speech class

Wilderness Survival

By Tiff Davis

Purpose: To inform my audience how to survive in an emergency situation.

Thesis: When bad things happen, it is better to be prepared. So I would like to give my audience some basic survival tips to help them survive in case of emergency.

Intro

I.                   Hook – When you have an umbrella, it won’t rain. When you aren’t prepared for the worst, it will probably happen.

II.                Name – Tiff Davis

III.             Topic – Basic wilderness survival in the PNW

IV.             Outline

1.      First I will go over taking inventory

2.      Next I will talk about how to signal your location

3.      Then I will cover how to obtain safe drinking water

4.      Third I will discuss how to make shelter

5.      Next I will briefly talk about how to obtain food

6.      Last I will discuss How to make a fire

Body

I.                   Inventory

1.      Everything and everything on you

2.      Vehicle if applicable

II.                How to Signal Location

1.      T – According to a retired Navy Corpsman a capitol T is a universal sign for distress

2.      SOS – 3 short, 3 long, 3 short – flashlight, rocks, reflective material, bright colors, whatever you have – make visible to airplanes

3.      Reflective/bright material such as emergency blankets, mirrors, flashlights or fire can be used to signal your location

4.      Smoke – light green branches, pine needles, grass etc on fire – fire will be covered shortly

III.             Water – The most important need we must fulfill as we can only survive 3 days without

1.      Always take from running water if possible!! Much safer than stagnant pools

2.      Water tablets – filter then follow directions on bottle

3.      Filter then boil

4.      Salt water distillation –3 pictures to show a few different ways of doing it

5.      If none of these are an option – go for fresh running water filtered as much as possible

IV.             Shelter – The second leading cause of death in wilderness emergency situations (dehydration being the first) is exposure

1.      Lean to – describe using visual aid

2.      Debris Hut

3.      If all else fails at least find shelter from the rain under a tree etc, keep warm with grasses/warm rocks – car interior

4.      Most importantly – Keep dry, and out of wind

V.                Basic  Food – Make sure the amount of energy spent getting the food, is worth the amount of energy you’ll get from the actual food

1.      Plants and Berries

A.    Fern buds

B.     There are tons of edible berries in the area

C.     How to tell if something is poisonous – skin – hour, tongue - hour, nibble – 2-3 hours, bite 2-3 hours, multiple bites2-3 hours, eat.

2.      Bugs beetles, grasshoppers, etc…– Beetles lbs per lbs have more protein than beef

3.      Fish and shell fish– one thing we are not short on in the PNW is water, and therefore clams, fish, etc. - How to find clams etc, and how to funnel fish into a trap visual aids

VI.             Fire – How to heat yourself, your food, and make your water safe!

1.      Different building techniques

2.      Lighter or matches – fuel from vehicle?

3.      Bow and drill

4.      Wood on wood

5.      Tip – Blow softly on kindling, but keep out of wind – keep it going so you don’t have to start it again

Conclusion

I.                   In conclusion

II.                I ask you all to take some time to learn a little more about your surroundings

III.             I  ask you to always be prepared

IV.             I ask you all to learn

V.                I ask you all to make that learning fun

1.      Camp with friends or family – try things out

2.      Read books that interest you on the subject

3.      Prepare, play, practice

                                             

References:

Jones, Bobby. Personal Interview. 9^th March, 2015.

McCullough, Jay. “The Ultimate Guide to U.S. Army Survival Skills Tactics and Techniques.” Skyshore publishing, New York; 2007. Print.

Miller, Jason. Personal Interview. 10^th March, 2015.

Final Paper with bibligraphy

Tiffany Davis

Dr. Sonia Apgar Begert

English 102

25^th November, 2014

Easter Island

            Easter Island, also known as Rapa Nui, has long been a topic of study for geographers, archeologists, and historians around the world. It is a small island located in the Southeastern Pacific ocean, about 3,200 km West of Chile, and it is only about 64 square miles (Foot, 12). Easter Island’s settlement is often discussed due to the islands’ isolation and how difficult it would have been for early explorers to reach the island. There are many different conversations and debates regarding Easter Island, however, I will be focusing on the colonization and collapse of the Island. One cannot study the collapse without first establishing the original timeline and when/how the Islanders began. In the larger scale of things studying the colonization and collapse of Easter Island is important because it can be used as a small scale example of a society collapsing due to the degradation of their environment.

Their environment may have been fragile, but it was their actions and presence that destroyed it. With all of today’s’ growing environmental concerns we have a lot we can learn from places such as Easter Island so that we do not repeat their mistakes and possibly have our own society collapse in our near future. Easter Island collapsed before the European’s arrival due to the deforestation and overall degradation of the island’s environment which are attributed to overuse. That is exactly what is happening to our environment now; we are cutting down trees, releasing toxins like carbon dioxide into the air, and slowly but surely destroying and depleting our natural resources.

            The main arguments regarding Easter Island concern the timeline of events. A few researchers such as Terry L. Hunt, Carl P. Lipo, and Paul Rainbird (I have designated these sources group one) argue that Easter Island was settled at a much later date than scientifically shown previously. Jared Diamond, John Flenley, Kevin Butler, and Paul Bahn (I have designated these sources group two) contest these theories. Group one’s backgrounds are as follows: Terry Hunt is from the University of Hawai’i, Carl Lipo is from California State University, and Paul Rainbird is from the University of Whales. On the other hand, group two’s backgrounds are as follows:  Jared Diamond is from the University of California and is a world renowned geographer, John Flenley is an emeritus professor from Massey University, Kevin Butler is also from Massey University, and Paul Bahn has a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge. All of these sources are very well educated, but only one group is correct.

It is important to know the accurate timeline because it sets the baseline for when and how Easter Island collapsed. There ought to be a focus on what primary factors contributed the most to Easter Island’s collapse while simultaneously looking at which factors had a much smaller impact. Group one, which consists of the key voices of my opposing argument, believes that the European’s arrival on Easter Island in the 1700’s was one of the main contributing factors to Easter Islands collapse. They also believe that rats had more of a key role in the deforestation of the island. However, group two which consists of my primary supporting voices, argues that the island was already deforested by that time and that due to the environmental damage, was already collapsing. There are a few side issues such as the religion and how it pertains to the stone statues the islanders constructed, various agricultural methods the islanders could have used, whether or not the islanders had resource management institutions, and where the original settlers migrated from, but these side arguments are tangential to my papers focus.

            The settlement of Easter Island is almost more heavily debated than the collapse of the Island’s society itself. Terry L. Hunt and Carl P. Lipo have argued in their article, “Chronology, Deforestation, and ‘Collapse’: Evidence vs. Faith in Rapa Nui Prehistory,” published in 2007, that Easter Island conceptually could have been inhabited before AD 1200, but that their evidence shows that they cannot prove it occurred sooner than that date (85). Hunt and Lipo’s claim is based off of a series of 8 radiocarbon dates from deposits at Anakena that are all very near the AD 1200 mark (Chronology, 85). What Hunt and Lipo do not consider are the other radiocarbon-dated samples from Anakena, and from other locations on the Island. On the other hand, John Flenley, Kevin Butler, and Paul Bahn can prove that Easter Island was inhabited before that time. In their article, “Respect Versus Contempt for Evidence: Reply to Hunt and Lipo,” published in 2007, they first show that those radiocarbon dates from Anakena cannot be more than a minimum date for their arrival because the soil/clay had an obscure origin and the topsoil was eroded, but also that there were earlier dates that Hunt and Lipo ignored (Flenley, 98). Flenley, Butler, and Bahn continue on in their article listing numerous radiocarbon dates from multiple locations that show the minimum date of settlement of Easter Island to be AD 800 (101).

            Additionally, Helene Martinsson-Wallin and Susan J. Crockford provide evidence in their article, “Early Settlement of Rapa Nui (Easter Island),” published in 2001, that Easter Island was inhabited by AD 400 (5). However, they admit that this settlement date is based off of only three radiocarbon dates of burned charcoal, which with only a 66% chance of accuracy of any one date being correct, is not enough data to conclude that they arrived before or near AD 400 (Martinsson-Wallin). Nevertheless, they can show that there are enough radiocarbon dates of burned charcoal, sediment layers, rat bones, and bird bones that fall near and before AD 800 (Martinsson-Wallin, 5-7).  I therefore conclude that the settlement date of Easter Island was approximately AD 800. To say they settled the island prior to that would be misleading for there is not enough information to prove that they did, and to say they settled after that would be ignoring the evidence.

            In the beginning when Easter Island was first settled it is approximated that there were 30 people that arrived together on the island (Pakandam, 8). In Jared Diamond’s book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive, published in 2006, Diamond approximates Easter Island’s total population. Diamond states that because they had 1,233 houses, with approximately 5-15 people in them, they can safely say that at least a third of the houses were inhabited at one point in time, and thus the maximum population of Easter Island could have been anywhere between 6,000-30,000 at its peak (Collapse, 90). Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo give a much lower estimate of the population of Easter Island at its peak of about 4,000 people (Conflicting, 13). John Flenley and Paul Bahn hypothesize that Hunt and Lipo’s reasoning for not accepting that Easter Island had a lower population peak, is due to Hunt and Lipo’s belief that Easter Island was not colonized until a later date (Conflicting, 13). However, as we established above, Easter Island was colonized at the minimum date of AD 800, not after AD 1200 as Hunt and Lipo claim.

            Another common topic of debate between group one and group two, is what level of involvement the rats had with the deforestation of the island. Group two states that the rats had minimal involvement, and that it was the islanders’ impact on their fragile environment that led to deforestation. Contrarily, Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo argue that rats were one of the main causes of the islands’ deforestation (93). However, I will show they were not. Hunt is quoted saying, “I believe that there is substantial evidence that it was rats, more so than humans, that led to the deforestation,” (Flenley, Bahn, 12). In their article, “Revisiting Rapa Nui (Easter Island) ‘Ecocide’ 1,” Hunt and Lipo even goes so far as to argue that because rats had devastating effects on the forests in Hawai’i, that we should believe that this may have happened on Easter Island as well (5). Though Hawai’i is in a similar area to Easter Island, it is an entirely different island with a different ecosystem. Thus, the issue they had with rats cannot be applied because it happened in Hawai’i, a completely different place. It is common knowledge that the rats did eat the seeds of the palm trees that were the primary type of tree on East Island. Yet, the rats did not eat the actual trees, they did not cut them down, nor did they even eat every species of tree on that Island. The fact is, rats did not clear the Island of the palm tree, the inhabitants of Easter Island did. Someone had to cut down that last tree. Though rats did have an impact on the trees ability to replenish, they did not destroy the forest that covered the island when the islanders arrived, and thus were not a primary factor in the islands deforestation (Flenley, Bahn, 12). Having established that the rats did not cause deforestation, they then also did not contribute substantially to the collapse of Easter Island either.

            Disease is another issue that has been considered to be a different primary cause of the Island’s collapse. Though diseases (such as smallpox), did not arrive until the Europeans arrived. Paul Rainbird is quoted saying, “The population collapse at Easter Island had less to do with deforestation in comparison with changes in culture influenced by contact with Europeans, including the introduction of new diseases,” (Koss, 548). Hunt and Lipo also believe disease had a bigger impact on Easter Island than deforestation did. Lorelei Koss, from Dickinson College, uses differential equations in her article “Sustainability in a Differential Equations Course: A Case Study of Easter Island,” to show that disease could have had an impact on the collapse of Easter Island (548). Yet, by the time the Europeans arrived and introduced smallpox to Easter Island’s population, Easter Island was already deforested and suffering from the effects of that on their environment. This leads us to the timeline of deforestation to show how diseases and the European’s arrival were not the cause of Easter Island’s collapse. Without trees the islanders’ population was already collapsing due to their inability to continue farming efficiently.

            Before getting into the food shortages, we must establish a timeline of when the Island was deforested. J.D. Hughes, an emeritus professor from the University of Denver Colorado, shows in his article, “Easter Island: Model for Environmental History?” that there is “... Incontrovertible evidence that the island had been covered by forest for millennia before the first human inhabitants arrived.”(1). This shows us that without human interference Easter Island likely would never have been deforested. Radiocarbon-dated material that establishes when Easter Island was colonized shows that shortly after colonization the islanders began cutting down trees to build their homes and fuel their fires.

They began building huge statues called Moai around AD 1000, because we cannot radiocarbon-date the stone, this date was determined by radiocarbon-dating the charcoal found in the stone bases of these statues (Diamond, Collapse, 97). In order to move these megalithic statues and their bases the Islanders chopped down trees to roll the statues to their designated areas (Hamilton, 172). This practice resulted in a noticeable loss of the islands forest. Approximately 900 statues have been inventoried, most of which were moved significant distances by rolling them on trees, and 300 of which were giant (Diamond, Revisited, 1693). This information implies a lot of trees must have been used to transport these statues. Another practice the islanders developed around AD 1280, was chopping down the palms and burning the debris as shown by radiocarbon-dated charcoal, burned remnants, and burned stumps (Diamond, Revisited, 1692). This resulted in an additional loss of the palm canopy that once covered the Island. This is also the time when Easter Island’s population peaked (around AD 1650) and then the population suddenly collapsed (Foot, 13). It takes time for effects of environmental changes to be noticeable. This shows us that the forest collapsed slightly before the population began to crash, and that the population began to crash about 100 years before the Europeans even arrived.

            Going further with the radiocarbon-dated charcoal, Jared Diamond states in his article, “Easter Island Revisited,” that, “By identifying 78,000 bits of burned wood from radiocarbon-dated ovens and middens [archeologists] recognized more than 20 other tree and woody plant species exterminated during human settlement,” (1692). With the radiocarbon dates this information shows us that the palm tree that primarily, and originally, forested the island was mostly gone by AD 1450, and other large trees were mostly gone by AD 1650 (Diamond, Revisited, 1692). It also provides insight into how the island was deforested. The inhabitants burned copious amounts of trees while they were living on the island. Other radiocarbon-dated material shows that during the time while the trees were becoming more and more scarce between AD 1450 and AD 1650, the islanders had to make the switch to burning grasses and sedges instead of wood for fuel (Diamond, Revisited, 1692). Though they were adapting, they still suffered numerous consequences from the deforestation of their Island. Though the rats did not contribute to the actual deforestation they did make it more difficult for trees to replenish. On the other hand, given the amount of time it takes to grow a tree, it likely wouldn’t have made that much of a difference in the short term while the society was already beginning to collapse.

            One of these consequences was food scarcity. They did try adapting to their deforested land by changing their agricultural methods in order to utilize stone to protect the soil from the elements, a job trees once did (Diamond, Revisited, 1692). The loss of trees resulted in the loss of the tree canopy that once protected their soils. Without that protection the soil was vulnerable to the wind, rain, erosion, and could not hold moisture as well as it used to. The use of lithic mulch to aid the soil in holding water, prevent evaporation of that water, and prevent erosion (Stevenson, 921) was a smart move on their part, but they could only do so much. Their crop yield could never be what it was when they had the natural protection of the trees to aid them. The sap from the trees was another food staple they lost when the island was deforested (Foot, 15). Birds once supplemented the islander’s food supply but with no trees as safe havens they went extinct shortly after deforestation (Foot, 15). This left the islanders with one less source of protein. Without wood the inhabitants of Easter Island could not build boats to leave the island and thus find more food either, further complicating their situation and leaving them with no exit.

            Furthermore, the food scarcity led to civil war. The presence of severely damaged bones and verbal history from descendants of such warfare during AD 1650-1680 suggest a society in serious turmoil collapsing into civil war due to their lack of resources (Flenley, Butler, 101). Additionally there was an abundance of spear heads that were radiocarbon-dated in this same time period, prior to European arrival (Flenley, Butler, 101). The spearheads imply that the conflict was severe enough that it warranted the manufacturing weapons. This is when Easter Island collapsed. Without the trees that once covered the island they lost a lot of their resources for food. While their population was at its peak, they soon fell into a civil war spurred by lack of resources, and their society inevitably collapsed.

            When the Europeans arrived in the late 1700’s they found a society that had already failed. First and foremost, their records indicate that they found only 1,400-1,600 people inhabiting the island when they first arrived (Diamond, Collapse, 109). When you compare this to the earlier estimated peak population numbers of 6,000-30,000 you can see there was a huge loss in the number of people. The Europeans additionally described the people as lean, tired, and worn (Diamond, Collapse, 109), which further indicates starvation due to their environmental challenges that resulted from deforestation as the reason for their collapse. Most accounts of the European’s arrival state that the island had no trees upon it when they arrived, but some state there were a few sporadically placed (Hughes, 4). Even if there were a few trees, there were not enough resources to support the inhabitants of the island.

            Individually these instances are only suggestive that Easter Island collapsed, however, together they provide a massive wall of evidence showing that Easter Island collapsed before the Europeans arrival in the late 1700’s (Flenley, Butler, 102). Going back, we can see that rats only reduced the trees ability to replenish but they were not the underlying cause of deforestation. Due to the fact that this information shows that Easter Island’s collapse occurred prior to the European’s arrival, there is no way disease could have been responsible for the collapse of Easter Island as Hunt and Lipo argue. With no trees the Islanders could not leave the Island, they could not continue building, and they could not continue moving their monolithic statues; they were burning grasses to stay warm and they were having issues with their agricultural sustainability. Easter Island is a small scale demonstration of what could happen to our society if we do not make changes.

Like the Easter Islanders, we cannot leave our environment; we cannot leave Earth once we deplete its resources. Our world is a fragile environment, and if we continue cutting down the trees and polluting our atmosphere we will end up like the Easter Islanders. Easter Island may not have made a big impact on our society today, however, its lessons should. We need to learn from these lessons of sustainability and protect the natural resources we have before we end up in a dire situation as they did. Easter Island collapsed due to deforestation; will we let that be our fate as well?

Works Cited

Diamond, Jared M. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive. London: Penguin Books. 2006. Print.

----. “Easter Island Revisited.” Science, New Series 317 (2006): 1692-1694. American Association for the Advancement of Science. JSTOR. Web. 16 Oct. 2014.

Flenley, John, Kevin Butler, and Paul Bahn. “Respect Versus Contempt for Evidence: Reply to Hunt and Lipo.” Rapa Nui Journal 21.2 (2007): 98-104. Web. 23 Oct. 2014.

Flenley, John, Paul Bahn. “Conflicting Views of Easter Island.” Rapa Nui Journal 21.1 

(2007): 11-13. Web. 23 Oct. 2014.

Foot, K. David. “Easter Island; A Case Study in Non-sustainability.” Greener Management International 48 (2006): 11-20. Academic Search Premier. Web. 14 Oct 2014.

Hamilton, Sue, Mike Seager Thomas, and Ruth Whitehouse. "Say It with Stone: Constructing with Stones on Easter Island." World Archaeology 43.2 (2011): 167-190. Academic Search Premier. Web. 21 Oct. 2014.

Hughes, J.D. “Easter Island: Model for Environmental History?” Capitalism, Nature, Socialism 14.2 (2003): 77. Proquest Research Library. Web. 7 Oct 2014.

Hunt, Terry L. “Rethinking the Fall of Easter Island.” The American Scientist. (2014). Web. 2 Oct. 2014.

Hunt, Terry L., and Carl P. Lipo. “Revisiting Rapa Nui (Easter Island); ‘Ecocide’ 1.” Pacific Science 63.4 (2009): 601-16. Proquest Research Library.  Web. 7 Oct. 2014.

----. “Chronology, Deforestation, and ‘Collapse:’ Evidence vs. Faith in Rapa Nui Prehistory.” Rapa Nui Journal 21.2 (2007): 85-97. Academia. Web. 23 Oct. 2014.

Koss, Lorelei. "Sustainability in a Differential Equations Course: A Case Study of Easter Island." International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science & Technology 42.4 (2011): 545-553. Computer Source. Web. 16 Oct. 2014.

Martinsson-Wallin, Helene, and Susan J. Crockford. “Early Settlement of Rapa Nui (Easter Island).” Asian Perspectives 40.2 (2001): 244-78. Proquest Research Library. Web. 7 Oct. 2014.

Pakandam, Barzin. “Why Easter Island Collapsed: An Answer for an Enduring Question.” Economic History working Papers, 117/09. Department of Economic History, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK. (2009). Web. 2 Oct. 2014.

Rainbird, Paul. "A Message for Our Future? The Rapa Nui (Easter Island) Ecodisaster and Pacific Island Environments." World Archaeology 33.3 (2002): 436-451. Academic Search Premier. Web. 14 Oct 2014.

Stevenson, Christopher M., et al. "Prehistoric and Early Historic Agriculture at Maunga Orito, Easter Island (Rapa Nui), Chile." Antiquity 80.310 (2006): 919-936. Academic Search Premier. Web. 21 Oct. 2014.

Outline

Tiffany Davis

Dr. Sonia Apgar Begert

English 102

30^th November, 2014

Outline

I.                   Introduction to my topic, why it is important, and my thesis.

a.       Easter Island, also known as Rapa Nui has long been a topic of study.

                                                             a.      It is located about 3,200 km West of Chile (Foot, 12). In other words it is very isolated.

                                                            b.      It is approximately 64 square miles (Foot, 12).

b.      Studying Easter Island is important because it is a small scale example of a society collapsing due to the degradation of their environment, and those problems can be related to the issues we are having with our environment today.

c.       Thesis: Easter Island collapsed before the European’s arrival due to deforestation and overall degradation of the island’s environment which is attributed to overuse.

II.                Background: In order to support my argument I must first establish my sources as reliable by giving their background, as well as show my opposing sources backgrounds as not to be biased. I will also briefly state their positions.

a.       My primary supportive sources are Jared Diamond, John Flenley, Kevin Butler, and Paul Bahn.

                                                             a.      Jared Diamond is from the University of California and is a world renowned geographer.

                                                            b.      John Flenley and Kevin Butler are from Massey University.

                                                             c.      Paul Bahn has a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge.

b.      My primary opposing sources are Terry Hunt, Carl Lipo, and Paul Rainbird.

                                                             a.      Terry Hunt is from the University of Hawai’i.

                                                            b.      Carl Lipo is from California State University

                                                             c.      Paul Rainbird is from the University of Whales.

c.       My primary sources support my thesis statement that deforestation was due to the Islander’s overuse of the trees, and that their society collapsed before the Europeans arrived in the late 1700’s.

d.      My opposing sources believe that rats and disease played a heavier role in deforestation and population decline than they did, and that Easter Island did not collapse until after the European’s arrival in the 1700’s.

III.             When Easter Island was settled, and ongoing debate.

a.       Opposing sources argue that Easter Island was not settled until AD 1200 (Hunt, Lipo, Chronology, 85).

b.      On the other hand, John Flenley, Kevin Butler, and Paul Bahn show that Easter Island was inhabited before that point in time (98). They then show that the island was settled in AD 800 (Flenley, Butler, 101).

c.       Helene Martinsson-Wallin and Susan J. Crockford provide further evidence (Radiocarbon-dated burned charcoal, sediment layers, rat bones, and bird bones) that Easter Island was settled before AD 800 (5-7).

d.      Thus, I conclude that Easter Island was settled by approximately AD 800.

IV.             It is important to know what happened with Easter Island’s population in order to understand the strains it put on the island, and to later help emphasize the decline.

a.       Originally 2 canoes with approximately 40 people settled on the island (Foot, 13).

b.      They built up around 1,233 houses, we can safely say about 1/3 of the houses and had approximately 5-15 people per house, which means there were between 6,000-30,000 people at the island’s peak (Diamond, Collapse, 90).

c.       Opposing sources such as Hunt and Lipo believe the colonization date to be later and thus estimate there were only 4,000 people at the population peak (Conflicting, 13).

V.                The involvement of rats with deforestation is another big debate between my primary and opposing sources.

a.       My supporting sources argue that the rats had minimal involvement as they only ate the seeds to the trees, and not the actual trees themselves.

b.      Hunt and Lipo believe rats had a huge impact on Easter Island’s forest (93).

c.       Flenley and Bahn show there is no way that rats could have been responsible for deforesting Easter Island, or that they could have even had a substantial impact (12).

VI.             The involvement of disease is highly debated because disease was brought with the European’s in the late 1700’s.

a.       Disease could have contributed to Easter Islander’s collapse (Koss, 548).

b.      By the time the European’s arrived on Easter Island, Easter Island was already collapsing and thus disease could not have been the cause of the collapse.

c.       This leads us to the timeline of deforestation to show that disease/the European’s arrival and impact did not cause the collapse of Easter Island.

VII.          The timeline of deforestation.

a.       Easter Island was covered by forest for as far back as we can tell before it was colonized (Hughes, 1).

                                                             a.      Hughes is an emeritus professor from the University of Denver Colorado.

b.      Pollen analysis also shows that prior to colonization the palm tree covered the island (Foot, 15).

c.       Stone statues played a significant role in the deforestation of the island.

                                                             a.      They began building megalithic statues around AD 1000 (Diamond, Collapse, 97).

                                                            b.      The Islanders moved their statues by cutting down trees and rolling them into place with them (Hamilton, 172).

                                                             c.      Approximately 900 statues have been inventoried, approximately 300 of which were giant (Diamond, Revisited, 1693).

d.      Around AD 1280 the islanders began chopping down more and more trees and burning them for intensive agricultural purposes (Foot, 15), as shown by radiocarbon-dated charcoal, burned wood remnants and burned stumps (Diamond, Revisited, 1692).

e.       All of this led to a significant loss of the palm canopy that once covered the Island.

f.       By AD 1450 the palm tree that was the most predominant on the island was almost entirely gone if not gone (Diamond, Revisited, 1692).

g.      By AD 1650 other large trees were almost if not entirely completely gone (Diamond, Revisited, 1692).

h.      Around AD 1600 Easter Island’s population peaked, and then suddenly collapsed right after (Foot, 13). This shows the population had begun collapsing over 100 years before the European’s arrived.

VIII.       The effects of deforestation are important to show so that we can understand why they caused Easter Island to collapse.

a.       One of the primary consequences was food scarcity.

                                                             a.      Though they tried adapting to use lithic multh agricultural methods, they still could not produce as much food as when the trees protected the soil, and held moisture and other nutrients in the soil (Diamond, Revisited, 1692). Lithic mulch aided the soil in holding water, preventing evaporation, and preventing erosion, but was not as effective as the trees (Stevenson).

                                                            b.      Birds once supplemented the Islanders food supply, but with no trees as safe havens they went extinct shortly after deforestation (Foot, 15). Additionally the bird droppings that once provided nutrients to the soil were severely diminished (Foot, 15).

                                                             c.      The Islanders could not build canoes to hunt porpoises in the deeper seas without wood and thus lost that food source (Foot, 15).

                                                            d.      All their meat was cooked over firewood from Easter Island’s forests, until they had none, which made food preparation more difficult (Diamond, Collapse, 105).

                                                             e.      The sap from the palm trees was another food source they lost once the island was deforested (Foot, 15).

b.      The Islanders had no wood to build boats to leave the island once their population peaked and they did not have enough food (Stevenson).

c.       The Easter Islanders turned to cannibalism due to their lack of food (Foot, 15).

d.      The presence of severely damaged bones and legends of such warfare during AD 1650-1680 suggest a society in serious trouble collapsing into civil war (Flenley, Butler, 101). There was also an abundance of spear heads found that were dated prior to European interaction (Flenley, Butler, 101).

IX.             When the European’s arrived they found an already collapsing society.

a.       They found approximately 1,400-1,600 people living on the Island (Diamond, Collapse, 109).

b.      They described the people as lean, tired, worn, and many of their statues had been destroyed (Diamond, Collapse, 109).

c.       Some accounts of the European’s arrival state that the island had a few trees on it, but others say there were no trees to be found (Hughes, 4).

X.                Conclusion: What does all this information mean?

a.       Individually these instances are only suggestive that Easter Island collapsed, however, together they provide a massive wall of evidence showing that Easter Island collapsed before the Europeans arrived in the late 1700’s (Flenley, Butler, 102).

b.      Rats only reduced the trees ability to replenish they were not the underlying cause of deforestation.

c.       Because this shows that Easter Island collapsed before the European arrival in the late 1700’s there is no way disease could have been responsible for the collapse of Easter Island as Hunt and Lipo argue.

d.      Easter Island’s peak population was approximately 6,000-30,000 according to Jared Diamond earlier (Collapse, 90), and it was approximately 4,000 according to Hunt and Lipo (Conflicting, 13), given either of these numbers, how could anyone say that the population had no collapsed when the Europeans arrived and found a mere 1,400-1,600 people?

e.       Easter Island is a small scale demonstration of what could happen to our society if we do not make changes. The Islanders could not leave the island once they had depleted their environment, and on a larger scale, we cannot leave ours if we repeat those same mistakes.