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.