A new National Geographic special on Easter Island, called Easter Island Underworld and airing next week, is an excellent summary of the research and some of the debate about this fascinating microcosm of human society. Note: I just heard from a producer and he says I was sent the wrong video. They'll send the new one to me overnight and the Video airing June 9, 2009 is reviewed here.
History of Easter Island Easter Island, located by itself way out in the Pacific Ocean, was settled once by about forty lost Polynesians between about AD ~700–900. They were then left alone to their own devices for ~800–1000 years. During that time, they managed to construct some of the most amazing megalithic monuments in the world—the moai, large enormous carved human heads and torsos. By using all the forests on the island to build the moai, the Easter Islanders completely destroyed the ecosystem of their island, trapped themselves and devolved into warfare and violence. Most astoundingly, they were able then to recover from all that, to bring back a state of relatively peaceful agricultural existence.
Relatively peaceful that is, until 1722, when Dutch sailors arrived at the island; basically it was all over, society ruined by all the disease and violence the west could and did bring to numerous places.
How Could the Easter Islanders Do That? But the story is fascinating—why, oh why, would the Easter Islanders let intergroup competition in building moai lead to the destruction of their way of life? There must have been signs, fewer birds, more erosion, fewer trees for canoes, as they continued to build and set up moai. Were they unaware that they were destroying the habitats of the birds they relied on, not to mention the wood for canoes? Or were they so terrified by the disappearing birds and access to fish that they risked everything to appease their ancestors and built as many megalithic moai as possible as quickly as possible? We'll just never know.
But the Easter Island saga is a parable of the way the world can work, if the wrong decisions are made and followed through to their destructive ends.
Nat Geo Takes Aim The National Geographic special highlights the work of several Easter Island scholars, including Jo Anne Van Tilburg, Paul Rainbird, Erika Hagelberg, John Flenley and Doug Owsley, as they explain their understanding of how this society flourished and fell, and flourished and fell again. The story is a remarkable one, of ecosystems destroyed and rebuilt, the destruction wrought by grotesque levels of competition and the diseases brought by western contact. And, in among all this tragedy, success brought about by reliance on human ingenuity.
Fabulous imagery (duh) is found throughout the feature. The copy I received of the program, which was a pre-final copy, had a couple of errors in the titling: Flenley's name was spelled wrong and Charlie Love was labeled as Paul Rainbird at one point, but I suspect those minor issues will be fixed in the final version.
Some of the story isn't told in the 45-minute special (plus ads). There is quite a bit of debate in the academic publications over the precise timing of the initial colonization and downfall of Easter Island society, as well as all the factors which went into that downfall: none of that is directly addressed in the feature. I suspect it's not the most interesting part of the story, to most people, anyway. All in all, I think "Easter Island Underworld" is a well-done, user-friendly version of the latest information coming out of archaeological and anthropological studies.
The National Geographic special Easter Island Underworld first airs on Tuesday, June 9, 2009. Check local listings for the time.
Moai with Coral Eyes. Photo copyright National Geographic
Comments
The experts you list are actually not featured in this doc, and the experts you don’t list are featured.
Can you clarify?
For many years the moai’s eyes were blank and blind. The person who figured out that some of the ‘artefacts’ were indeed parts that made up the eye was a Rapa Nui young woman named Sonia Haoa. She was working with Thor Heyerdahl in 1971 when she made this breakthrough. She has since been educated to become an archeologist and her work links Rapa Nui past and present. I would love to see her get recognition for opening the eyes of the moai after their many years in blindness.
Not all of this is accurate, for instance, it was SPANISH sailors that came, and they never spread disease, they spread Catholicism. That’s what made the islanders destroy alot of their artifacts such as their writing. Get your facts straight before you actually post something stupid like what you did against the Dutch.
Aku Aku, utterly fascinating by a man who really did explore the underwolrd.