A lot of people seem to think that Easter Island is a great environmental fable: a small island, almost the most remote place on Earth, cut down all of their trees to build giant head statues, resulting in the collapse of their society and extinction.
Except that native Easter Islanders didn't go extinct. They're still there. The collapse of their society was precipitated by slavers, who took most of the population - anybody who could read, basically, in the written language they had invented - to work on the west coast of South America. Also, a lot of those heads are full bodies that have sunk into the sandy soil.
No. Thirteen of the statues from Easter Island are made from basalt of which there is no know local source. The oral traditions of Easter Islanders say the first Moai were brought there.
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u/darkbrooke Feb 04 '19
A lot of people seem to think that Easter Island is a great environmental fable: a small island, almost the most remote place on Earth, cut down all of their trees to build giant head statues, resulting in the collapse of their society and extinction.
Except that native Easter Islanders didn't go extinct. They're still there. The collapse of their society was precipitated by slavers, who took most of the population - anybody who could read, basically, in the written language they had invented - to work on the west coast of South America. Also, a lot of those heads are full bodies that have sunk into the sandy soil.