Are we able to preserve the planet we live on?

Upon discovering a small island in the South Pacific, on Easter Sunday 1722, Dutch navigator Jacob Roggeveen felt impressed. Not by the beauty, because he had seen much more idyllic islands. What raised eyebrows were giant stone statues scattered around the island. 3600 km distant from the nearest continent, South America, and 2,000 km from the nearest island, Pitcairn, Easter Island is one of the most isolated spots on the planet. In the 150 years that followed, at least 53 more European expeditions reached the piece of land. The logbooks of explorers reported that, on each visit, unless those enormous figures were spotted in the distance: they were all being cut down. Until in 1825, the crew of an English ship did not find any more standing.
According to European explorers, the statues, called moai, seemed to witness a society in collapse. Roggeveen himself wrote in his diary: "The destroyed look could not give another impression beyond poverty and unproductive individuals." In the mid-18th century, the Rapanui people, who inhabited Easter Island, was already in decline.
Well before the arrival of Europeans, the island had experienced centuries of progress, with booming plantations and abundant food. At some point, however, something went very wrong. The population has grown too, the forests are gone, the soil was eroded, agriculture did not prosper more rapanui and villages went up in wars. For a large number of researchers, the collapse was caused by the careless actions of man over nature. No wonder that Easter Island is currently indicated as a kind of metaphor of Earth's future: what happened to the Rapanui is more or less what can happen to us.

The stone statues were built in honor of someone important to the clan who had died. Its strategic location - backs to the sea, looking for the village - that was for, right from the afterlife, the deceased continued to look for his people.


Between ages 11 and 14, the company Rapanui lived his glory days. The volcanic soil favored the cultivation of various foods. The efficient agriculture resulted in a growing population - estimated that the island once had 15 thousand people. Then the problems started. A greater number of people demanded that more areas were devastates. Planting on a large scale requires an open field, were other demands for wood for use as fuel and the structures of houses and boats.
The palm trees were used to build canoes that the islanders used at sea to fish an important item of their diet: dolphins. As the marine life around the island was not as abundant, only the most experienced fishermen, with their double canoes, could bring dolphins to the table. The meat of the animal was greatly appreciated, as well as seal and 25 types of wild birds. Guess how it was all cooked? With the burning of wood removed in the forests.
But not only was the food that caused deforestation. It was intensified by a dispute that has engulfed the island: The obsession with building moai. The different villages were creating ever bigger statues. The first moai, which would have been made around 1100, were between 2 and 3 meters tall. The highest put on an altar, carved some 300 years later, is 10 meters and weighs 82 tons. At the foot of the volcano Rano Raraku, where all the moai were built, there is a statue with more than 15 meters and about 270 tons, which was never completed.
But what do moai has to do with cutting down trees? The researchers, lead a moai from the volcano to a village and leave it standing up was a job that required lots of wood In addition, one quarter of the food of Rapa Nui was consumed in the production and transportation of the moai - activities that involved between 50 and 500 people each time.
As the palm trees were uprooted, a number of problems on the ground began to appear. "The farmland was exposed to sun, wind and rain. The soil was eroded and many villages were uninhabitable because nothing flowed around them. With the destruction of fertile soil, it is not difficult to imagine dramatic famines in Rapa Nui.
In a period of warfare between villages, when defeated members of a particular clan, the winners toppled the moai face down to the ground - the ultimate humiliation that could be made. The European expeditions that visited Easter Island helped to worsen the crisis, spreading epidemics and taking people as slaves.

The Rapanui people no longer exists because it was not able to preserve the island where they lived. Their legacy serves as a grim warning.




Are we able to preserve the planet we live on?