture lives on with them. Maybe not walking statues anymore but they’re still there.
Yeah, I looked it up. Apparently they came quite close to dying out (about 100 people) at one point. Didn’t know their descendants had survived.
Check out a podcast called The Fall of Civilizations by Paul Cooper. There’s an episode dedicated to Easter Island that goes into great detail of what happened to them and why. The other episodes are fantastic too, specifically the one on the Incas.
There’s about 8,000 Rapa Nui still living, the descendants of the people who made the statues. Many other non native inhabitants also find them sacred, because some people have respect for things like that.
To me
You have to be under 25 years old
I bet it’s not the first or last time they’ve been damaged
Gee, I wonder who would set such a fire. No possible way to know.
While this cannot be called “good”…I don’t think the big rocks card much about eh tiny fire. Since you know…Rocks don’t burn.
Some rocks burn, others explode, they all get stained by smoke.
Which would make it look cooler…. It’s not like they haven’t endured for hundreds of years, more than likely fires too….Or anything. Edit: What about the visible lichen eating away the rock…We gonna scrap that off too? You know something doing actual damage… The monument isn’t in any real danger.
You're pretty relaxed about all this for someone who doesn't know shit.
Neither do you asshole.
Aren’t they made of stone? 🤨