MODERN TIMES
by Art Hobson
ahobson@uark.edu
NWA Times 15 April
2006
REALITY CONFRONTS
NWA'S HIGHWAY ADDICTION, PART 3
On Easter Island, the monumental statues stare eerily over a once lushly forested but now barren landscape. Dutch explorers landing on this remote Pacific island in 1722 found a few thousand starving survivors of a former Polynesian civilization of 25,000 that had carved these 50-ton 30-foot ceremonial statues out of native rock, pulled them ten miles on huge wooden sleds, and erected them on broad 10-foot-high stone platforms. Each statue was an immense undertaking for a society possessing no cranes, wheels, machines, metal tools, or draft animals, and that relied only on human muscle. About 400 of these statues once stood; hundreds more are unfinished and remain in the island's stone quarry.
The triangular island, 10 miles long on each of its three sides, is one of the most isolated places on Earth. A 3-week ocean trip by dugout canoe separates it from other islands. The Polynesians divided the island into a dozen territories, each ruled by a chief who was subject to a head chief who maintained a cooperative peace between the territories.
After arriving around 1200 A.D., Polynesian settlers immediately began clearing the island's 60-foot palm trees and other large trees and bushes. They used the wood for houses, cooking, heating, large dugout canoes, and mostly for the huge sleds and wood-derived rope used to transport and erect the statues.
They seem not to have noticed that the trees were vanishing. Scientific pollen analysis shows that the Polynesians landed on an island covered by sub-tropical forest filled with 21 tree species along with bushy plants. The deforestation rate reached its peak around 1400, palm trees went extinct around 1500, and by 1600 all the trees and woody bushes were gone, leaving a permanent wasteland of scorched grass and weeds without a single tree over ten feet tall.
The statues stood mostly on the coast and faced inward. They served as ceremonial sites, and reflected the power and prestige of the chief upon whose territory they stood. The chiefs competed with each other to see who could erect the most and mightiest statues. The statues grew larger and larger over time, suggesting competition for power and prestige among the chiefs, like modern home owners competing for the most ostentatious display of wealth. One statue weighing 270 tons (a loaded highway truck weighs 40 tons) turned out to be too heavy to move and was left in the quarry.
The island was home to 30 species of land and sea birds that were safe until humans arrived. By 1600 all but one species were extinct. By 1500, there were no large trees for the dugout canoes that enabled the Polynesians to reach other islands and to fish for the porpoise that, along with birds, had provided meat. There was little wood for fires for cooking and warmth. Vegetables no longer grew readily in the dry and eroded soil that remained after deforestation. People were soon eating rats that had been inadvertently imported to the island. And they ate each other. The lack of wood made cremation a luxury, and they soon discovered that devouring corpses was one means of survival on their treeless island.
By 1600, the population had collapsed, people lived in caves, and the island was in constant civil war. The quarry was abandoned. The great statues were deliberately toppled from their platforms. When the Dutch arrived in 1722, a few Polynesians came out to meet the wooden sailing vessels in small, leaky canoes made of bush branches. When the Dutch asked the islanders what they most needed for survival, they all repeated "miru, miru." The Dutch soon learned that "miru" was the word for the large palm trees that had vanished two centuries earlier.
Jared Diamond includes this history in his insightful book "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed." The subtitle expresses Diamond's conclusion that societies choose their own fate by either facing, or not facing, reality. His book studies many societies that have destroyed themselves by refusing to change their own inappropriate cultural habits.
Today, our own chiefs plan mighty highways: bypasses around Bella Vista and Springdale, expansion of I-540 to eight lanes, and a western beltway. It's obvious that we cannot afford this, and that even if we could we would still be faced with a regional transportation nightmare.
Other chiefs erect monumental shopping centers lining I-540 west of Rogers. Pinnacle Hills alone, one of seven new shopping malls, will occupy one square mile; its builders claim it to be "the largest retail and commercial construction project in the state." So while some chiefs search for the cash to expand I-540, other chiefs are busy making things worse. It's assumed from the start that more highways, more sprawl, and breakneck shopping are permanent fixtures of American culture.
None of this is happening in a vacuum. On our globe, a tiny island isolated from other intelligent life by interstellar or even intergalactic distances, the greenhouse gases build, glaciers crumble, sea levels rise, hurricanes intensify, rainforests vanish, species go extinct at 1000 times the natural rate, demand for oil outstrips supply, oil prices soar as production nears the limits of its capacity, and America goes ever deeper into debt while consuming far more than its share of resources and generating far more than its share of pollution. And still we shop. And still we plan our superhighways, and raise our malls and big box stores to the heavens. And still the American mantra sounds: grow--grow--grow.
I have long wondered what the Easter Islanders thought as they cut down the last stand of trees.