I didn’t tell many people where I was heading. This was partly because most people that I did tell had no clue what I was talking about, but also because I truly did not believe this was going to happen until at least the second full day on the island was complete. Several questioned why I would want to go there over any of the other islands in the world. And the truth is, I’ve been interested in this place ever since I saw a television advertisement for Dristan in the 1990s.
In recent years, the island seemed to pop up in course work for my undergrad and in one of the books that led me to attend university in the first place - A Short History of Progress by Ronald Wright. It fascinated me how quickly an entire ecosystem could be decimated by human activity and have always thought of this as THE place to look at environmental history and the impact we humans have on the world around us.
Before I really get into my trip, perhaps it would be good to provide a bit of the background.
Rapa Nui, or Easter Island as it’s known more widely, is believed to be the most isolated inhabited island in the world. It is a territory of Chile, although it’s found 3500+ kilometres away from the continent. The nearest inhabited place are the Pitcairn Islands located 2075 kilometres north-west of Rapa Nui. I’ll be honest, the idea of heading to an island that doesn’t even show up on a world map because it’s so small was something that made me hesitant to visit. Thankfully, this did not appear to bother me once I arrived (tsunami signage and all!).
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| Image Source: Google Maps Notice that the town name, Hanga Roa, takes more space than the island itself?! |
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| In case you were wondering, the safe zone area was basically the church, which, for any Nova Scotia folks, is about the distance of running from the harbour to Barrington, maybe Argyle Street. Upon seeing these signs, I asked how big of a threat this was and was told the last tsunami took place just 3 years ago. You’d never know... |
Building the Moai was labour intensive, resource intensive, basically just intensive. It took a lot of time to carve the statues, plus transporting them throughout the island (which is only 22.5 kilometres by a little over 11 kilometres, for the record...but it’s a hilly 22.5 by 11!), and setting them upon their alters, or ahu.
To put this into perspective, to date, there are 887 Moai registered/known on the island. Of those, 288 had been moved and placed (at one time) on one of the ahu, 397 can be found at the quarry, and the remaining were enroute to their respective ahu. That’s a lot of rock and man power. And it became completely unsustainable (surprise!). Eventually, the Moai era came to an end and those beautiful creations came tumbling down.
Following the end of the Moai era, it got a bit weird. Enter: the Birdman era. Okay, so, it wasn’t entirely weird, at least not in the good way, but it was pretty competitive. Essentially, in the time of building Moai, there was a king-based socio-political structure to the Rapa Nui lifestyle. The Birdman era sought to change this, by giving everyday folk a chance. This, my friends, is known as the Birdman Competition.
This competition is like no other I have ever heard of. Picture a bunch of scantly clad sirs scooting down a steep cliff (approximately 300 meters) into the ocean with floatation devices made of reeds to a near by island (known in English as Birdman’s Island, but to the Rapa Nui as Motu Nui.). Once there, they searched for the first manutara (or the sooty tern) egg of the year. When the lucky guy was successful, he place the egg in a sort of headpiece, and swam back to Rapa Nui, climbed up the cliff and was then deemed ruler for the year. Of course, they had to deal with the usual challenges of swimming in the ocean, plus the risk of being murdered by other competitors if they found out you had the egg. Kinda makes our elections seem pretty boring, eh?
The Birman competitions continued until the white-folk showed up in 1722. And this, is when Rapa Nui was transformed into Easter Island. The reason? Well, the Dutch showed up on Easter Sunday 1722 and hence, the name Easter Island became the name of “choice” to both the Dutch and the other white explorers to follow. Not unlike a typical Easter in my family though, instead of a good home cooked dinner and conversation, these explorers brought disease, slavery and Christianity to the island over time. Also, they made the island exist...because the hundreds of years before they “discovered” it, there wasn’t really anything going on...
In the 1860s palm production began, which once again decimated the environment and brought down the population significantly. (Side note: in case you haven’t been paying attention, this is the 4th societal/environmental collapse I’ve mentioned here in the island’s history...) The most recent shenanigan was an attempt to produce sheep, which lasted until the 1950s. It also did not great things to the island’s environment.
Today, the island has recently passed a law that makes landownership exclusive to the Rapa Nui. This means, not unlike Canada, you have to show up with a job offer in order to stay, but you can’t own land or a house. The island is also a National Park, and is now solely operated by Rapa Nui (although guides and such do not need to be Rapa Nui).
To conclude, if you haven’t been able to see the link between human genius/irresponsible activity and the impact it has on both people and the environment, well, what can I say? But, if you have, then you can see why the history of the island (and I mean the real history, not the half-assed attempt at recounting every word I’ve read or heard and trying to make it fun for you to read) is one of the best examples of environmental collapse. BUT it also gives hope that we can actually rebuild should something like this happen on a larger scale (i.e. globally). I just hope we come up with something better than a Birdman competition...
-the Orange Canadian
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