The Polynesian Impact on Easter Island

The situation with the Polynesians is very reminiscent of a “man left to his own devices” tale. Though while not a prophesized outcome, destruction by neglectful behavior is fairly common. The Polynesians and their home of Easter Island is yet another instance of precaution not taken, and the consequences of irresponsibility.

When the Polynesians first arrived at Easter Island in A.D. 400, this new land was absolutely the definition of heaven! Heavily forested with shrubs, trees, bushes, and contained grassy plains. The volcanic soil made this possible and also made way for edible herbs and nut trees. It is speculated that under these conditions the islanders were extremely prosperous, using the tall trees of the land to build strong, deep-sea harpooning ships.

Nowadays, Easter island is a wasteland with barely any trees or bushes at all! So what happened? It turns out that while the Polynesians were very adept in creating a prosperous society, they were not good at basic maintenance. By the 1400s, the forest was destroyed. They had over-harvested the wood for building canoes, houses, and fuel. The island’s natural cycle f regeneration could not keep up. Another damaging fact was that the islanders had a diet of fish, sea-mammals and birds. Just like the forest, the Polynesians ate their native bird population into extinction, except for a few chickens. This caused the rat population to increase as they feasted on the nuts and roots of the already depleting trees. Can’t these poor trees catch a break?

Because of the decline in trees, people could no longer make ships or canoes for fishing. In desperation to feed themselves, the Polynesians finally turned to cannibalism when their meat supply became restricted. Cannibalism among the islanders became so common that one particularly popular insult was, “The flesh of your mother sticks between my teeth.”

Clearly these people had dug themselves deep in a hole when they dug up those trees. It makes one wonder how they didn’t stop when things began to go wrong. It’s highly unlikely that no one during this centuries long process stopped to consider the damage being done to the environment. According to anthropologists, the mere ignorance of the situation was not the case at all. The Polynesians had been struggling with the political and social consequences of the dying ecosystem, i.e. shortening food supply, the inciting cannibalism, etc. Instead of hitting two birds with one stone and finding solutions to the environmental issues, the aftermath of the ill-treated land was given more precedence until it was too late.

In defense of the Polynesians, however; if your society has made cannibalism so common that locals are creating fifteenth century equivalents of “Yo Mama” jokes, I’d be paying significant attention to the social issues too.

Then again, the Polynesians could have prevented the wasteland that Easter Island is today. They could have restricted wood harvesting, scavenged for other resources to take the place of wood and thereby decrease the high demand for it, or they could have used ships to sail off to other lands and partake in trade for required goods. The point is there were options and yet, as history proves, the Polynesians of Easter Island were terrible at prioritizing and pre-planning.

Stories like Easter Island can truly frighten listeners, and it causes us all to question our society’s practices in regards to the environment. These questions are valid and need to be addressed, even if only to prevent us from pushing ecological issues to the back-burner until they literally burn out. We must remember though, like the Polynesians, there are options and it is only through careful thought and planning that we can avoid making the same mistakes of the pas