[Subjectivist]

This BBC documentary just showed up on my Netflix account today so I watched it. The host takes a new comprehensive look at Easter Island strongly challenging the Ecocide theory we have all heard repeatedly.

Archeological evidence now indicates the the population was robust and happy in 1722 when th first Dutch ships arrived, but within 50 years introduced European diseases had cut the population deeply down. Within the second 50 yeats after first contact slave raids combined with reduced the population to a few thousand when a new Governor arrived. He imported sheep and forced the remaining native population into a tiny reservation while the sheep population exploded and ate everything in sight making the small remaining groves of Rapa Nui Palm trees extinct. The native peoples were forbidden agriculture and the sheep ate all of the yams and casava until they died out in favor of hardy grasses. Recently descendents of the original Polynesian settlers have started planting trees native to other Polynesian islands in an attempt to restore the evology of he island to something resembling what existed before the Europeans devestated it with imported diseases and sheep ranch monoculture in the 1800's and early 1900's.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01q9w87

[HARM]

Ug... political correctness and revisionist history run amok. Now we're supposed to believe that it's all the white devil's fault that Easter Islanders overshot the carrying capacity of their island and cut down every tree in sight. Did Makati1 and Noobtube write the screenplay?

[Subjectivist]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('HARM', 'U')g... political correctness and revisionist history run amok. Now we're supposed to believe that it's all the white devil's fault that Easter Islanders overshot the carrying capacity of their island and cut down every tree in sight. Did Makati1 and Noobtube write the screenplay?

[americandream]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('HARM', 'U')g... political correctness and revisionist history run amok. Now we're supposed to believe that it's all the white devil's fault that Easter Islanders overshot the carrying capacity of their island and cut down every tree in sight. Did Makati1 and Noobtube write the screenplay?

[El_Producto]

Seems like a reasonable explanation on 're surface. Many indigenous peoples who come into contact with more advanced people get decimated by disease.

[dissident]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('HARM', 'U')g... political correctness and revisionist history run amok. Now we're supposed to believe that it's all the white devil's fault that Easter Islanders overshot the carrying capacity of their island and cut down every tree in sight. Did Makati1 and Noobtube write the screenplay?

[HARM]

When the Dutch colonizers arrived in 1722, they described the landscape as barren and denuded of trees, as well as cannibalism being practiced by the relatively few survivors. Unless of course, you believe Jared Dimaond, Hunt & Lipo, National Geographic and a billion other respected sources are complete liars.

Of course Europeans also brought a lot of nasty diseases that did not help. Nonetheless, it's quite clear that the Easter Islanders had already decimated their own population via ecocide --with little or no help from Europeans.

[vtsnowedin]

1722 was almost two hundred years after the Spanish conquest of South America and their introduction of small pox and measles there. Could it be that those diseases reached Easter island by native boat and the resulting devastation then removing the navigators and the knowledge of how to make the trip. If you have no written history losing all your elders removes the body of knowledge they have and eight generations later there would be little evidence it ever existed or of the plaque happening.

[Strummer]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Subjectivist', 'f')oolish savages who couldn't manage themselves

[Tanada]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('HARM', 'W')hen the Dutch colonizers arrived in 1722, they described the landscape as barren and denuded of trees, as well as cannibalism being practiced by the relatively few survivors. Unless of course, you believe Jared Dimaond, Hunt & Lipo, National Geographic and a billion other respected sources are complete liars.

Of course Europeans also brought a lot of nasty diseases that did not help. Nonetheless, it's quite clear that the Easter Islanders had already decimated their own population via ecocide --with little or no help from Europeans.

[Subjectivist]

Before watching this video I had never heard of lithic mulch, the practice of placing patterns of foot sized rocks on fields. The rocks greatly reduce wind and water erosion while also providing a microclimate of surface shade. They also add trace minerals as they slowly erode into the soil. The native population also had built water features out stone includieng nurseries for young palm trees along with yams, sweet potato, cassava, and sugarcane that they brought with them to the island when they arrived.

[Synapsid]

The sweet potatoes and (I believe) the cassava are a puzzle of sorts. Europeans, arriving in the Pacific, found Polynesians growing them but they're native to South America.

Yams, chickens, pigs and sugarcane they brought with them from the Old World, but not sweet potatoes, or cassava.

[dissident]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Strummer', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Subjectivist', 'f')oolish savages who couldn't manage themselves

[Subjectivist]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Synapsid', 'T')he sweet potatoes and (I believe) the cassava are a puzzle of sorts. Europeans, arriving in the Pacific, found Polynesians growing them but they're native to South America.

Yams, chickens, pigs and sugarcane they brought with them from the Old World, but not sweet potatoes, or cassava.

[dissident]

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/easter/civ ... iants.html

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')- Total number of moai on Easter Island: 887
- Total number of maoi that were successfully transported to their final ahu locations: 288 (32% of 887)
- Total number of moai still in the Rano Raraku quarry: 397 (45%)
- Total number of moai lying 'in transit' outside of the Rano Raraku quarry: 92 (10%)

[Synapsid]

Hi Subjectivist.

The last I've seen about the Chilean chicken bone is that the Chilean sample was contaminated.

Polynesian sailors were certainly capable of reaching South America, and the sweet potato is good evidence that they did, but we seem to be without evidence of their leaving chickens behind (or anything else?) Maybe someday.

[Tanada]

I just checked YouTube, this documentary is available online now without a Netflix subscription.

http://youtu.be/730YFNokIA8