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0 pointstoto4444y ago0 comments

> A settler on Easter Island stood beside the island’s last tree. He or she looked around the treeless horizon, every one of those trees removed by man, and chopped it down anyway. Afterwards, the island died — the nutrients washed away, the landscape stripped. The population collapsed into warfare and cannibalism.

I have always had a hard time believing this story. It assumes these Easter Island people were really dumb and irrational. It might be that this story is not what really happened.

> It is a compelling tale, but may be completely false, according to research published yesterday. The Easter Island population did collapse, not due to this “ecocide”, but instead something less remarkable: the arrival of Europeans, bringing syphilis, smallpox and slavery.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/european-disease-led-to-d...

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mrob4y ago

>It assumes these Easter Island people were really dumb and irrational.

No it doesn't. It assumes a tragedy of the commons. Everybody who cut down trees did so out of rational self-interest. The same kind of thing happens even in supposedly advanced civilizations, e.g. with the Atlantic cod fishery. Coordination problems are hard to solve.

marginalia_nu4y ago

The thing is trees take a long-ass time to grow, and if you need wood now to make tools to produce food, what are you gonna do, starve to death so someone else can make tools in 50 years?

Man-made deforestation of islands is fairly well documented. Iceland was largely deforested by early settlers as well.

Deforestation alone may not be what killed the settlers of Easter island, but it sure as hell didn't do them any favors to not have access to wood.

imtringued4y ago

There is a very big island called madagascar that has experienced extensive deforestation.

https://youtu.be/L9zWDtDKDS8?t=65

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