November 26, 2008 • 19 mins
Home to hundreds of mysterious, gigantic stone statues, Easter Island is an isolated, tiny island in the Pacific. Check out this podcast to learn more about the astonishing history of Easter Island.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm editor Kandi Gibson, joined by staff writer Jane mccarno
pay cannas Jane, I think that if I could go
any place in the world, it would be Easter Island.
(00:23):
Really is a beautiful place. Have you been. I haven't.
I've just seen pictures, but it looks beautiful. I am
kind of obsessed with that. And I was looking at
videos of Easter Island the other day and I stumbled
upon this fabulous piece of information, and that is that
Easter Island has its own marathon. And now I love
love running long distances. I love half marathons and full marathons.
(00:44):
And I'm very slow. I won't profess to be the
first of the line or even like the eight hundred,
but I don't think there'd be anything cooler than running
around the moi of Easter Island. And it's not that
big of an island. Actually, I was looking at it.
I mean I saw that it was about sixty four
square miles and that's about I mean, just to see
(01:04):
the point of reference, Like it's about the same size
as Washington, d C. It is itty bitty. Furthermore, it
is in the middle of nowhere. I think it's closest
land neighbor. I guess a big land neighbor. I think
there are other islands smattered around. Nearby, but not too
close by would be Chile, and that is about two
thousand miles away. That's right. If you look at a globe,
(01:27):
it looks like just a tiny little stock on the globe,
and it's fascinating that people were able to find it
as early as they did. Yeah, considering that these are
the Polynesians who lived probably in South America, we're not
quite sure where they came from, and we're not quite
sure why they left, whether there was some sort of
dispute the Rows, or whether some got ambitious and wanted
(01:48):
to start their own colony elsewhere. But because the Polynesians
are such great sailors and navigators, they were able to
make it to this island. We know that they sailed
and wooden boats that were probably lasted together with reds
wrapped really tightly like ropes, and they were probably a
drift in the ocean for about two weeks before they
hit land. Easter Island, and that was around four hundred
(02:09):
a d. And so you can understand how archaeological evidence
can't really indicate like what exactly motivated these people because
they ended up being isolated on this island for so long. Furthermore,
speaking of isolation, we're not sure how many went the
first time, and when they arrived at Easter Island, We're
not sure if they settled there because they had picked
(02:31):
it and they knew it existed and that was their
final destination, or if they were so desperate they picked
any land that they could have seen. And you've regardless,
they actually came very prepared for for being ready to
survive wherever they landed. Yeah, they had a type of
leafy green with them to grow. They had sweet potatoes,
and my fan as I now, who doesn't love a
sweet potato gosh um. I think they also had a
(02:53):
couple of chickens. And again when they pulled up to
Easter Island, I just I can't imagine how they must
have felt because parts of Easter Island were just gorgeous,
a very verdant paradise. I think that today archaeologists suspect
that there may have been at one time sixteen million
palm trees, just you know, an Eden in the middle
of the ocean. But the part that they docked at
(03:16):
was a less welcoming landscape. And that's the thing about
Easter Island. As tiny as it is, this little triangle
shaped island has very diverse landscapes that has white sandy beaches,
and then it has these very jagged and forbidden cliffs,
and it has a volcano and volcanoes and palm trees.
So who is what they thought. But they set to
task and they did pretty well. They cultivated the land,
(03:37):
and they increased their population and they became a very
sophisticated society. Yeah, you can see how it was probably
pretty hard at first, especially because they brought most of
their sustenance with them, as we said, and what was
actually on the island itself before they came there was
not much. There were there were lizards, maybe an insects
um but that. But they actually had to start from
the ground up mostly exactly. They were able to hide
(04:00):
dolphins and other types of fish in the waters. But
it's important to note that Eastern Island is not just
remote as far as people go and animals. Like you
were saying, there aren't very many nutrients in the water,
or there weren't at that time, and so not much
could be sustained. So there were birds that would pass over.
And some people think that's how it got to be
such a verdant little paradise, is that the birds would
(04:20):
bring seeds that they deposited. And for this is actually
a point of contention about like how things got there
and and um, etcetera, because some historians claim, like, we're
trying to figure out where the original people came from,
and some historians claim, oh, these people came from Chile, obviously,
like that's the closest land. Um. But when explorers eventually
stumbled upon the island, a European explorers, uh, a Polynesian
(04:43):
on the ship was actually able to converse with the
people there, and so that's so they were obviously speaking
of variation on Polynesian. So they think the people came
from Polynesia. And so we could tell y'all about Easter
Island all day, and if you don't know much about it,
you may be saying, Okay, sure, so it's a tiny
little island, things are green, people came from nowhere. Great.
But the really important thing about Easter Island is the Moai,
(05:09):
and ultimately the Moai brought about the height of the
civilization and then they're very very darkest hour and the
history of Easter Island. Not just how they got there,
because that part is interesting in and of itself, but
it gets so haunting and it really gives me to
chills every time I think about it. These people had
a very specific religion and culture, and um their spirituality
(05:33):
was manifested through art, you know, storytelling and string figures
and sculpture. And so they got to Easter Island. The
volcanoes and the quarries had all of this ash that
was perfect for making sculpture, and so they made these
giant heads and they're very stylized looking. If you've never
seen a picture of them, I would encourage you to
(05:53):
look at the Easter Island Moi and what people usually
asso associate with Easter Island is these huge hits, huge
And what I found interesting is that there actually found
other places, like other other cultures did have something like this,
but it was the Easter Islanders who actually like they
had the most sophisticated and the biggest and the most
incredible ones. Well, and you have to wonder too, I
(06:14):
think they might have gotten bored, and there was a
sense of competitiveness among them because they would build these
giant giant heads. And just to give you guys an
idea average average wise, they could weigh up to eighty
two tons instead up to thirty two ft high. They
were huge. They were just giant heads. They didn't have nacks,
but they had these really long earlobes, and they were
very stylized, and their features with their long noses and
(06:36):
their eyes were sometimes ornament with coral or obsidian. But
they look very phallic, and perhaps archaeologists say that's because
the population was always struggling to reproduce and they were
fertility guys. I believe they were. They were so they
could be phallic in homage to fertility GUIDs and um.
(06:56):
Speaking of which, because the population was the challenge they
had to end read and so even to this day
you'll find some Easter Islanders who have six toes on
each foot. It's very interesting, and I guess it also
probably stems from the fact that they had a class
system even within this tiny island. Um their population had
a class of like an upper class and a working
class sort of thing. And I imagine that contributed to
(07:17):
separating how people bread. I think so, and when it
came to the Moi, this was such a manifestation of
honor and spirituality. I think everyone was a participant, no
matter the class. I don't know that far a fact,
but I would assume that people would come together and
there was a very specific process with creating the moi.
The artist would start in the quarry and start, you know,
putting the rock together and carving it down and chiseling it,
(07:39):
and essentially it would be sort of on like a
little block when Tommy finished carving it, and they would
create these deep rivets alongside the block. So finally there
was just like a tiny little sliver of stone that
connected the head to the quarry, and this was the keel.
And once they could sever the keel, they would lay
the head on a series of logs, we'd imagine, and
(08:01):
archaeologists are in dispute about how they transported these heavy,
heavy monoliths, and it's sort of like the stone Hinge
of Eastern Island, because people are historians are boggled by
the fact how could these people have the technology in
the in the in the ingenuity, I guess to move
these humongous structures, and that's like a huge feat it is.
(08:22):
And so people either imagine that about seventy men got
together and pulled them with ropes fashioned from parts of trees,
or else they laid them on a series of logs
in which two layers of logs be perpendicular to each other.
They'd grease them with palm oil and they'd roll them
on a platform. And I imagine this was such a
painsticking process. I think that it could take up to
two weeks to move the moi. Important to them exactly,
(08:46):
It's very important to them because they put such labor
into it, and their final resting spot were on ahu
or platforms, and the moi faced inland towards the island.
It was obviously meant to watch over the residents and
to protect them. So they with these around the perimeter, right,
it's like, and so all of these all around the perimeter,
we're looking inward. Yeah, and it's really interesting. We think
over the course of five years, about nine hundred of
(09:08):
them were carved, and you can see where the artists
got competitive because there were so many that were left
unfinished in the quarry and archaeologists found them later. On um.
Ones that had a flaw maybe are ones that were broken,
you know, whether in transit or whether in construction, they
were just abandoned completely. And they were perfectionists. They were
a perfectionist. This is, you know, how they were expressing
(09:30):
their division to the gods. And they got bigger over
time too. They started out more modest, and then there
was one that they call El Gigante, and it's so big.
Of course it's in the quarry. No one could possibly
have moved it. But here in lies the problem with
what they were doing. Uh yeah, So if we go
back to how they transported them, they obviously candid suggested
that they were using logs and and it must have
(09:53):
taken a lot and obviously they made a lot of
these moi. So they ended up cutting down a whole
lot of trees and ended up being their huge flaw.
They're they're huge mistake. You're right, because over time they
had such an abundance of resources. I think that they
used it throwing cautins to the wind and Credaly, we
sort of think of trees as the most renewable resource
(10:14):
there is, but of course, like on that isolated island,
they must have just used. No, you're right. When you're
living in isolation like that, when you use up your resources,
no matter how renewable it is, if you're not getting
any more seeds to plant and you're cultivating the landscape,
it's over. And that's what happened, because not only did
they cut down all the trees, but they essentially caused
(10:36):
all the top soil on the island to wash away
because the roots were in there to hold it down. Furthermore,
they were using the trees to make boats to go
out and fish for dolphins and purposes. This is especially
said to me. It's just that they couldn't make boats anymore.
You know, they couldn't fish because they couldn't make both
because they didn't have trees. And what's worse than that,
not only did they not fished on only at they
not grow crops. After they realized that they had destroyed
(10:59):
their island and all the treas were gone, they didn't
have anything left to make pots with to flee the ivan.
They were prisoners of their own making, and that's when
things got really dark and really dangerous. Beau started starving.
Some scholars posit that maybe some may have resorted to cannibalism. Yeah,
that's true. And this is a point of contention because
(11:20):
some some historians, notably UM Jared diamond says that these
Um Islanders resorted to cannibalism after like other food sources
dwindled UM and he points to how cannibalism is the
their oral tradition. The islanders oral tradition is rife with
with cannibalism and talk of it. And there's a little
bit of archaeologic archaeological evidence that um human bones were
(11:44):
found in these pits of of garbage that where these
are the pits where they threw their their food trash
and so um people like Jared Diamonds used this to
to say, oh, well they must have resorted to cannibalism.
Other historians are like, oh no, there's not an evidence
to say then we shouldn't say that unless it's unless
were sure, and they say that maybe you know, after
(12:04):
people naturally died, they there were rituals that people did
with people, don'tes we know what that happened too, So
it's a point of contention. So however you interpret these
relics of bones, you can look at the things that
are alongside them that the date to around the same time,
and you see that this is the first time and
Eastern Island that they've manufactured weapons like spears and arrows
(12:25):
and things like this. Between the tribes were yeah, and
we know that when they came there were very very
few of them. Around eleven fifty day, the population was
somewhere from seven thousand to nine thousand, sixteen hundreds. That
was the height of the civilization. It was around ten
thousand population done. But then when things started declining and
the population started dwindling, we say that people broke off
(12:47):
into different clans and essentially they were all fighting for
the very tiny parcels of arable land that were left.
And it was very, very difficult to stake a claim
to this because I think that the Easter Islanders they
were respectful of their gods and they're respectful of women
and children. Even the scholars who point the fact that
they may have resorted to cannibalism point out that women
(13:09):
and children never watched this happen, which I don't know
if that means that men were the only ones who
resorted to cannibalism if they ate it in private away
from women and children, but I think that they you know,
they were still trying to hold their civilization together, but
it got harder and harder, and finally there was this
cult that rose out of all the distress, and it
(13:30):
was called the Birdman cult. And the premise was pretty simple.
Be the first person to grab the egg from a
city turned nest and you're gonna be the leader for
twelve moons. And that may sound like a pretty simple feet,
but the city turns nests are in the highest cliffs
on the islands. It would involve like a swim and
the rock climb and then a massive track back to
(13:51):
be the first person to have this egg. And if
you lost this contest, it was all bets off because
the losers were typically expected to stab themselves with spears.
So the Barman cult dies sound pretty drastic, but through
this there actually wise every birth and arable land and
cultivation of crops. I think the sweet potater reared its
(14:11):
head again, so I think goodness for tuvers. Yeah, and
they were struggling. They were they were still struggling to
to um an extent, and this is when you know
Europeans actually started stumbling upon these people and they finally
had sort of contact and access to the outside world.
But this ended up causing a lot of harm as
well as good, um because like obviously Europeans come uh
(14:36):
with their own diseases like that they have become immune to,
and so they exposed these diseases to the islanders at
the time, and so that hurt their population even more.
And I think that when the nineteenth century came around,
the population had dwindled to unlate gosh, just a little
over a hundred maybe a hundred ten Easter Islanders. And
(14:58):
not only did the Westerners bring their diseases, they also
brought their religion and their ideas. And one of the
reasons it's called Easter Island is because when it was
first discovered I guess, discovered by Europeans was that it
was Easter Sunday. And it's interesting and throughout the the
I guess the nineteenth century, eventually Christian missionaries did come
(15:18):
over and start and start converting the islanders um to uh,
most of them, I guess, And they ended up sacrificing
a lot of their culture, which is of course necessary
when you sacrifice um your religion. Right when the Christian
missionaries came the exchange for giving up their religion and
their culture, like their storytelling and their their tattoos and
there's everything. Else was that they learned how to use
(15:40):
their land to be a ranch essentially, so they had
livestock and they were able to say, okay, so we
have this very treeless land. Now that's not good for much,
but it is good for using as a ranch. And
at this time the Easter Islanders, I think for the
most part, they were very wearied with their culture, and
when things had gotten really dark, they turned to the
(16:00):
moi and what and rather they blamed them, blame the
gods for what had befallen them, or whether they realized
that it was their own, you know, very overenthusiastic production
of the sculptures that brought them down. They started knocking
them down, and you know, like you said, like, we're
not really sure why it happened. I remember reading One
theory was that, like when when the population split into
(16:23):
different clans, one clan would destroy those those statues because
they believe those are the source of their power, the
opposite clans power. And so there's all kinds of theories
about this, but um regardless, it is interesting that they
made such amazing feats and yet they ended up tearing
it down. They did, and you can you can see
where they galuged out the eyes, then a city and eyes,
and they would arrange really sharp stones underwear. The head
(16:46):
would fall so and then when they knocked it from
the yahoo, the head with sever So they were in
essence decapitating these gods. And it wasn't until archaeologists came
back and tried to restructure them that they were able
to rehoist the moai. And I think that today the
Easter Islanders very much accept that as part of their culture.
But another thing that they lost forever was their language,
(17:09):
which was Wrongo wrongo, and it actually came about from
a very dirty trick that the Spanish pulled back in
seventy two. They came over and essentially they tricked the
tribal leader into signing a treaty that turned Easter Island
over to Spanish control. So while that in itself was
not diplomatic to any extent, it inspired the Easter Islanders
(17:31):
to create their own system of writing. And so there
are still tablets today with Wrongo wrongo that exists, and
I think Easter Islanders continue to carve these little symbols
that no one knows what it means, because again, part
of giving up the culture to Christian missionaries was getting
you know, ranches established and getting their crops re established
and essentially surviving. So they made that choice. That's interesting
(17:52):
that both the introduction of writing sort of hurt and
helped them sort of in a way like, uh, it's
certainly in a trick to be like, hey, this is
what writing is. Write anything on this line and you're
sacrificing your island and knowingly sort of thing. But it
also brought about to fall up the Birdman cult too,
because the tribal leader was able to reassert his power
(18:13):
through writing. So it's just such an interesting history and
the Easter Islanders are very very proud of their history.
I think that today there are maybe around two thousand
people on the island. Yeah, their population is really rebounded.
Thankfully they have and they have i think joint citizenship
with Chile, so they can go back and forth. And
if you want to go to Easter Island, I think
that you have to fly to Chile first, and then
(18:33):
there are flights certain days of the week that go
out to Easter Island. And that's what I mean. It's
awesome that Easter Island has has an um an airport
now and so people can come and they like argaelogist
can study and tourists can can find out the rich
culture and it's pretty interesting. And yeah, they had Chili
actually has control over it because they annexed it in
eighty eight. We should probably mention that. But um, but
(18:53):
the culture of Easter Island is still alive. The people
are incredibly friendly, and I think that people have written
that as I've traveled to Easter Island. If hotel rooms
are booked, you can stay with any Easter Island family
in their house and they'll happily welcome you. So it's
just it seems like such a great place to visit.
I can't wait to go. Mark my words. If I'm
not there or someone comes, shake me please. So if
(19:15):
you want to learn even more about Easter Island and
other ancient civilizations, be sure to check out how stuff
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at how stuff works dot com.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm editor Kandi Gibson, joined by staff writer Jane mccarno
pay cannas Jane, I think that if I could go
any place in the world, it would be Easter Island.
(00:23):
Really is a beautiful place. Have you been. I haven't.
I've just seen pictures, but it looks beautiful. I am
kind of obsessed with that. And I was looking at
videos of Easter Island the other day and I stumbled
upon this fabulous piece of information, and that is that
Easter Island has its own marathon. And now I love
love running long distances. I love half marathons and full marathons.
(00:44):
And I'm very slow. I won't profess to be the
first of the line or even like the eight hundred,
but I don't think there'd be anything cooler than running
around the moi of Easter Island. And it's not that
big of an island. Actually, I was looking at it.
I mean I saw that it was about sixty four
square miles and that's about I mean, just to see
(01:04):
the point of reference, Like it's about the same size
as Washington, d C. It is itty bitty. Furthermore, it
is in the middle of nowhere. I think it's closest
land neighbor. I guess a big land neighbor. I think
there are other islands smattered around. Nearby, but not too
close by would be Chile, and that is about two
thousand miles away. That's right. If you look at a globe,
(01:27):
it looks like just a tiny little stock on the globe,
and it's fascinating that people were able to find it
as early as they did. Yeah, considering that these are
the Polynesians who lived probably in South America, we're not
quite sure where they came from, and we're not quite
sure why they left, whether there was some sort of
dispute the Rows, or whether some got ambitious and wanted
(01:48):
to start their own colony elsewhere. But because the Polynesians
are such great sailors and navigators, they were able to
make it to this island. We know that they sailed
and wooden boats that were probably lasted together with reds
wrapped really tightly like ropes, and they were probably a
drift in the ocean for about two weeks before they
hit land. Easter Island, and that was around four hundred
(02:09):
a d. And so you can understand how archaeological evidence
can't really indicate like what exactly motivated these people because
they ended up being isolated on this island for so long. Furthermore,
speaking of isolation, we're not sure how many went the
first time, and when they arrived at Easter Island, We're
not sure if they settled there because they had picked
(02:31):
it and they knew it existed and that was their
final destination, or if they were so desperate they picked
any land that they could have seen. And you've regardless,
they actually came very prepared for for being ready to
survive wherever they landed. Yeah, they had a type of
leafy green with them to grow. They had sweet potatoes,
and my fan as I now, who doesn't love a
sweet potato gosh um. I think they also had a
(02:53):
couple of chickens. And again when they pulled up to
Easter Island, I just I can't imagine how they must
have felt because parts of Easter Island were just gorgeous,
a very verdant paradise. I think that today archaeologists suspect
that there may have been at one time sixteen million
palm trees, just you know, an Eden in the middle
of the ocean. But the part that they docked at
(03:16):
was a less welcoming landscape. And that's the thing about
Easter Island. As tiny as it is, this little triangle
shaped island has very diverse landscapes that has white sandy beaches,
and then it has these very jagged and forbidden cliffs,
and it has a volcano and volcanoes and palm trees.
So who is what they thought. But they set to
task and they did pretty well. They cultivated the land,
(03:37):
and they increased their population and they became a very
sophisticated society. Yeah, you can see how it was probably
pretty hard at first, especially because they brought most of
their sustenance with them, as we said, and what was
actually on the island itself before they came there was
not much. There were there were lizards, maybe an insects
um but that. But they actually had to start from
the ground up mostly exactly. They were able to hide
(04:00):
dolphins and other types of fish in the waters. But
it's important to note that Eastern Island is not just
remote as far as people go and animals. Like you
were saying, there aren't very many nutrients in the water,
or there weren't at that time, and so not much
could be sustained. So there were birds that would pass over.
And some people think that's how it got to be
such a verdant little paradise, is that the birds would
(04:20):
bring seeds that they deposited. And for this is actually
a point of contention about like how things got there
and and um, etcetera, because some historians claim, like, we're
trying to figure out where the original people came from,
and some historians claim, oh, these people came from Chile, obviously,
like that's the closest land. Um. But when explorers eventually
stumbled upon the island, a European explorers, uh, a Polynesian
(04:43):
on the ship was actually able to converse with the
people there, and so that's so they were obviously speaking
of variation on Polynesian. So they think the people came
from Polynesia. And so we could tell y'all about Easter
Island all day, and if you don't know much about it,
you may be saying, Okay, sure, so it's a tiny
little island, things are green, people came from nowhere. Great.
But the really important thing about Easter Island is the Moai,
(05:09):
and ultimately the Moai brought about the height of the
civilization and then they're very very darkest hour and the
history of Easter Island. Not just how they got there,
because that part is interesting in and of itself, but
it gets so haunting and it really gives me to
chills every time I think about it. These people had
a very specific religion and culture, and um their spirituality
(05:33):
was manifested through art, you know, storytelling and string figures
and sculpture. And so they got to Easter Island. The
volcanoes and the quarries had all of this ash that
was perfect for making sculpture, and so they made these
giant heads and they're very stylized looking. If you've never
seen a picture of them, I would encourage you to
(05:53):
look at the Easter Island Moi and what people usually
asso associate with Easter Island is these huge hits, huge
And what I found interesting is that there actually found
other places, like other other cultures did have something like this,
but it was the Easter Islanders who actually like they
had the most sophisticated and the biggest and the most
incredible ones. Well, and you have to wonder too, I
(06:14):
think they might have gotten bored, and there was a
sense of competitiveness among them because they would build these
giant giant heads. And just to give you guys an
idea average average wise, they could weigh up to eighty
two tons instead up to thirty two ft high. They
were huge. They were just giant heads. They didn't have nacks,
but they had these really long earlobes, and they were
very stylized, and their features with their long noses and
(06:36):
their eyes were sometimes ornament with coral or obsidian. But
they look very phallic, and perhaps archaeologists say that's because
the population was always struggling to reproduce and they were
fertility guys. I believe they were. They were so they
could be phallic in homage to fertility GUIDs and um.
(06:56):
Speaking of which, because the population was the challenge they
had to end read and so even to this day
you'll find some Easter Islanders who have six toes on
each foot. It's very interesting, and I guess it also
probably stems from the fact that they had a class
system even within this tiny island. Um their population had
a class of like an upper class and a working
class sort of thing. And I imagine that contributed to
(07:17):
separating how people bread. I think so, and when it
came to the Moi, this was such a manifestation of
honor and spirituality. I think everyone was a participant, no
matter the class. I don't know that far a fact,
but I would assume that people would come together and
there was a very specific process with creating the moi.
The artist would start in the quarry and start, you know,
putting the rock together and carving it down and chiseling it,
(07:39):
and essentially it would be sort of on like a
little block when Tommy finished carving it, and they would
create these deep rivets alongside the block. So finally there
was just like a tiny little sliver of stone that
connected the head to the quarry, and this was the keel.
And once they could sever the keel, they would lay
the head on a series of logs, we'd imagine, and
(08:01):
archaeologists are in dispute about how they transported these heavy,
heavy monoliths, and it's sort of like the stone Hinge
of Eastern Island, because people are historians are boggled by
the fact how could these people have the technology in
the in the in the ingenuity, I guess to move
these humongous structures, and that's like a huge feat it is.
(08:22):
And so people either imagine that about seventy men got
together and pulled them with ropes fashioned from parts of trees,
or else they laid them on a series of logs
in which two layers of logs be perpendicular to each other.
They'd grease them with palm oil and they'd roll them
on a platform. And I imagine this was such a
painsticking process. I think that it could take up to
two weeks to move the moi. Important to them exactly,
(08:46):
It's very important to them because they put such labor
into it, and their final resting spot were on ahu
or platforms, and the moi faced inland towards the island.
It was obviously meant to watch over the residents and
to protect them. So they with these around the perimeter, right,
it's like, and so all of these all around the perimeter,
we're looking inward. Yeah, and it's really interesting. We think
over the course of five years, about nine hundred of
(09:08):
them were carved, and you can see where the artists
got competitive because there were so many that were left
unfinished in the quarry and archaeologists found them later. On um.
Ones that had a flaw maybe are ones that were broken,
you know, whether in transit or whether in construction, they
were just abandoned completely. And they were perfectionists. They were
a perfectionist. This is, you know, how they were expressing
(09:30):
their division to the gods. And they got bigger over
time too. They started out more modest, and then there
was one that they call El Gigante, and it's so big.
Of course it's in the quarry. No one could possibly
have moved it. But here in lies the problem with
what they were doing. Uh yeah, So if we go
back to how they transported them, they obviously candid suggested
that they were using logs and and it must have
(09:53):
taken a lot and obviously they made a lot of
these moi. So they ended up cutting down a whole
lot of trees and ended up being their huge flaw.
They're they're huge mistake. You're right, because over time they
had such an abundance of resources. I think that they
used it throwing cautins to the wind and Credaly, we
sort of think of trees as the most renewable resource
(10:14):
there is, but of course, like on that isolated island,
they must have just used. No, you're right. When you're
living in isolation like that, when you use up your resources,
no matter how renewable it is, if you're not getting
any more seeds to plant and you're cultivating the landscape,
it's over. And that's what happened, because not only did
they cut down all the trees, but they essentially caused
(10:36):
all the top soil on the island to wash away
because the roots were in there to hold it down. Furthermore,
they were using the trees to make boats to go
out and fish for dolphins and purposes. This is especially
said to me. It's just that they couldn't make boats anymore.
You know, they couldn't fish because they couldn't make both
because they didn't have trees. And what's worse than that,
not only did they not fished on only at they
not grow crops. After they realized that they had destroyed
(10:59):
their island and all the treas were gone, they didn't
have anything left to make pots with to flee the ivan.
They were prisoners of their own making, and that's when
things got really dark and really dangerous. Beau started starving.
Some scholars posit that maybe some may have resorted to cannibalism. Yeah,
that's true. And this is a point of contention because
(11:20):
some some historians, notably UM Jared diamond says that these
Um Islanders resorted to cannibalism after like other food sources
dwindled UM and he points to how cannibalism is the
their oral tradition. The islanders oral tradition is rife with
with cannibalism and talk of it. And there's a little
bit of archaeologic archaeological evidence that um human bones were
(11:44):
found in these pits of of garbage that where these
are the pits where they threw their their food trash
and so um people like Jared Diamonds used this to
to say, oh, well they must have resorted to cannibalism.
Other historians are like, oh no, there's not an evidence
to say then we shouldn't say that unless it's unless
were sure, and they say that maybe you know, after
(12:04):
people naturally died, they there were rituals that people did
with people, don'tes we know what that happened too, So
it's a point of contention. So however you interpret these
relics of bones, you can look at the things that
are alongside them that the date to around the same time,
and you see that this is the first time and
Eastern Island that they've manufactured weapons like spears and arrows
(12:25):
and things like this. Between the tribes were yeah, and
we know that when they came there were very very
few of them. Around eleven fifty day, the population was
somewhere from seven thousand to nine thousand, sixteen hundreds. That
was the height of the civilization. It was around ten
thousand population done. But then when things started declining and
the population started dwindling, we say that people broke off
(12:47):
into different clans and essentially they were all fighting for
the very tiny parcels of arable land that were left.
And it was very, very difficult to stake a claim
to this because I think that the Easter Islanders they
were respectful of their gods and they're respectful of women
and children. Even the scholars who point the fact that
they may have resorted to cannibalism point out that women
(13:09):
and children never watched this happen, which I don't know
if that means that men were the only ones who
resorted to cannibalism if they ate it in private away
from women and children, but I think that they you know,
they were still trying to hold their civilization together, but
it got harder and harder, and finally there was this
cult that rose out of all the distress, and it
(13:30):
was called the Birdman cult. And the premise was pretty simple.
Be the first person to grab the egg from a
city turned nest and you're gonna be the leader for
twelve moons. And that may sound like a pretty simple feet,
but the city turns nests are in the highest cliffs
on the islands. It would involve like a swim and
the rock climb and then a massive track back to
(13:51):
be the first person to have this egg. And if
you lost this contest, it was all bets off because
the losers were typically expected to stab themselves with spears.
So the Barman cult dies sound pretty drastic, but through
this there actually wise every birth and arable land and
cultivation of crops. I think the sweet potater reared its
(14:11):
head again, so I think goodness for tuvers. Yeah, and
they were struggling. They were they were still struggling to
to um an extent, and this is when you know
Europeans actually started stumbling upon these people and they finally
had sort of contact and access to the outside world.
But this ended up causing a lot of harm as
well as good, um because like obviously Europeans come uh
(14:36):
with their own diseases like that they have become immune to,
and so they exposed these diseases to the islanders at
the time, and so that hurt their population even more.
And I think that when the nineteenth century came around,
the population had dwindled to unlate gosh, just a little
over a hundred maybe a hundred ten Easter Islanders. And
(14:58):
not only did the Westerners bring their diseases, they also
brought their religion and their ideas. And one of the
reasons it's called Easter Island is because when it was
first discovered I guess, discovered by Europeans was that it
was Easter Sunday. And it's interesting and throughout the the
I guess the nineteenth century, eventually Christian missionaries did come
(15:18):
over and start and start converting the islanders um to uh,
most of them, I guess, And they ended up sacrificing
a lot of their culture, which is of course necessary
when you sacrifice um your religion. Right when the Christian
missionaries came the exchange for giving up their religion and
their culture, like their storytelling and their their tattoos and
there's everything. Else was that they learned how to use
(15:40):
their land to be a ranch essentially, so they had
livestock and they were able to say, okay, so we
have this very treeless land. Now that's not good for much,
but it is good for using as a ranch. And
at this time the Easter Islanders, I think for the
most part, they were very wearied with their culture, and
when things had gotten really dark, they turned to the
(16:00):
moi and what and rather they blamed them, blame the
gods for what had befallen them, or whether they realized
that it was their own, you know, very overenthusiastic production
of the sculptures that brought them down. They started knocking
them down, and you know, like you said, like, we're
not really sure why it happened. I remember reading One
theory was that, like when when the population split into
(16:23):
different clans, one clan would destroy those those statues because
they believe those are the source of their power, the
opposite clans power. And so there's all kinds of theories
about this, but um regardless, it is interesting that they
made such amazing feats and yet they ended up tearing
it down. They did, and you can you can see
where they galuged out the eyes, then a city and eyes,
and they would arrange really sharp stones underwear. The head
(16:46):
would fall so and then when they knocked it from
the yahoo, the head with sever So they were in
essence decapitating these gods. And it wasn't until archaeologists came
back and tried to restructure them that they were able
to rehoist the moai. And I think that today the
Easter Islanders very much accept that as part of their culture.
But another thing that they lost forever was their language,
(17:09):
which was Wrongo wrongo, and it actually came about from
a very dirty trick that the Spanish pulled back in
seventy two. They came over and essentially they tricked the
tribal leader into signing a treaty that turned Easter Island
over to Spanish control. So while that in itself was
not diplomatic to any extent, it inspired the Easter Islanders
(17:31):
to create their own system of writing. And so there
are still tablets today with Wrongo wrongo that exists, and
I think Easter Islanders continue to carve these little symbols
that no one knows what it means, because again, part
of giving up the culture to Christian missionaries was getting
you know, ranches established and getting their crops re established
and essentially surviving. So they made that choice. That's interesting
(17:52):
that both the introduction of writing sort of hurt and
helped them sort of in a way like, uh, it's
certainly in a trick to be like, hey, this is
what writing is. Write anything on this line and you're
sacrificing your island and knowingly sort of thing. But it
also brought about to fall up the Birdman cult too,
because the tribal leader was able to reassert his power
(18:13):
through writing. So it's just such an interesting history and
the Easter Islanders are very very proud of their history.
I think that today there are maybe around two thousand
people on the island. Yeah, their population is really rebounded.
Thankfully they have and they have i think joint citizenship
with Chile, so they can go back and forth. And
if you want to go to Easter Island, I think
that you have to fly to Chile first, and then
(18:33):
there are flights certain days of the week that go
out to Easter Island. And that's what I mean. It's
awesome that Easter Island has has an um an airport
now and so people can come and they like argaelogist
can study and tourists can can find out the rich
culture and it's pretty interesting. And yeah, they had Chili
actually has control over it because they annexed it in
eighty eight. We should probably mention that. But um, but
(18:53):
the culture of Easter Island is still alive. The people
are incredibly friendly, and I think that people have written
that as I've traveled to Easter Island. If hotel rooms
are booked, you can stay with any Easter Island family
in their house and they'll happily welcome you. So it's
just it seems like such a great place to visit.
I can't wait to go. Mark my words. If I'm
not there or someone comes, shake me please. So if
(19:15):
you want to learn even more about Easter Island and
other ancient civilizations, be sure to check out how stuff
works dot com for more on this and thousands of
other topics. Does it how stuff works dot com? Let
us know what you think. Send an email to podcast
at how stuff works dot com.
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