Thought du Jour

Anthropologist Terry Hunt (University of Hawaii-Manaoa) and Archaeologist Carl Lipo (California State University-Long Beach) have written a very readable book on the history of Easter Island, or Rapa Nui. Their theory that the island was deforested by rats, not humans, is not accepted by all scholars, but how deforestation occurred is less important than the fact that an indigenous population was able to thrive on an inhospitable, treeless island located far from other human populations. Contact with Europeans proved more fatal than deforestation for the inhabitants of Rapa Nui. This fact, often ignored, is not disputed by scholars.

Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen was the first European to sight Rapa Nui. He spotted the island on Easter Sunday in 1722, and gave it the name “Easter Island”.  He and his crew went ashore to find a treeless island, inhabited by about 3,000 healthy individuals. The visit was devastating for the native population, as was a subsequent visit by the Spanish in 1770, the consequences of which were witnessed by the English Captain James Cook in 1774.

Within three days of their visit ashore, the Dutch had sailed over the horizon ignorant of so much of what had transpired. Indeed, they were ignorant of even the possibilities.  …. [H]ordes of new germs were unleashed, posing a far greater and devastating threat than the muskets that had killed a dozen or so of the Rapanui assembled on the shore just days earlier. What happened next was witnessed only by the victims, the Rapanui themselves. (p. 156)

A catastrophic population collapse would have obliterated the social, political, and economic status quo. The devastating epidemics and longer-term effects of venereal disease, for example, would have come as a shock to the Rapanui.

If by 1725 there were only a few hundred survivors left on Rapa Nui, they effectively ofrmed a new founding population – of survivors. The Rapanui people were isolated again from the outside world and its diseases … and this small group would have rebounded relatively quickly, approaching the original population size, probably within three to four generations.

But in 1770 the onslaught began anew …. [with the arrival of] two [Spanish] warships led by Felipe Gonzales de Haedo …. (p. 158)

While no violence erupted during the Spanish visit, something more potent had been unleashed on Rapa Nui. From the six days on the island and the explicit references to sexual encounters, we can be certain that venereal disease gained a foothold. Epidemic disease must also have followed the Spanish visit, and this time unwitting witnesses of the impact would arrive on the scene within four years: the British. (p. 159)

At the time of Cook’s [three-day] visit, just four years after the Spanish had arrived, the Rapanui were almost certainly suffering in the aftermath of disease outbreaks. Indeed, the 600 to 700 people Cook reports for the island’s population must be survivors of whatever pathogens were introduced and epidemics that ensured. And there are venereal diseases; they don’t kill quickly, but linger to inflict long-term maladies, reproductive problems, and sterility.  (pp. 162-163)

The British were unknowing witnesses to an epidemic that had just passed. But what had just transpired was still incomprehensible to them. They were perplexed by the small population size, what the perceived as poverty, and generally by the disheveled state of things; in hindsight, this is precisely what the aftermath of epidemic and a population crash would look like. (p. 163)

Terry Hunt and Karl Lipo, The Statues that Walked: Unraveling the Mystery of Easter Island (Free Press, New York, 2011).

Amazon.com sells this short book in hardcover for $15.44 and a Kindle (e-book) version for $23.88. There is no paperback yet available.

TdJ reviewed some of Terry Hunt’s earlier writings on Rapa Nui in 2006 and 2009.