It is perhaps the world’s most famous environmental parable. 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.
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.
A study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has dated the tools used by the islanders, made from obsidian rock and scattered around the island, and found that they reveal a pattern of farming and land use at odds with the idea that the civilisation caused its own downfall.
Instead of a sudden agricultural collapse associated with deforestation, the scientists from Virginia Commonwealth University discovered from dating the tools that there was a gradual decline in some areas — but not others. It seems they survived perfectly well after the last tree was cut down.
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For the Rapa Nui, the indigenous name for the islanders, it is welcome news. The collapse narrative has in recent years become a compelling metaphor in parts of the environmental community for the way humanity is treating its planet today, but the Rapa Nui have never been ecstatic about being used as an exemplar of man’s stupidity. Especially by people whose own ancestors gave theirs smallpox.
“It is a terrible presumption to say there was a food shortage,” said Professor Sue Hamilton, an Easter Island expert from UCL who was not directly involved in the research. “Yes, if you take away trees you expose the soil to having its nutrients flushed away, but you can do other things.”
Rather than looking just at the stone statues, called moai, which did stop being made with the last tree, she and other archaeologists have tried to interpret the entire landscape. They have found that the Rapa Nui came up with clever solutions to the lack of trees — in particular “rock mulching” where they put rocks across the soil to hold in nutrients.
It might well have been environmental folly to remove the trees, but, the scientists write in the paper, “the concept of ‘collapse’ is misleading”.
“Starvation is not an automatic result of tree removal, and neither is warfare,” said Professor Hamilton. Past research found what appeared to be layers of obsidian spearheads — implying brutal conflict, but further analysis showed they had been used for peeling vegetables.
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Similarly, while islanders might have lost the ability to go out on the sea to fish, there is evidence that they kept more chickens. It appears that civilisation survived long after the last tree — and collapsed only when the first ship appeared.
“Their story is one of ingenuity, resilience, and resourcefulness,” said Professor Hamilton.