Talk:Easter Island

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Contents

[edit] More Sections Needed

Trying to learn more about the modern island leaves a big gap in my knowledge. The photograph currently in the article suggests there is tourism and the article mentions immigration from mainland Chile. How is the economy structured? How do the citizens support themselves? What is the food source on such an isolated place? Thanks.--72.237.107.17 (talk) 18:27, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Incoherent Jumble

The historical section is a mess. Every other sentence seems to change directions.

"According to Carl Friedrich Behrens, Roggeveen's officer, "The natives presented palm branches as peace offerings. Their houses were set up on wooden stakes, daubed over with luting and covered with palm leaves," (presumably from Banana plants as the island was by then deforested)..."

This appears in a discussion of whether or not the island was de-forested! Talk about begging the question. GeneCallahan —Preceding signed but undated comment was added at 07:27, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Major misconception of what is a source.

This article suffers from shallow investigation and outdated ideas. Diamond is a secondary source reporting his opinions about other sources. These are what should be cited, not his book, which is an interpretation of the facts. Heyerdahl is thoroughly discredited by the lack of South American genes in the native population. The best current source is Bahn and Flenley, which is not even in the current list of citations. USAtoday reports on the AAA meetings are suspect at best. They summarize most of the avaiable studies and their arguements are pretty cogent. There are too many people on this page with an axe to grind about one thing or another to make any sense out of what it contains or intends. The current state palynology and archaeology suggests that people arrived around 3-400 CE. One persons recalibration of the dates does not out weigh the general consensus.

Their populations grew too large and consumed all of the available resources one way or another as is shown in the archaeological evidence. The arguement about rats vs people are not supported by other Polynesian islands with similar experiences.

Readers of this article should understand that this is a discussion between people with a point of view, not a dispassionate presentation of facts. For that read the actual source material

Kindly define what is the "actual source material". --Drieakko 08:35, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

The primary sources are the accounts of various visitors reporting what they've seen, various locals recounting what they know and scientists discussing their findings. Secondary sources are ones passing on information collected from a primary source and tertiary sources are ones that have collected info from secondary sources. I'm not sure how one classifies myths that have been handed down through dozens of generations, or how one best describes a discredited source like Von Daniken or a flawed source like Heyerdahl.

So Routledge, Metraux, Flenley and Bahn would all count as primary sources when they write about their own research but secondary sources when they quote Roggeveen and other early visitors, or interviewed people who lived through the slave raids. The image of the 1770 map is a primary source.Jonathan Cardy 06:32, 13 September 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Rapa Nui or Easter Island

Should this article be titled "Rapa Nui", maybe with a redirect from "Easter Island"?

I was thinking about that, but then I saw a Wiki policy somewhere that we should use the most widely used term, which in this case is Easter Island.Jonathan Cardy 21:42, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Post contact history

More information on after-discovery history is missing. For example, the natives were subject to slavery, and several forms of exploitation that led to furthe loss of cultural transmission. "Someone" do it :) -- Error 02:27 May 15, 2003 (UTC)

I've added some bits but some of the information I have is contradictory so I've ordered a couple more books. Does anyone know a good source for the allegations about Doutrou Bournier and shipwrecking and forgery of artifacts? Also I've now seen four different figures for the number taken by the 1862 Peruvian slave raidJonathan Cardy 07:11, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

I've now sourced the Doutrou Bournier story from Fischer, I can understand why Routledge was a little too genteel to go into much detail other than his death.Jonathan Cardy 21:42, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Statue costs

The article says

[The statues] must have been extremely expensive to craft; not only would the actual carving of each statue require years of effort...

but in Aku-Aku, Thor Heyerdahl writes that when he was on Easter Island, and requested that the natives make him a new statue, six men were able to make significant progress in only three days:

We sat down quetly on the grass and estimated the time needed by the ancient stonemasons to complete a statue. Each of us made his calculations. The mayor [one of those who had been working on the new statue] came to the conclusion that it would take twelve months to complete a medium-sized statue with two teams working all day in shifts. The tall old man said fifteen months. Bill [professor of archaeology] made an independent study of the rock and arrived at the same result as the mayor: the work on one statue would take a year, and then the problem of removing it would arise.

Dominus 04:10, 26 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Yes this needs rewriting though Tilberg is more up to date than Heyerdahl. Size of statue and material are also significant, does anyone know a source for estimates of how long the Basalt and Trachyte ones took to carve?Jonathan Cardy 07:11, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] South American Connections

The article states that "There is no evidence of any South American contact with the island as was once suggested by Thor Heyerdahl" without mentioning any of the evidence Heyerdahl pointed out. Here are some of those that at least need to be explained if dismissed.

1) Easter-islanders used stone in many ways to build religous and domestic structures. However, there is no evidence found on the island how they developed those skills. They seemed to have all the required knowledge of stonework and how to move giant structures already in their minds when they got started with the work. It would already be remarkable for a community of maximum 10,000 people to make all the inventions related to stonework, but even more remarkable it would be that they invented it all without any gradual steps that were required from much larger societies.

2) There are high-quality wall structures on island that resemble those in Tiahuanaco in today's Bolivia. The heyday of Tiahuanaco was 600-800 AD.

3) The round stone houses called "tupas" in Easter Island are very close to similar "chullpas" in South America. Both have also been used in the similar manner, to house those who have died.

4) The giant statues on the island are very dogmatic with very little variation during the about 500 years they were built. Once they got started with the highly stylized stonework, they stuck to the design with very little alteration. As stated before, there is no sign of gradual development of the statue production. Huge, stylized human statues are common in many prehistoric sites from today's Mexico to Bolivia. Statues on Easter Island have many similarities with the respective Indian work e.g. in Tiahuanaco, like the "hairdo", the ornamental "weeping eye" symbolizing the rain given by the Sun God and the way arms are carved in the stone. Another common cultural element are the statues' long ears that were a common upper-class symbol in South America.

5) Stone fish hooks found on the island have their similar counterpart on the South American coast. They are not known elsewhere in Polynesia.

6) Bone needles found on Easter Island were also common in South America. Outside New Zealand, sewing was unknown in Polynesia.

7) The paddles on Easter Island were double-bladed, again a South American tradition unknown elsewhere in Polynesia.

8) There are some dozen domestic plants growing on the island that are originally from South America.

9) Totora, the Titicacan reed growing in the volcanic lake in Easter Island (!), was bundled together and used in the very same manner than in South America.

10) Like Heyerdahl pointed out by doing it himself, the Indians had technical means to get over the Pacific ocean to Polynesia. Indians had these means to get to Easter Island for at least 2,000 years. During that time, there must have been countless people wondering what was on the other side of the ocean and trying to get there. If they had the way, time and opportunity, they most likely succeeded in the task.

Other points exist as well, but these are the main ones. South American influences do not mean that the inhabitants were from South America. It is clear that the population was largely from Polynesia and the culture in general largely Polynesian. To use this fact to deny all possibility of having any connection with the other side of the ocean, is not feasible. It seems reliable to assume, that people familiar with South American cultures got to the island and had a major influence on the existing Polynesian population.

I've long thought that Heyerdahl's hypothesis of South American contact with Easter Island, along with the likelihood population mingling, has some truth to it. The severe flamings I get when I mention this in some venues sometimes leads me to believe that these over-reactions belie nagging doubts but whatever. I don't accept the implied argument that taking Heyerdahl seriously is an attack on Polynesian culture. The plunge of Heyerdahl's reputation on the island (which began about 20 years after his visit), from being remembered as an archaeologist and explorer to being disdained as an adventurer and pseudo-scientist sort of saddens me. His archaeological monograph on the island (not Aku Aku) added much to scientific understanding of its history and is still referenced. Some of his assertions do contain leaps in logic and its true that he resisted peer review but his underlying observations IMO point to some sort of South American contact. I don't think he proved his hypothesis, neither do I think it has been disproved. Wyss 04:13, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
The problem is not that there was contact; the fact that there were sweet potatoes (native to South America) all across Polynesia means there had to have been some. That's an undeniable fact that can't be accounted for by any kind of cultural convergence. The problem is with the suggestion some have made that the South Americans made it all the way out to the speck of Easter Island and then never went any further, versus the Polynesians making one more hop to Chile after going all the way across the Pacific. I mean, if you didn't know that there were islands that are a long way apart (as the Polynesians obviously already did, but South Americans wouldn't), would you keep going 2,200 miles from the coast? And if you did know that lots of islands are out there, would you stop at Easter? Heyerdahl only showed that the South Americans' boats were capable (barely) of making it across such a distance. The fact is that Polynesians were serious seafaring people, and South Americans weren't. The fact that regular commerce continued over the 1,200 miles between Hawaii and Tahiti suggests that it wasn't impossible for regular contact to have gone on for some time between Easter and South America, allowing for cultural swaps like those mentioned above. KarlM 03:07, 10 January 2007 (UTC)


There is an interesting response to Thor Heyerdahl's claims on http://islandheritage.org/faq.html and the Marae article is worth reading for anyone who thinks the Rapanui unusual in being Polynesian who worked in stone. But may I propose the main place for Polynesia - South America contacts is the article Pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact#Polynesians not Easter Island.Jonathan Cardy 21:18, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Reordering of the history section -- a proposal

As it is the history section is inconsistent and controversial, starting from the incipit:

Early European visitors to Easter Island recorded the local oral traditions of the original settlers.

(how so? AFAIK, the first recording of oral traditions were made in late 19th century, over 150 after the island was visited, when the population was reduced to a few survivors).

I think that the history section should contain only the few uncontested facts: the the island was settled in (relatively) recent times, that in the past the island was forested, and that by the 19th century the island was deforested and its population reduced to about 100 inhabitants.

A separate section should then explain the different theories or hypotesis on what the causes of the deforestation and depopulation were:

  • the ecocide theory, that blames overexploitation of the natural resources, and conseguent war and famine
  • the climate change theory, that blames the Litte Ice Age period
  • the genocide theory, that blames slave raids and colonialism

For each theory, primary sources should be given (that is, writings by people who directly studied the island); the cited Diamond is a secondary source. StefanoC 08:11, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Or perhaps there could be a description of a (more or less) "mainstream" reconstruction, with separate section reporting the alternate theories. StefanoC 08:30, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

The difficult thing here is that it isn't three separate theories. The main events of the 1860s and 1870s are reasonably well documented, OK precise numbers for how many were taken as slaves and how many died of Small Pox are unclear or unavailable, but does anyone have a source that disputes that both happened or that both were more serious than 25% of the surviving population dying from tuberculosis?

At different times in the two to four centuries between the peak population and the nadir of 111 people, Easter Island suffered from: Loss of trees and with them loss of the canoes from which they could catch fish other than from the shore. Inter clan wars that saw most Moai toppled, and an unknown number of deaths. Two documented major epidemics and possibly more. Half a century of slave raids culminating in the devastating event of 1862 Possibly famines from the occasional poor harvest.

What does seem to be contentious is: How long was it from first settlement to deforestation? How big was the population at its peak? How much if at all that fell by the time of European contact? What the carrying capacity of the island has been at various times and whether it has ever been exceeded? Were the inter clan wars caused by crop failure or the cause of crop failure? What the relative contributions were of several different disasters to the population collapse.

I may put something in about a circa 99% fall in population as I think that is non-contentious and well sourced. But I'm really not sure how to balance the more contentious bits, though I've ordered a couple more books and perhaps they will synthesis things.Jonathan Cardy 21:00, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Section about Hunt contradicting Diamond

Diamond does talk about the rats being a part of the cause of plant extinction. I have not read Hunt's work criticizing Diamond, but if he says that rats contributed to plant extinction, he would be agreeing with Diamond. In "Collapse", Diamond says that all seeds found from a certain tree showed signs of rat bites, and could not germinate because of this. Where is the contradiction?

I just read the Rapa Nui section of Ronald Wright's book and the article by Hunt on the New Scientist website. I haven't read Diamond. But if the "established" opinion is that human settlement began about 500CE to 800CE and that deforestation was mainly due to human activity (with some help from rats) over the next 500 to 1000 years, then Hunt's contention that humans first arrived around 1200CE, bringing rats with them to accomplish deforestation in only 100 to 300 years (with some help from humans), seems like enough of a contradiction to make the debate worthwhile.LightSpeed 05:21, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Apparently the statues numbered close to 900, weighed from 10 to 72 tons, and in many cases were transported long distances. It would seem almost inevitable that wood was a component of the transportation apparatus as rails and/or rollers, and may have been involved as well in erecting the statues. Has anyone calculated how many trees might have been required for these purposes - particularly trees sizeable enough to support heavy weights? If many were required, and trees were also cut for all the more conventional reasons, it is likely that human activity was a major contributor to the deforestation. Rats may have played more of a role in preventing regrowth than in the initial loss of trees. Fmoolten (talk) 01:30, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Easter eggs

This is probably a coincidence but if it isn't it's worth exploring. The island was discovered on Easter Sunday, which is why it has it's name. According to the article, the natives maintained a tradition of going to a nearby island to find the first egg laid by a particular species of bird. The first one back got to determine how the island's resources were distributed.

Is this how the egg-hunting tradition on Easter got started? Seems awfully similar. -David Youngberg 04:59, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

No, Easter eggs are much older than the European discovery of Easter Island. See Easter_egg#History.-gadfium 06:51, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Dogs?

There seem to be a number of innacuracies; for example, I see no reference that the original islanders brought dogs. Chickens and rats are the only animal newcomers cited. There are other errors.205.119.60.110 16:53, 23 April 2007 (UTC)V.B.

If you can find a legitimate sourced reference to dogs or pigs on the island before European contact then that would be big news, current thinking is that those elements of the Polynesian toolkit didn't reach the island with Hotu Matua. Jonathan Cardy 07:46, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Hanau eepe and hanau epe

"Verification needed" tags have appeared on the old dispute how to correctly spell the name of the legendary inhabitants of Easter Island. The "epe" appears in the meaning of "earlobe" in the Englert's old Rapa Nui dictionary from 1948 (by then, Englert had lived on the island for more than 10 years). His dictionary appears online nowadays. For "eepe" in the meaning of "stocky", see e.g. Fischer's island at the end of the world, page 42. See also Fischer page 48 for the note about the greatly lengthened earlobes of one part of the island's population. Whatever the correct translation, the related legends anyway emphasize the long earlobes of the hanau epe. --Drieakko 18:51, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

The word "eepe" appears also in Englert's dictionary in the meaning of "stout, corpulent". --Drieakko 04:56, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Racism

The following exert from the History subheading in the First Settlers paragraph "or Indian balsa rafts have drifted to Polynesia, likely never being able to return due to their inferior navigational skills and less enduring ships" sounds quite offensive and implies that Native South Americans would not have been smart enough to make a return trip back to South America. TeePee-20.7 15:49, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

It is not offensive and least meant to be so. Polynesians settled everywhere in the Pacific, but South American Indians are not known to have surely reached any of the Pacific islands. Their ships were not enduring - Heyerdahl who built a copy of such quite literally witnessed how it fell apart at the end of his Pacific voyage. Having little experience in maritime travelling, Indians did not need navigational skills either. If their ship-building technology and navigational skills had been on the level of Polynesians, they surely would have taken over the Pacific islands. --Drieakko 17:08, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Spinning off "History of Easter Island"

I'd like to spin of the history section to a separate article History of Easter Island. The section is fairly large compared to the rest of the article. --Drieakko 10:12, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Good idea. You'll need to write a short summary of the history to stay in the main article.-gadfium 22:16, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

I like that but would go further. I suggest that all the controversies and alternative points of view be moved to sub articles such as Moai and Rongorongo, that the section on the name be moved to a minor part of the history, some of the repetition is tidied up and perhaps we need a culture article as a second section. Jonathan Cardy 12:59, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Easter Island History now created, I think the sections on demographic history and ecological decline should be moved to it. Jonathan Cardy 23:01, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Moai facing direction

Some Moai faced away from the sea, while others faced toward the sea. [1] MegaHasher 02:07, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Most of those that were on Ahus were on the coast with their backs to the sea, at least one inland Ahu can be described as having its Moai facing the sea, but there was quite a bit of land in between it and the sea (I'm sure I've seen a quote smewhere that they faced their clan lands). And then there are the ones in transit or outside Rano Raraku.....Jonathan Cardy 17:51, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Rats

The statements of Polynesian rats (Rattus exulans) causing deforestation is attributed to Hunt and also J. Stephen Athens. I could not find a direct reference to Athens other than Hunt's article. MegaHasher 02:38, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

It's also in Flenley and Bahn "the enigmas of Easter Island" page 198. The theory is that rats eat the seeds and prevented regeneration of the forest. Jonathan Cardy 22:22, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Note that this is is entirely unproven. The argument originated from Hunt and goes like this: "R. exulans ate into extinction Pritchardia on the Hawaiian islands, hence it also seems to have eaten Paschalococos/cf. Jubaea into extinction on Easter Island, or at least it was the main reason for the ecological collapse and not human oxerexploitation."
There is a new paper by Hunt & Lito in which they retort to criticvism here, but the debate has deteriorated where it cannot be considered NPOV or science. For example,

Flenley and Bahn (2007a; 2007b) assert that the Jubaea chilensis palms of Chile live 2,000 years, but the basis of their speculation is unfounded.

is quite a cheeky statement from people whose competing hypothesis rests on the speculation that the fleshy fruit of Pritchardia are equally accessible to R. exulans as the tough nuts of the Easter Island palm. Yes there is evidence of rats gnawing and cacheing the seeds. But in Jubaea, there is actually a mutualism it seems: some of the seed end as food, others get gnawed at but not eaten and this actually seems to enable them to germinate faster - in Jubaea seed are dependent on mechanical or chemical action in the shell to germinate with reasonable odds of success, as common with palm "nuts" (pot coconuts often die in germaination because the hsk does not rot quickly enough in indoors climate).
In brief, there is no indication that Hunt's rat-induced collapse theory has any basis in fact at present. It might be true, it might be utter bullshit. Certainly, an adaptation to rodent gnawing might get lost on an island where no rodents exist - or it might not in a long-lived tree species in limited habitat and the absence of predators, because it is simply a neutral trait if the "nuts" are able to germinate for decades, until they have rotted enough naturally. And in any case, the initial colonization of the island was almost certainly by a palm that had very tough fruit shells, that would "like" to have a rodent nibbling away at them to be able to germinate properly; Paschalococos is best considered to be a derivative of proto-Jubaea stock at present.
Crudely put, Hunt says "a date is the same as a coconut, ecologically speaking, and therefore the human contribution to the ecosystem turnover on Rapa nui is minor". But neither is this true, nor does it answer how they got the moai there, nor is his maths solid science, nor does it explain the shift in the islanders' diet or the extinction of landbirds (for which the rats were responsible in some cases but almost certainly not in all; there were 2 species of rail relatives of which are known to be highly resilient against R. exulans colonization).
The truth is not found in Hunt's papers, and the truth is not found in the movie Rapa Nui. It is somewhere in between. That is the only scientifically possible conclusion of the available data.
But the new paper is worthwhile: it lists sources that discredit the notion that the "war of the 'long-ears' against the 'short-ears'" - if there actually ever was something like it - was anything else than the islanders' fight against raiding pirates and slavers.
See also here. To wit:

Hunt’s hypothetical population model is dissatisfying in this respect and seriously flawed for the period after the first European Contact with Easter Island. It even is at odds with the written text of his paper.

Good idea Mr Hunt, but you need to get up your own standards before starting the name-calling. Insofar, it is perhaps better to refer to the original sources for the cannibalism bit rather than to the Hunt papers. Who knows what else is "at odds with the written text"?
The same, of course, holds true for Hunt's detractors. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 23:47, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
All this is, I should add, a word of caution. When you work in this field, you can sense a gathering storm. With words like "unfounded" and "seriously flawed" being thrown around by people who are not actually on different sindes, major ugliness seems to be brewing. Expect to see several more outlandish exaggerations by stupid media people in the due future. At present, the articles are nice and to the point and do avoid the controversy. A bit more mention of the rats could go in there, but again, if there is any other scholarly source than Hunt, I'd gladly take that. His work without doubt compares well to the standards of Heyerdahl's, but I don't think it's good enough for Wikipedia. And of course, news reports suck in such cases. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 23:56, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
If you read the abstracts I linked, the data seems to point at a near-total collapse of the forest ecosystem between 1400 and 1500, or some 200-300 years after the arrival of humans and rats. If in the absence of new trees, almost all the upland forest could be wiped out in the time of 3 generations using stone-age technology, it is not really likely the rats did anything but settle a foregone conclusion. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 00:04, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Omphalos

I added Omphalos to the "See also" section because I feel the concept is clearly related. An Omphalos is a stone object that is the "navel of the world." And Easter Island is the "navel of the world". When I visited the island, there were many round stones about that were referred to as "navels". It makes sense to me to link the articles. --Elonka 03:27, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Omphalos is a Greek concept. There is no relationship between Greek and Easter Island cultures.-gadfium 03:32, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
True, but I find it interesting (and I'm sure some of our readers would also find it interesting) that there are "navels of the world" on opposite sides of the planet. I don't think that there are enough to create a "Navels of the world" category, but it still feels like a "see also" is appropriate. --Elonka 05:01, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
I would agree to the last. It is the archetypical "see also", I'd even say. In biology, we have a term for this: convergent evolution. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 23:50, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Religion

No references to the predominant religion of nowdays in Easter Island, that is Catholicism, nor to the animist beliefs previous to the european arrival. I think these references should be added.Mistico (talk) 21:37, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Great Island

Easter Island is Also Called the "Great Island"--Connie957 (talk) 20:37, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Who calls it that? Please give a reliable source.-gadfium 21:58, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Ethnocentric Garbage

The History section is full of it. There needs to be a clean up to distinguish actual facts from wild theories stemming from Thor Heyerdahl's now discredited stories.

(Pacaveli (talk) 04:55, 19 May 2008 (UTC))