Easter Island is over 2,000 miles from the nearest population center, Tahiti and Chile, making it one of the most isolated places on Earth. It is best known for the giant stone monoliths, known as Moai, that dot the coastline. Scientists are baffled by the question of how and why the inhabitants carved and transported the massive statues. And its a good question. But I have a better one.
The Easter Islanders settled an island that was originally forested, and those forests included the world’s largest palm tree. The Easter Islanders gradually chopped down the forest and used the wood for canoes, firewood, transporting statues, raising statues, carving and also to protect against soil erosion. Eventually they chopped down all the forests to the point where all the tree species were extinct, which meant that they ran out of canoes, they could no longer erect statues, there were no longer trees to protect the topsoil against erosion, and their society collapsed in an epidemic of cannibalism that left 90 percent of the islanders dead. Good fun.
My question is this: How the @#$&! could a society make such a horrendously bad decision as to cut down all the trees on which they depend? I mean, what did they say as they were cutting down the last palm tree? “Gee…..” Actually, I can’t even make anything up. No one could be that stupid.
Surely the Easter Islanders, capable of making those amazing statues, must have realized the consequences of destroying their own forest. It wasn’t a subtle error. Easter Island is very small. No one could have made the mistake of cutting down the last lonely tree in front of them while thinking there were others elsewhere. It would have been obvious.
People are smart, but they can be really dumb too. I wonder whether, centuries from now, people will be as astonished about our blindness to reality as we are about the Easter Islanders’.
I would point out what those blindnesses are, but, of course, I’m blind too.