FROM GENOCIDE TO ECOCIDE: THE RAPE OF RAPA NUI

The following article was recently posted on the Cambridge Conference
Network (CCNet). While addressing a different point from recent
discussions in the ng, it still throws some light on the history of
Rapanui (Easter Island) and I have the approval of Benny Peiser to
post it here:

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FROM GENOCIDE TO ECOCIDE: THE RAPE OF RAPA NUI

Benny Peiser, Liverpool John Moores University, Faculty of Science
Liverpool L3 2ET, UK. b.j.peiser@xxxxxxxxxxx

Energy & Environment, 16:3&4 (2005), pp. 513-539
http://www.staff.livjm.ac.uk/spsbpeis/EE%2016-34_Peiser.pdf


ABSTRACT
The 'decline and fall' of Easter Island and its alleged
self-destruction has become the poster child of a new environmentalist
historiography, a school of thought that goes hand-in-hand with
predictions of environmental disaster. Why did this exceptional
civilisation crumble? What drove its population to extinction? These
are some of the key questions Jared Diamond endeavours to answer in
his new book 'Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive.'
According to Diamond, the people of Easter Island destroyed their
forest, degraded the island's topsoil, wiped out their plants and
drove their animals to extinction. As a result of this
selfinflicted environmental devastation, its complex society
collapsed, descending into civil war, cannibalism and
self-destruction. While his theory of ecocide has
become almost paradigmatic in environmental circles, a dark and gory
secret hangs over the premise of Easter Island's self-destruction: an
actual genocide terminated Rapa Nui's indigenous populace and its
culture. Diamond, however, ignores and fails to address the true
reasons behind Rapa Nui's collapse. Why has he turned the victims of
cultural and physical extermination into the perpetrators of their own
demise? This paper is a first attempt to address this disquieting
quandary.

It describes the foundation of Diamond's environmental revisionism and
explains why it does not hold up to scientific scrutiny.

INTRODUCTION

Of all the vanished civilisations, no other has evoked as much
bafflement, incredulity and conjecture as the Pacific island of Rapa
Nui (Easter Island). This tiny patch of land was discovered by
European explorers more than three hundred years ago amidst the
vast space that is the South Pacific Ocean. Its civilisation attained
a level of social complexity that gave rise to one of the most
advanced cultures and technological feats of Neolithic societies
anywhere in the world. Easter Island's stone-working skills and
proficiency were far superior to any other Polynesian culture, as was
its unique writing system. This most extraordinary society developed,
flourished and persisted for perhaps more than one thousand years -
before it collapsed and became all but extinct.

Why did this exceptional civilisation crumble? What drove its
population to extinction? These are some of the key questions Jared
Diamond endeavours to answer in his new book Collapse: How Societies
Choose to Fail or Survive (Diamond, 2005) in a chapter which focuses
on Easter Island.

Diamond's saga of the decline and fall of Easter Island is
straightforward and can be summarised in a few words: Within a few
centuries after the island was settled, the people of Easter Island
destroyed their forest, degraded the island's topsoil, wiped out
their plants and drove their animals to extinction. As a result of
this self-inflicted environmental devastation, its complex society
collapsed, descending into civil war, cannibalism and
self-destruction. When Europeans discovered the island in the 18th
century, they found a crashed society and a deprived population of
survivors who subsisted among the ruins of a once vibrant
civilisation.

Diamond's key line of reasoning is not difficult to grasp: Easter
Island's cultural decline and collapse occurred before Europeans set
foot on its shores. He spells out in no uncertain terms that the
island's downfall was entirely self-inflicted: "It was the islanders
themselves who had destroyed their own ancestor's work"
(Diamond, 2005).

Lord May, the President of Britain's Royal Society, recently condensed
Diamond's theory of environmental suicide in this way: "In a lecture
at the Royal Society last week, Jared Diamond drew attention to
populations, such as those on Easter Island, who denied they were
having a catastrophic impact on the environment and were eventually
wiped out, a phenomenon he called 'ecocide'" (May, 2005).

Diamond's theory has been around since the early 1980s. Since then, it
has reached a mass audience due to a number of popular books and
Diamond's own publications. As a result, the notion of ecological
suicide has become the "orthodox model" of Easter Island's demise.
"This story of self-induced eco-disaster and consequent self-
destruction of a Polynesian island society continues to provide the
easy and uncomplicated shorthand for explaining the so-called
cultural devolution of Rapa Nui society" (Rainbird, 2002).

The 'decline and fall' of Easter Island and its alleged
self-destruction has become the poster child of the new
environmentalist historiography, a school of thought that goes
hand-in-hand with predictions of environmental disaster. Clive
Ponting's The Green History of the World - for many years the main
manifest of British eco-pessimism - begins his saga of ecological
destruction and social degeneration with "The Lessons of Easter
Island" (Ponting, 1992:1ff.). Others view Easter Island as a microcosm
of planet Earth and consider the former's bleak fate as symptomatic
for what awaits the whole of humanity. Thus, the story of Easter
Island's environmental suicide has become the prime case for the
gloomiest of grim eco-pessimism. After more than 30 years of
palaeo-environmental research on Easter Island, one of its
leading experts comes to an extremely gloomy conclusion: "It seems
[...] that ecological sustainability may be an impossible dream. The
revised Club of Rome predictions show that it is not very likely that
we can put of the crunch by more than a few decades. Most of their
models still show economic decline by AD 2100. Easter Island still
seems to be a plausible model for Earth Island." (Flenley,
1998:127).

>From a political and psychological point of view, this imagery of a
complex civilisation self-destructing is overwhelming. It portrays an
impression of utter failure that elicits shock and trepidation. It is
in form of a shock-tactic when Diamond employs Rapa Nui's tragic end
as a dire warning and a moral lesson for humanity today: "Easter
[Island's] isolation makes it the clearest example of a society that
destroyed itself by overexploiting its own resources. Those are the
reasons why people see the collapse of Easter Island society as a
metaphor, a worst-case scenario, for what may lie ahead of us in our
own future" (Diamond, 2005).

While the theory of ecocide has become almost paradigmatic in
environmental circles, a dark and gory secret hangs over the premise
of Easter Island's selfdestruction: an actual genocide terminated Rapa
Nui's indigenous populace and its culture. Diamond ignores, or
neglects to address the true reasons behind Rapa Nui's collapse. Other
researchers have no doubt that its people, their culture and its
environment were destroyed to all intents and purposes by European
slave-traders, whalers and colonists - and not by themselves!
After all, the cruelty and systematic kidnapping by European
slave-merchants, the near-extermination of the Island's indigenous
population and the deliberate destruction of the island's environment
has been regarded as "one of the most hideous atrocities committed by
white men in the South Seas" (Métraux, 1957:38), "perhaps the most
dreadful piece of genocide in Polynesian history" (Bellwood,
1978:363).

So why does Diamond maintain that Easter Island's celebrated culture,
famous for its sophisticated architecture and giant stone statues,
committed its own environmental suicide? How did the once well-known
accounts about the "fatal impact" (Moorehead, 1966) of European
disease, slavery and genocide - "the catastrophe that wiped out
Easter Island's civilisation" (Métraux, ibid.) - turn into a
contemporary parable of selfinflicted ecocide? In short, why have the
victims of cultural and physical extermination been turned into the
perpetrators of their own demise?

This paper is a first attempt to address this disquieting quandary. It
describes the foundation of Diamond's environmental revisionism and
explains why it does not hold up to scientific scrutiny.

FULL PAPER at
http://www.staff.livjm.ac.uk/spsbpeis/EE%2016-34_Peiser.pdf




Eric Stevens

.

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