We could make a much better estimate of the population if we could pin down the timeframe in which the drama played out. Easter Island was originally thought to have been populated around the year 900, or even as early as 300. But more recently, advanced technology has fixed this date substantially later, to roughly the year 1100.21
Using this later date, Jan Boersema has done a simple calculation. Let’s say that about a hundred Polynesian seafarers landed on Easter Island in the year 1100. And say the population grew 0.5 per cent a year (the maximum achievable by pre-industrial societies). This means there could have been up to twenty-two hundred inhabitants by the time Roggeveen came ashore. This number tallies nicely with estimates recorded by European voyagers who stopped at the island in the eighteenth century.
Which means those thousands of Easter Islanders who supposedly tortured, killed and ate each other have an excellent alibi.
They never existed.
The next unsolved riddle is what happened to Easter Island’s forests. If Jared Diamond, William Mulloy and a whole host of other scientists are to be believed, all the trees were chopped down by greedy inhabitants who wanted to put up as many moai as possible. A Canadian historian even goes so far as to diagnose ‘mania’ and ‘ideological pathology’.22
But if you do the maths, you realise pretty quickly that this conclusion is a little rash. Boersema reckons that about fifteen trees were needed to roll each of the one thousand stone statues into place. That comes out to 15,000 trees, tops. So how many trees were there on the island? According to ecological research, millions–possibly even as many as sixteen million! 23
Most of these statues never even left Rano Raraku, the quarry where they were carved. Yet rather than being ‘abandoned’ when the island was suddenly plunged into civil war, scientists now think they were left there intentionally to serve as ‘guardians’ of the quarry.24
In the end, 493 statues were rolled to another spot. That may sound like a lot, but don’t forget that for hundreds of years the Easter Islanders had the place to themselves. At most, they only moved one or two statues a year. Why didn’t they stop at a nice round dozen? Boersema suspects there is a simple explanation for this, too. Boredom. ‘Living on an island like that, you basically had a lot of time on your hands,’ he laughs. ‘All that hacking and hauling helped to structure the day.’25
I think making the moai should really be seen as a collective work event, much like the construction of the temple complex at Göbekli Tepe more than ten thousand years ago (see Chapter 5). Or more recently on the island of Nias, west of Sumatra, where in the early twentieth century as many as 525 men were observed to drag a large stone statue on a wooden sled.26
No doubt endeavours like these could have been carried out more efficiently, but that wasn’t the point. These were not prestige projects dreamed up by some megalomaniacal ruler. They were communal rituals that brought people together.
Let there be no misunderstanding: the Easter Islanders chopped down a good share of the trees. Not only to move the moai, but also to harvest the sap inside, to build canoes and to clear land for crops. Even so, when it comes to explaining the disappearance of the entire forest, there’s a more likely culprit. Its name is Rattus exulans, aka the Polynesian rat.
These rodents were probably stowaways on the first boats to arrive, and with no natural predators on Easter Island they were free to feed and breed. In the lab, rats double in number every forty-seven days. That means that in just three years, a single pair of rats can produce seventeen million offspring.
This was the real ecological disaster on Easter Island. Biologists suspect these fast-proliferating rats fed on the seeds of trees, stunting the forest’s growth.27
For the Easter Islanders, deforestation was not that big a deal, because every felled tree also freed up arable land. In a 2013 article, archaeologist Mara Mulrooney demonstrated that food production actually went up after the trees were gone, thanks to the islanders’ use of savvy farming techniques like layering small stones to protect crops from wind and retain heat and moisture.28
Even if the population had reached 15,000, archaeologists say there still would have been plenty of food to go around. Mulrooney goes so far as to suggest that Easter Island perhaps ‘should be the poster-child of how human ingenuity can result in success, rather than failure’.29
4
That success was to be short-lived.
The plague that would ultimately destroy Easter Island came not from within, but arrived on European ships. This tragic chapter opened on 7 April 1722, as Jacob Roggeveen and his crew were preparing to go ashore. A naked man came paddling up in a boat. Judged to be in his fifties, he was solidly built, had dark, tattooed skin and sported a goatee.
Once aboard, the fellow made an animated impression. He expressed amazement at ‘the great height of the masts, the thickness of the ropes, the sails, the cannon, which he touched with great care, and also everything else that he saw’.30 He had the fright of his life when he saw himself reflected in a mirror, when the ship’s bell sounded, and when he poured a proffered glass of brandy into his eyes.
What impressed Roggeveen most was the islander’s high spirits. He danced, he sang, he laughed and uttered repeated cries of ‘O dorroga! O dorroga!’ It wasn’t until much later that scholars determined he was probably shouting ‘Welcome’.
A bitter welcome it would be. Roggeveen moored with 134 men in three ships and two sloops. While the Easter Islanders showed every indication of delight, the Dutchmen lined up in battle formation. And then, without warning, four or five shots rang out. Someone shouted ‘Now, now, open fire!’ Thirty more shots followed. The islanders fled inland, leaving about ten dead on the beach. Among them was the friendly native who had originally greeted the fleet with ‘O dorroga!’
Roggeveen was furious with the offenders, who claimed it had been a misunderstanding, but his journal makes no mention of punishment. When evening fell, Roggeveen insisted they leave, eager to resume his mission to find the Southern Land.
It would be forty-eight years before another fleet stopped at Easter Island. The expedition led by captain Don Felipe González planted three wooden crosses, raised the Spanish flag and claimed the island for the Virgin Mary. The Easter Islanders didn’t seem to mind.
‘There was not the least sign of animosity,’ the conquerors noted.31 When the Spaniards presented the inhabitants with a new bow and arrow, the peaceable natives were at a loss as to what to do with the gift. In the end, they opted to wear it like a necklace.
Four years later, in 1774, came an English expedition under the command of James Cook. It was Captain Cook who, after three epic voyages across the Pacific Ocean, would finally prove the Southern Land a myth. He joined the illustrious ranks of history’s great explorers, while the name Roggeveen is long forgotten.
This is an engraving of a drawing by the artist Gaspard Duché de Vancy, who visited Easter Island on April 9, 1786. The image probably says more about this Frenchman and his colonial viewpoint than the natives of Easter Island. That it survived at all is something of a miracle, de Vancy having been part of an ill-fated expedition led by the explorer Jean-François de Galaup, Comte de La Pérouse. In 1787 the French arrived on the Kamchatka Peninsula in north-east Russia. There, just to be safe, La Pérouse decided to send home an advance report of his voyage (including this illustration). A year later his expedition was shipwrecked. What exactly befell La Pérouse, the expedition’s artist De Vancy, and the rest of the crew is a mystery that scholars are still trying to unravel today. Source: Hulton Archive.
Cook’s exalted stature may explain why the doomsayers put so much faith in his observations about Easter Island. Cook was the first to report on the toppled moai and–perhaps more importantly–described the natives as ‘small, lean, timid, and miserable’.
Or, rather, that’s what he’s always quoted as writing. Oddly enough, when a University of Toronto researcher reread Cook’s logbook, this unflatterin
g description was nowhere to be found.32 Instead, Cook reports that the inhabitants were ‘brisk and active, have good features, and not disagreeable countenances; are friendly and hospitable to strangers’.33
So where did Cook make that scathing judgement? Where can we find this quote that fits so neatly with the narrative of Easter Island’s collapse and even made it into the hallowed pages of the scientific journal Nature?34 Jared Diamond cites as his sources Paul Bahn and John Flenley (authors of the book Easter Island, Earth Island), but they, in turn, cite none. I decided to try tracking down the mysterious quote myself. After a long day in the library I found it, in a dry book written for an academic readership in 1961.35
Subject? The Norwegian expedition to Easter Island. Author? Thor Heyerdahl.
That’s right: the source of Cook’s mangled quotation was none other than the Norwegian adventurer and champion of some rather hare-brained ideas. This is the same man who’d just published a popular bestseller in which he fantasised that the island was originally populated by long-eared Incas before being inundated by short-eared Polynesian cannibals. The same Thor Heyerdahl who recast Cook’s ‘harmless and friendly’ islanders as a population of ‘primitive cannibals’.36
This is how myths are born.
Meanwhile, there’s one mystery still to be solved. Why did the Easter Islanders destroy their monumental statues?
For the answer, we have to go back to Jacob Roggeveen’s journal. Until his arrival, the island’s inhabitants had for hundreds of years supposed themselves to be completely alone in the world. It’s probably no accident that all the moai faced inwards, towards the island, rather than outwards, towards the sea.
Then, after all that time, three gigantic ships appeared on the horizon. What would the islanders have thought of these strange Dutchmen, with their marvellous ships and their awful firepower? Were they prophets? Or gods? Their arrival and the massacre on the beach must have been a profound shock. ‘Even their children’s children in that place will in times to come be able to recount the story of it,’ predicted one of the Dutch sailors.37
Next to come ashore with much pomp and fanfare were the Spaniards. They put on a ceremonial procession complete with drums and flag-waving and capped the show with three thunderous cannon shots.
Would it be a stretch to presume these events made an impact on the islanders and how they viewed the world? Where Roggeveen described seeing them kneel before the moai, Cook said the statues were no longer ‘looked upon as idols by the present inhabitants, whatever they might have been in the days of the Dutch’. What’s more, he noted, the islanders ‘do not even repair the foundations of those which are going to decay’.38
By 1804, according to a Russian sailor’s account, only a few of the moai were still standing. The rest had perhaps fallen over, or been knocked over intentionally, or maybe a little of both.39 Whatever the case, the traditions surrounding the moai faded into obscurity and we’ll never know precisely why. Two hypotheses have been put forward, either or both of which may be true. One is that the islanders found a new pastime. After the forests were gone, it got more difficult to move the megaliths around, so people devised new ways to fill their days.40
The other hypothesis involves what scholars call a ‘cargo cult’. That is, an obsession with westerners and their stuff.41 The Easter Islanders, for some reason, developed a fascination with hats. One French expedition lost all their headwear within a day of their arrival, causing great hilarity among the islanders.
It was also around this time that the island’s inhabitants erected a house in the shape of a European ship, built stone mounds resembling boats and engaged in rituals mimicking European sailors. Scholars believe it may have been an attempt to will these foreigners to return with their strange and welcome gifts.
And return they did, but this time they didn’t bring merchandise to trade. This time, the islanders were to become merchandise themselves.
5
The first slave ship appeared on the horizon one dark day in 1862.
Easter Island was the perfect prey for Peruvian slavers. It was isolated, home to a hale and hearty population and unclaimed by any world power. ‘In brief,’ sums up one historian, ‘nobody was likely to know or care much about what happened to the people and the cost of removing them would be small.’42
At the final count, sixteen ships would sail off with a total of 1,407 people–a full third of the island’s population. Some were tricked with false promises, others removed by force. It turns out the perpetrators were the very same slave traders who kidnapped the inhabitants of ‘Ata (the island where the real-life Lord of the Flies would unfold a hundred years later). Once in Peru, the enslaved islanders started dropping like flies. Those who weren’t worked to death in the mines succumbed to infectious diseases.
In 1863, the Peruvian government bowed to international pressure and agreed to ship the survivors back home. In preparation for their return, the islanders were gathered in the Peruvian port city of Callao. They got little to eat and, even worse, an American whaling ship berthed in the port had a crew member infected with smallpox. The virus spread. During the subsequent long sea voyage to Easter Island, corpses had to be thrown overboard daily, and in the end only fifteen of the 470 freed slaves made it home alive.
It would have been better for everyone if they’d died, too. Upon their return the virus spread among the rest of the population, sowing death and destruction. Easter Island’s fate was sealed. Now Europeans who stopped at the island really did witness islanders turning against each other. There were heaps of bones and skulls, wrote one French sea captain, and the diseased were driven to such despair that dozens threw themselves off the cliffside to their deaths.
When the epidemic finally subsided in 1877, just 110 inhabitants remained–about the same number as had first paddled their canoes to the shore eight hundred years earlier. Traditions were lost, rituals forgotten, a culture decimated. The slavers and their diseases had finally accomplished what the native population and the rats had not. They destroyed Easter Island.
So what’s left of the original story? Of that tale of self-centred islanders who ran their own civilisation into the ground?
Not much. There was no war, no famine, no eating of other people. Deforestation didn’t make the land inhospitable, but more productive. There was no mass slaughter in or around 1680; the real decline didn’t begin until centuries later, around 1860. And foreign visitors to the island didn’t discover a dying civilisation–they pushed it off the cliff.
That’s not to say the inhabitants didn’t do some damage of their own, like accidentally introducing a plague of rats that wiped out indigenous plant and animal species. But after this rocky start, what stands out most is their resilience and adaptability. It turns out they were a lot smarter than the world long gave them credit for.
So is Easter Island still a fitting metaphor for our own future? A few days after my conversation with Professor Boersema, I saw a newspaper headline declaring: ‘CLIMATE CHANGE ENDANGERS EASTER ISLAND STATUES.’ Scientists have analysed the effects of rising ocean levels and coastal erosion, and this is the scenario they predict.43
I’m no sceptic when it comes to climate change. There’s no doubt in my mind that this is the greatest challenge of our time–and that time is running out. What I am sceptical about, however, is the fatalistic rhetoric of collapse. Of the notion that we humans are inherently selfish, or worse, a plague upon the earth. I’m sceptical when this notion is peddled as ‘realistic’, and I’m sceptical when we’re told there’s no way out.
Too many environmental activists underestimate the resilience of humankind. My fear is that their cynicism can become a self-fulfilling prophecy–a nocebo that paralyses us with despair, while temperatures climb unabated. The climate movement, too, could use a new realism.
‘There’s a failure to recognise that not only problems but also solutions can grow exponentially,’ Professor Boersema told me. ‘There’s no g
uarantee they will. But they can.’
For proof, we need only look to Easter Island. When the last tree was gone, the islanders reinvented farming, with new techniques to boost yields. The real story of Easter Island is the story of a resourceful and resilient people, of persistence in the face of long odds. It’s not a tale of impending doom, but a wellspring of hope.
Part Two
AFTER AUSCHWITZ
‘It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.’
Anne Frank (1929–45)
If it’s true that human beings are kind-hearted by nature, then it’s time to address the inevitable question. It’s a question that made a number of German publishers less than enthusiastic about my book. And it’s a question that continued to haunt me while I was writing it.
How do you explain Auschwitz?
How do you explain the raids and the pogroms, the genocide and concentration camps? Who were those willing executioners that signed on with Hitler? Or Stalin? With Mao? Or Pol Pot?
After the systematic murder of more than six million Jews, science and literature became obsessed with the question of how humans could be so cruel. It was tempting at first to see the Germans as a whole different animal, to chalk everything up to their twisted souls, sick minds, or barbaric culture. In any case, they were clearly nothing like us.
But there’s a problem: the most heinous crime in human history wasn’t committed in some primitive backwater. It happened in one of the richest, most advanced countries in the world–in the land of Kant and Goethe, of Beethoven and Bach.
Could it be that civil society was not a protective veneer after all? That Rousseau was right and civilisation an insidious rot? Around this time, a new scientific discipline rose to prominence and began to furnish disturbing proof that modern humans are indeed fundamentally flawed. That field was social psychology.
Humankind Page 12