The mysteries of Easter Island: resilient people did not perish from hubris, but to what?

Hundreds of meters high heads tower above the land. Why and how? Nobody knows for sure. If there is one place on earth surrounded by myths and legends, it is Easter Island. In fact, the main theory about the demise of civilization can go overboard. But what did the Easter Islanders cost their heads?

Easter Island owes its name to the Dutchman Jacob Roggeveen, who spotted the island on Easter Sunday in 1722 and became the first European to set foot there. Together with his 134-strong crew, he was very kindly received by the locals, but things still went wrong. “Suddenly Roggeveen heard shots,” says Professor of Fundamentals of Environmental Sciences Jan Boersema of Leiden University in a press release. He is one of the organizers of the Easter Island conference, which was held for the tenth time last week, this time in Leiden. “When the gunpowder fumes cleared, about ten Easter Islanders were lying dead on the ground. According to the gunmen, the residents were at their guns.” At the conference, apologies were offered for the massacre. “Roggeveen strongly disapproved of the shooting, but it happened. We wanted to reflect on that together”, says Boersema.

The so-called downfall
The gunmen thought the Easter Islanders were up to no good. That fits with the long-held theory that the civilization on Easter Island collapsed due to resource depletion, which would have led to war. The book collapse by famed geographer Jared Diamond, describing the demise of the Easter Islanders, was a 2005 bestseller. His story: Already around the year 900 people lived on Easter Island. Natural resources were exhausted and the population grew to about 15,000 people. The inhabitants wanted to make more and more beautiful and larger images. This required more and more manpower, food for the hard workers and wood for transport. Eventually almost all the trees were gone, causing the soil to erode and agriculture to be less profitable. Scarcity arose, which led to a war between different groups on the island in 1680. When Roggeveen arrived in 1722 there were only a few thousand Easter Islanders left, who were also in bad condition. They would even practice cannibalism to survive.

But it turns out that all kinds of things are wrong with this theory, which has already been described by other scientists. Professor Boersema describes in his book Easter Island Pictures how he read nothing about a society in decline in Roggeveen’s travelogue. The explorer called the land fertile and the islanders sympathetic. There was no question of war or cannibalism. How is it then that this story is believed even now here and there? “Diamond painted a picture of pretty stupid islanders who built very large statues and perished in their own megalomaniac culture,” says Boersema in conversation with Scientias.nl. “It is often seen as an example of what we humans are doing right now and what awaits the earth as a whole. People use the story in their own way to make it fit.”

Photo: Aliaksei Skreidzeleu

Expedition drifting

But how could the population have shrunk from 15,000 around 1680 to a few thousand two centuries later? To answer that question, one simple change to the basic premise will suffice: there were never 15,000 Easter Islanders, but only a few thousand. The Polynesians probably came to Easter Island in one badge, so at most with about a hundred, says Boersema† “The Polynesians sailed with their boats to all corners of the archipelago. Usually they went exploring first, but that is unlikely in this case because of the great distance. It was by far the largest expedition in that area,” explains Boersema. “My theory is that the expedition has drifted. They may have been thrown off course by a storm and managed to find the island. They are formidable sea sailors. After that, they might not be able to get out of it. The expedition was well organized with enough young people to reproduce.”

Natural population growth

That did not happen around the year 900, as was long thought, but only around 1150. If you then assume an average population growth, you arrive at a population of a few thousand at most. A review study discussed at the conference last week comes to the same conclusion. “There appears to be absolutely no indication of the very high numbers of generously over 10,000. That is very unlikely. At the peak, there were more than 3,000 to 4,000,” says Boersema.

poor soil
According to the professor, there has been no collapse of the empire at all, but only a gradual transition. “The environment has changed and the population has been able to adapt.” However, a second paper presented at the conference on dietary minerals on the island showed that this was not obvious. “Many soils on the island were on the poor side. In order to grow enough food, the islanders had to enrich the soil in certain places with, for example, their own excrements,” says Boersema, who emphasizes that the Easter Islanders were very innovative. “At the quarry where they carved the statues, for example, they used the grit from the stones, which contain minerals, to enrich the soil. The quarry therefore became a sweet spot for arable farming. They covered the bottom there with small stones to prevent it from drying out. The islanders grew many tuber crops, such as sweet potato. They are sensitive to dehydration.”

In order to survive, the residents had to show a lot of resilience. “They have adapted to increasingly poor conditions due to deforestation. This was probably caused by a combination of cutting down trees for personal use, by fires and by rats. The regeneration of the forest was therefore difficult. There also followed at the end of the 17^the century due to Gulf Stream La Niña probably a very dry period.”

The bird culture
Possibly under the influence of the poorer conditions, the visual culture eventually disappeared. Bird culture took its place. Boersema calls this another proof of the resilience of the people. “They were able to further develop a culture that already existed to some extent, in which the frigatebird and the tern were revered, as a structuring ritual.” According to this ritual, strong men on behalf of different tribes had to try to retrieve the first egg from the sooty tern from the rock island of Motu Nui. That was no mean feat. They had to go to the island with a primitive canoe made of reeds and half swimming to climb a 300 meter high cliff. If they had found the egg, they had to descend the cliff with it on their heads. They stayed on the island for days or sometimes even weeks. Many men died because they fell down or were attacked by sharks. The winner brought the egg to his foreman, who then became the spiritual leader of Easter Island for a year. He withdrew to a crater that also housed the quarry where the statues were made. A sign that the sculpture and the birdman culture were linked. “The quarry where the stone for the statues was cut was much more than just a place to get stones,” says Boersema. “It was an important center for the community, also because of the vegetable cultivation, which could take place there in the enriched soil.”

Cheap labor

Bird culture continued until the South Americans came in 1863 and took some of the Easter Islanders with them as cheap labor. “There were about 4000 Easter Islanders at the time. That is in line with previous figures. Some 1,400 were recruited and lured along with false promises. There was also a certain willingness to leave: maybe life was better elsewhere.” That turned out not to be the case. Many died in the mines and plantations of Peru from diseases such as smallpox and tuberculosis. Only 15 eventually returned, unfortunately with the germs so that the disaster also took place on the island. Finally, around 1877, 110 Easter Islanders were counted. That was the real collapse. Rapa nui had to pick himself up again.

Moai near Tongariki (photo: Jan J. Boersema)

Present

According to Boersema, Easter Island is still ‘actually the earth in miniature’. “Many problems that play a role worldwide, such as the pollution of the oceans, also occur on Easter Island. Consider, for example, neo-colonialism. Chile has, in a sense, colonized Easter Island, but is now undergoing an interesting constitutional reform. In addition, the original inhabitants receive new rights.”

The expert also believes that we can learn a lot from the resilience of the Easter Islanders. “They show how you can develop an interesting culture even in poorer circumstances by adapting to your changing environment. They had a special social structure and were innovative in the field of agriculture. They were smart survivors.”

We can also draw lessons from the story of Easter Island about intercultural communication. “We’ve gotten better at that since then, but it’s still a problem. The strangeness of another culture and how you react to it is still not easy. The fear of the strange, of the other, is behind it.”

The last riddles

Are there any riddles left on Easter Island? “Enough”, says Boersema. “It remains unclear how so many trees have disappeared, because not so many were needed to make the images. Also, the most common coconut palm was not at all suitable for rolling statues or making canoes.”

Furthermore, it is still a mystery where the South American genetic material that has been found comes from. “Possibly the Polynesians have been in Latin America well before Columbus and there was already traffic between Polynesia and the mainland. For example, the sweet potato often grown on Easter Island came from South America.”

In short, there is still plenty to explore and discover on Easter Island. But that it was not cannibals who destroyed themselves, that much is clear. In fact, they were an innovative, resilient people who adapted to whatever life brought them.

Photo: Lindrik