Gucumatz
JS, secretly Rod Serling
- Joined
- Dec 11, 2011
- Messages
- 6,181
So you couldn't find a single expert? And that's a terrible analogy frankly - people who don't have expertise in the field either way obviously won't know enough to care either way about what is being depicted as truth/fact.
Here I'll make the definition more narrow for you - find someone who has a degree that focuses in any of the historical areas discussed by Diamond in Collapse that agrees with your position. Again - I am not sure you have actually read QC. This is a fairly representative group of academia that are all accomplished in their relevant fields. Doing a google book review for Collapse you will see the only people who give Collapse a decent rating are people who have no real knowledge of the fields discussed. I think its worth pointing out again that it seems you didn't read QC and think that its some sort of hitpiece.
==========
Speaking of hitpieces, you should see how Diamond responds to criticism of his work. Here is his criticism of the world's leading archaeologists on Easter Island and their response [A bit of a foreword, Diamond lied about sourcing, data, etc.]
Hunt and Lippo's response to Diamond's attack:
And Diamond's attack:
Diamond's Collapse is really nothing more than whitewashing and support of it, is justification of whitewashing and there is a reason no real expert accept's the Collapse narrative
Here I'll make the definition more narrow for you - find someone who has a degree that focuses in any of the historical areas discussed by Diamond in Collapse that agrees with your position. Again - I am not sure you have actually read QC. This is a fairly representative group of academia that are all accomplished in their relevant fields. Doing a google book review for Collapse you will see the only people who give Collapse a decent rating are people who have no real knowledge of the fields discussed. I think its worth pointing out again that it seems you didn't read QC and think that its some sort of hitpiece.
==========
Speaking of hitpieces, you should see how Diamond responds to criticism of his work. Here is his criticism of the world's leading archaeologists on Easter Island and their response [A bit of a foreword, Diamond lied about sourcing, data, etc.]
Hunt and Lippo's response to Diamond's attack:
Spoiler :
Carl Lipo and Terry Hunt
We are hardly surprised that Jared Diamond would write that we are transparently wrong about Easter Island. He has a vested interest in defending his ecocide storyline published back in 1995 in Discover Magazine and again in his bestselling book Collapse. We acknowledge that Diamond has much at stake here. But so do the Easter Islanders. So too does the field of archeology. And so too does the truth.
Diamonds thesis about what happened on Easter Island is not new, building as it did on presumptions originally offered by the first Europeans to set foot on the island in the early 18th century. Sadly, this thesis was not challenged because it so conveniently confirmed 18th century prejudice about superior (European) and inferior (everyone not European) societies. Thor Heyerdahl expanded the story and added a further racist twist about lighter-skinned people who accomplished much, and darker-skinned people who incited rebellion, warfare, and ruin. Diamond simply continues the tradition by reworking the tale to remove the racist elements, relying instead upon an environmental twist put forth by popular writer Bahn and palynologist Flenley.
An important role of scholarship is to examine long-held myths and see if they hold up under modern scientific tests. The original Easter Island thesis, in any of its iterations, including Diamonds, does not. Let us point out that we didnt go to Easter Island to tear down Diamonds thesis. We went there to support it by filling in the missing archeological data. It was only when we convinced ourselves that any iteration of that original story, including Diamonds, had no archeological evidence to support it and much to contract it that we began to see where the research was leading us.
It is also important to note that Diamond is not an archaeologist and has not done archaeological or palaeoecological research in Polynesia. We have been doing research and primary archaeological field work on Easter since 2000. One of us (TH) has worked in Pacific Island archaeology for nearly 40 years and taught at University of Hawaii for 23 years. On Easter Island we have done more field work and covered a greater breadth of archaeology than anyone else in the past two decades. Our work has been peer-reviewed and published in sciences most selective and prestigious journals. We outline in detail the evidence from our work and that of scores of colleagues working on the island in our book The Statues that Walked. Diamond would have readers believe that the majority of archeologists who have studied Easter Island support his thesis. It is simply not true. The new evidence that we and other serious scholars have provided over the past decade not only contradicts the old story that Diamond has so heavily invested in, but has led to a new consensus among the majority of scholars around our work.
Now, let us deal with the four or five major points of contention.
Deforestation
Everyone agrees that Easter Island was almost completely deforested by the time Europeans first visited in 1722. The key issue is causation. In the absence of evidence to refute the facts we lay out, Diamond chooses either to ignore or misrepresent what we do argue. We never argued that rats were the sole cause of deforestation. As the evidence shows and as we argued in our book, deforestation was a cumulative process that took centuries. It resulted from rat predation of seeds and from people using fire to clear vegetation for agriculture.
To defend his position that rats played no significant role in deforestation, Diamond cites a study by Mieth and Bork. Setting aside the fact that even if only a fraction of palm nuts were destroyed by rats, the cumulative effect would have been significant, lets examine this study on its merits.
We were well aware of the work of Mieth and Bork as we did our work. But we were also aware of the fact (which Diamond fails to point out) that Mieth and Bork based their claim on nut fragments, not whole nuts. Before we rejected this study, we took the time to experiment ourselves with 25 modern rat-gnawed palm nuts from mainland Chile that we broke into fragments of the sizes resembling those reported by Mieth and Bork. This sample of 100% whole rat-gnawed nutswhen broken and then counted by their fragmentsbecame a much, much smaller percentage. This shows the problem using Mieth and Bork whose estimate of 10% rat gnawed fragments implies that most nuts (if they were counted whole) were actually gnawed by rats.
Indeed, there is an extensive scientific literature on the impact of rats in island ecosystems that Diamond is either unaware of or simply doesnt want readers to know about, such as those from Lord Howe Island, where ecologists point out that without massive programs of rat eradication, the native palms on the island will go extinct. And rats have been on Lord Howe only since 1918, when a steamship ran aground! Diamond himself, in his own writing, has referred to rats as agents of extermination (Diamond 1985).
Bottom line: Diamond needs to explain how, in the absence of predators and with an almost unlimited supply of food, the rat population would have remained small and had no impact on native plants and animals.
Next, Diamond makes the argument that even if rats could do this type of damage, the particular type of trees on Easter Island were not vulnerable to rats. The facts are as follows: Of the 17 major woody species identified from charcoal found in ancient cooking fires, 14 are documented to have seen major rat impacts elsewhere, or to be edible and highly vulnerable. Furthermore, because the Jubaea palms were slow growing and did not fruit until about 70 years of age, they were particularly vulnerable. Some fraction of new palms would grow, but not enough to replace an entire forest over time. Older trees would die, many were lost to fire, and in the end it was a losing battle; not enough young seedlings made it to reproductive age.
As for Diamonds notion that palms were not diminished by rats, but taken down the islanders for rollers to move statues or to carve into canoes, enabling deep-sea fishing, anyone who has seen a palm tree cross-section with its thin, brittle bark and soft fibrous interior would quickly recognize these would not be suitable. Nor frankly would they have been capable of supporting the weight of multi-ton statues as rollers.
As for his allegation that palms were an important part of the islanders subsistence, there is overwhelming evidence that the islanders didnt think so. As we document in The Statues That Walked on research conducted by Joan Wozniak (2003), Chris Stevenson (Stevenson et al 2002, 2006; Ladefoged et al. 2005, 2010) and Hans-Rudolf (Bork et al. 2004) lithic mulch gardens, along with stone-walled gardens known locally as manavai, provided the basis for the islanders subsistence soon after the island was settled. Palms provided no direct, long-term benefit so their loss had few if any consequences.
ChronologyWhen exactly was the island colonized?
One of our most important findings was excavation and radiocarbon dating to establish the date of settlement as 300-800 years later than Diamonds thesis requires. Diamond insists on missing evidence to argue for a longer chronology. His argument asks us to accept on faith the notion that the evidence must be there, we just cant find it. That wouldnt stand up in court, and it certainly doesnt stand up in science. Until such time as serious scientists prove otherwise, there are no reliable radiocarbon dates that support settlement of Easter Island before 1200 A.D. (Hunt and Lipo 2006). To argue otherwise ignores more than 2,000 radiocarbon dates from multiple archipelagos that provide overwhelming evidence that all of the eastern Pacific Islands were settled only over the past thousand years (Rieth et al 2011;Wilmshurst et al 2011), with Easter settled around 1200 A.D. Even the most skeptical archaeologists working in the Pacific are now quibbling about chronological differences of only 50 to 100 years, not several centuries as Diamond imagines.
Statue TransportDid the states move horizontally or vertically?
Diamonds thesis hangs on the need for logs to roll the statues from the quarries to their final destinations. In support of his thesis, he asks the reader to imagine it yourself. Surely, he implies, it would be crazy to move a multi-ton statue in a standing position. And if all you are solely relying upon is your own imagination, it may sound like a scary proposition. But thats not reason enough to declare some past event as impossible.
But readers need to keep in mind that Diamonds collapse thesis relies heavily on how the statues were moved. To sustain his thesis regarding the eventual collapse of the ancient society, he needs statue movement to be the engine that caused the loss of trees. Decouple the loss of trees from moving statues and the collapse story looses steam. Thus, we are not surprised that Diamond holds so tenaciously to old beliefs and discredited claims.
But one has to wonder if Diamond has read The Statues that Walked. In the book we discuss how fallen statue positions, kinds of breakage, statue shapes with a forward center of mass, as well as statue modifications made between quarry and placement on platforms can only be explained by vertical movement. As archaeologist and colleague on the island Sergio Rapu (who has studied statues his whole life and has a M.A. degree in archaeology) taught us, the statues were engineered to move. Oral traditions have long insisted that they walked. And while some have shown that it is possible to move a statue horizontally on a contraption of logs, (as Diamond posits they were moved) such a method completely ignores the direct and unambiguous evidence provided by the statues themselves.
But there is much better news awaiting readers who might want to imagine it themselves. In recent experiments funded by National Geographic and fully filmed, we walked a multi-ton replica of an actual statue (one found along an ancient transport road). Moving a statue in a standing position is not only possible; its relatively easy and can be done with a small group of people using only ropes. Our experiment will be highlighted in a forthcoming NOVA-National Geographic television special to be broadcast on PBS in the spring of 2012. Then the rest of the world will see what we have seenthe statues of Easter Island walking upright! Stay tuned!
Collapse only after European Contact
Again Diamond makes an appeal to authority in lieu of reference to evidence. He mistakenly says we relied on only one source (Peiser, who does not even appear in our books bibliographyagain, did he read our book?) who, he points out, has not done any work on the island. Let us also note once again that Diamond has not conducted any field work on the island. Nor to our knowledge has one of Diamonds proclaimed leading experts, Paul Bahn, done any field studies on the island.
As we show in The Statues that Walked, rather than repeat assumptions and claims made in the past, we sought direct evidence with no preconceived ideas we needed to defend. In that frame of mind, what the evidence kept pointing to is that many of the facts offered up by so-called experts were simply claims repeated over and over and nothing more. The island was certainly transformed over the course of human history (including the dramatic impact of more than 100 years of sheep ranching once the Chileans took control of the island.). But what is Diamonds evidence that prehistoric loss of the forest led to cultural and demographic collapse? There is none other than the assumption that losing trees is bad for people living on this island. Is there evidence of soil erosion? Yes, but it shows re-deposited soils were successfully cultivated. In addition, radiocarbon dating and modern observations show that the most dramatic soil erosion occurred in post-contact and modern times (i.e., largely the results of sheep ranching). Would the loss of trees have resulted in a critical shortfall of food and/or necessary materials? The answer is a resounding no. Could the palm tree have provided a vital food source for people in the form of nuts? Yes, however, the introduction of tree-dwelling rats meant that these pests would have consumed most of the nuts first.
Diamond repeats a number of traditional notions about the islands history. In particular, he cites evidence of widespread warfare based on oral accounts and preserved weapons and skeletal injuries. Lets examine this so-called evidence. First, oral traditions were collected in the 20th century, almost 200 years after European contact. Alfred Metraux, an anthropologist who studied the islanders oral traditions, concluded that they were most likely of very recent origin (Metraux 1940). Katherine Routledge, who worked on the island in the early 20th century, also describes how unreliable and contradictory she found the oral traditions. Our work does not draw upon oral traditions, given their uneven and unknown reliability. Some traditions may well be consistent with what actually happened in the past. In other cases they may not. It is impossible to evaluate them on their own merits and independent lines of evidence are necessary (e.g., statues walking had to be evaluated in terms of evidence beyond just oral traditions).
Diamonds preserved weapons, the mataa, are agricultural tools that he has chosen to describe as weapons. Their design alone, a rounded to irregular shape, should have been enough to make him question their purpose. But if he had read the microscopic studies reporting edge damage on thousands of these artifacts, he would have seen that the damage they show is consistent with their role in cutting and scrapping plant material (e.g., Church and Ellis 1994). Indeed, our field studies show that they are found in the greatest concentrations in the lithic mulch gardening areas, right where one would expect to find them. And the island has no fortifications, such as those we see on other Polynesian islands where warfare was frequent.
Diamond points to evidence of violence in human skeletal remains. However, the published data reveal there are only two cases in which violence appears to have resulted in death, and one of these was an individual who suffered a bullet wound to the head. The skeletal evidence shows injuries and as we explain in The Statues that Walked, the ancient islanders engaged in some conflicts with one another. But as we outline in our book, statues were a focus of competitive signaling that staved off lethal violence.
Finally, Diamond ignores field research reporting dated domestic habitation sites (see Hunt and Lipo 2009 for discussion). When the habitations are plotted in fifty-year intervals, the number of those occupied clearly shows that the first and only sustained decline, as a relative measure of the population, began only in the first interval following European contact. Before contact the data show a population that is growing and stabilizing, as reflected in their habitations across the landscape. There is no evidence of population decline, let alone collapse until after European contact. Indeed, there is direct, abundant evidence that population numbers grew, stabilized, and then fell only after 1722.
The Lesson of Easter Island
Rather than address the evidence, Diamond attempts to deride our work by claiming that the people on the dust jacket are not experts in the field. Diamond is certainly no expert in the field of Easter Island archaeology, regardless of his popularity. The individuals who commented on our book are experts in the areas of human and environmental change, including extensive research in the Pacific Islands. These well-qualified, highly respected individuals know how science works and are directly engaged in research on ecology, evolution, and environmental change. Lacking quotes by experts who we have necessarily challenged in our research (perhaps such as Diamond?) is certainly no reason for suspicion. The truth of the matter rests in the hands of the reader and the factual evidence outlined in The Statues that Walked.
There are those such as popular writer Paul Bahn and and palynologist John Flenley who continue to push the old doomsday, ecocide scenario. But recent work has shown the central significance of lithic mulch (e.g., Bork et al. 2004; Stevenson et al. 2005; Ladefoged et al. 2010; Wozniak 1999, 2003), the lack of evidence for an 1680 AD Collapse event (e.g., Mulrooney et al. 2009, Lipo and Hunt 2009), that mataa are not developed weapons (Church and Rigney 1994; Church and Ellis 1995), the lack of structural integrity of palms to serve as rollers or use as canoes (e.g., Bork and Meith 2003), the lack of evidence for cannibalism (e.g., McLaughlin 2005), the shorter chronology for colonization not just for Easter, but for the entire eastern Pacific (e.g., Kennett et al. 2006; Reith et al. 2011; Wilmshurst et al. 2008, 2011), the devastating effects that rats have on island environments (e.g., Athens 2009), details about the impact that Europeans had on historic populations (e.g., Fischer 2005), direct evidence about statue transport based on analysis of moai roads (e.g., Lipo and Hunt 2005; Love 2001), the inherently nutrient poor state of soil on Rapa Nui (e.g., Ladefoged 2005) and more. These new findings point to the growing body of evidence that falsifies the basic claims made in favor of ecocide. And based on this evidence, the majority of archaeologists working on Easter and elsewhere in Polynesia now reject the notion that the island suffered a pre-European collapse.
Our work in The Statues that Walked brings a wide range of current research into focus and combines more than a decade of our own field and related Easter Island research to form a coherent picture that is the basis of a new scientific consensus. Easter Island was a story of remarkable success. And as young Native Islanders have told us, knowledge of their ancestors success, not failure, matters greatly to them. The collapse story for Easter Island is a convenient and popular parable used for shocking the public about the dangers of over-exuberance and environmental disregard. However, as we describe in our book, the islands collapse came only with the germs, guns, and enslavement brought by the outside world. Given what is at stake in terms of lessons to be learned about long-term survival on an isolated and resource poor location, the truth matters. Indeed, we have much to learn from Easter Island.
References
Ath
We are hardly surprised that Jared Diamond would write that we are transparently wrong about Easter Island. He has a vested interest in defending his ecocide storyline published back in 1995 in Discover Magazine and again in his bestselling book Collapse. We acknowledge that Diamond has much at stake here. But so do the Easter Islanders. So too does the field of archeology. And so too does the truth.
Diamonds thesis about what happened on Easter Island is not new, building as it did on presumptions originally offered by the first Europeans to set foot on the island in the early 18th century. Sadly, this thesis was not challenged because it so conveniently confirmed 18th century prejudice about superior (European) and inferior (everyone not European) societies. Thor Heyerdahl expanded the story and added a further racist twist about lighter-skinned people who accomplished much, and darker-skinned people who incited rebellion, warfare, and ruin. Diamond simply continues the tradition by reworking the tale to remove the racist elements, relying instead upon an environmental twist put forth by popular writer Bahn and palynologist Flenley.
An important role of scholarship is to examine long-held myths and see if they hold up under modern scientific tests. The original Easter Island thesis, in any of its iterations, including Diamonds, does not. Let us point out that we didnt go to Easter Island to tear down Diamonds thesis. We went there to support it by filling in the missing archeological data. It was only when we convinced ourselves that any iteration of that original story, including Diamonds, had no archeological evidence to support it and much to contract it that we began to see where the research was leading us.
It is also important to note that Diamond is not an archaeologist and has not done archaeological or palaeoecological research in Polynesia. We have been doing research and primary archaeological field work on Easter since 2000. One of us (TH) has worked in Pacific Island archaeology for nearly 40 years and taught at University of Hawaii for 23 years. On Easter Island we have done more field work and covered a greater breadth of archaeology than anyone else in the past two decades. Our work has been peer-reviewed and published in sciences most selective and prestigious journals. We outline in detail the evidence from our work and that of scores of colleagues working on the island in our book The Statues that Walked. Diamond would have readers believe that the majority of archeologists who have studied Easter Island support his thesis. It is simply not true. The new evidence that we and other serious scholars have provided over the past decade not only contradicts the old story that Diamond has so heavily invested in, but has led to a new consensus among the majority of scholars around our work.
Now, let us deal with the four or five major points of contention.
Deforestation
Everyone agrees that Easter Island was almost completely deforested by the time Europeans first visited in 1722. The key issue is causation. In the absence of evidence to refute the facts we lay out, Diamond chooses either to ignore or misrepresent what we do argue. We never argued that rats were the sole cause of deforestation. As the evidence shows and as we argued in our book, deforestation was a cumulative process that took centuries. It resulted from rat predation of seeds and from people using fire to clear vegetation for agriculture.
To defend his position that rats played no significant role in deforestation, Diamond cites a study by Mieth and Bork. Setting aside the fact that even if only a fraction of palm nuts were destroyed by rats, the cumulative effect would have been significant, lets examine this study on its merits.
We were well aware of the work of Mieth and Bork as we did our work. But we were also aware of the fact (which Diamond fails to point out) that Mieth and Bork based their claim on nut fragments, not whole nuts. Before we rejected this study, we took the time to experiment ourselves with 25 modern rat-gnawed palm nuts from mainland Chile that we broke into fragments of the sizes resembling those reported by Mieth and Bork. This sample of 100% whole rat-gnawed nutswhen broken and then counted by their fragmentsbecame a much, much smaller percentage. This shows the problem using Mieth and Bork whose estimate of 10% rat gnawed fragments implies that most nuts (if they were counted whole) were actually gnawed by rats.
Indeed, there is an extensive scientific literature on the impact of rats in island ecosystems that Diamond is either unaware of or simply doesnt want readers to know about, such as those from Lord Howe Island, where ecologists point out that without massive programs of rat eradication, the native palms on the island will go extinct. And rats have been on Lord Howe only since 1918, when a steamship ran aground! Diamond himself, in his own writing, has referred to rats as agents of extermination (Diamond 1985).
Bottom line: Diamond needs to explain how, in the absence of predators and with an almost unlimited supply of food, the rat population would have remained small and had no impact on native plants and animals.
Next, Diamond makes the argument that even if rats could do this type of damage, the particular type of trees on Easter Island were not vulnerable to rats. The facts are as follows: Of the 17 major woody species identified from charcoal found in ancient cooking fires, 14 are documented to have seen major rat impacts elsewhere, or to be edible and highly vulnerable. Furthermore, because the Jubaea palms were slow growing and did not fruit until about 70 years of age, they were particularly vulnerable. Some fraction of new palms would grow, but not enough to replace an entire forest over time. Older trees would die, many were lost to fire, and in the end it was a losing battle; not enough young seedlings made it to reproductive age.
As for Diamonds notion that palms were not diminished by rats, but taken down the islanders for rollers to move statues or to carve into canoes, enabling deep-sea fishing, anyone who has seen a palm tree cross-section with its thin, brittle bark and soft fibrous interior would quickly recognize these would not be suitable. Nor frankly would they have been capable of supporting the weight of multi-ton statues as rollers.
As for his allegation that palms were an important part of the islanders subsistence, there is overwhelming evidence that the islanders didnt think so. As we document in The Statues That Walked on research conducted by Joan Wozniak (2003), Chris Stevenson (Stevenson et al 2002, 2006; Ladefoged et al. 2005, 2010) and Hans-Rudolf (Bork et al. 2004) lithic mulch gardens, along with stone-walled gardens known locally as manavai, provided the basis for the islanders subsistence soon after the island was settled. Palms provided no direct, long-term benefit so their loss had few if any consequences.
ChronologyWhen exactly was the island colonized?
One of our most important findings was excavation and radiocarbon dating to establish the date of settlement as 300-800 years later than Diamonds thesis requires. Diamond insists on missing evidence to argue for a longer chronology. His argument asks us to accept on faith the notion that the evidence must be there, we just cant find it. That wouldnt stand up in court, and it certainly doesnt stand up in science. Until such time as serious scientists prove otherwise, there are no reliable radiocarbon dates that support settlement of Easter Island before 1200 A.D. (Hunt and Lipo 2006). To argue otherwise ignores more than 2,000 radiocarbon dates from multiple archipelagos that provide overwhelming evidence that all of the eastern Pacific Islands were settled only over the past thousand years (Rieth et al 2011;Wilmshurst et al 2011), with Easter settled around 1200 A.D. Even the most skeptical archaeologists working in the Pacific are now quibbling about chronological differences of only 50 to 100 years, not several centuries as Diamond imagines.
Statue TransportDid the states move horizontally or vertically?
Diamonds thesis hangs on the need for logs to roll the statues from the quarries to their final destinations. In support of his thesis, he asks the reader to imagine it yourself. Surely, he implies, it would be crazy to move a multi-ton statue in a standing position. And if all you are solely relying upon is your own imagination, it may sound like a scary proposition. But thats not reason enough to declare some past event as impossible.
But readers need to keep in mind that Diamonds collapse thesis relies heavily on how the statues were moved. To sustain his thesis regarding the eventual collapse of the ancient society, he needs statue movement to be the engine that caused the loss of trees. Decouple the loss of trees from moving statues and the collapse story looses steam. Thus, we are not surprised that Diamond holds so tenaciously to old beliefs and discredited claims.
But one has to wonder if Diamond has read The Statues that Walked. In the book we discuss how fallen statue positions, kinds of breakage, statue shapes with a forward center of mass, as well as statue modifications made between quarry and placement on platforms can only be explained by vertical movement. As archaeologist and colleague on the island Sergio Rapu (who has studied statues his whole life and has a M.A. degree in archaeology) taught us, the statues were engineered to move. Oral traditions have long insisted that they walked. And while some have shown that it is possible to move a statue horizontally on a contraption of logs, (as Diamond posits they were moved) such a method completely ignores the direct and unambiguous evidence provided by the statues themselves.
But there is much better news awaiting readers who might want to imagine it themselves. In recent experiments funded by National Geographic and fully filmed, we walked a multi-ton replica of an actual statue (one found along an ancient transport road). Moving a statue in a standing position is not only possible; its relatively easy and can be done with a small group of people using only ropes. Our experiment will be highlighted in a forthcoming NOVA-National Geographic television special to be broadcast on PBS in the spring of 2012. Then the rest of the world will see what we have seenthe statues of Easter Island walking upright! Stay tuned!
Collapse only after European Contact
Again Diamond makes an appeal to authority in lieu of reference to evidence. He mistakenly says we relied on only one source (Peiser, who does not even appear in our books bibliographyagain, did he read our book?) who, he points out, has not done any work on the island. Let us also note once again that Diamond has not conducted any field work on the island. Nor to our knowledge has one of Diamonds proclaimed leading experts, Paul Bahn, done any field studies on the island.
As we show in The Statues that Walked, rather than repeat assumptions and claims made in the past, we sought direct evidence with no preconceived ideas we needed to defend. In that frame of mind, what the evidence kept pointing to is that many of the facts offered up by so-called experts were simply claims repeated over and over and nothing more. The island was certainly transformed over the course of human history (including the dramatic impact of more than 100 years of sheep ranching once the Chileans took control of the island.). But what is Diamonds evidence that prehistoric loss of the forest led to cultural and demographic collapse? There is none other than the assumption that losing trees is bad for people living on this island. Is there evidence of soil erosion? Yes, but it shows re-deposited soils were successfully cultivated. In addition, radiocarbon dating and modern observations show that the most dramatic soil erosion occurred in post-contact and modern times (i.e., largely the results of sheep ranching). Would the loss of trees have resulted in a critical shortfall of food and/or necessary materials? The answer is a resounding no. Could the palm tree have provided a vital food source for people in the form of nuts? Yes, however, the introduction of tree-dwelling rats meant that these pests would have consumed most of the nuts first.
Diamond repeats a number of traditional notions about the islands history. In particular, he cites evidence of widespread warfare based on oral accounts and preserved weapons and skeletal injuries. Lets examine this so-called evidence. First, oral traditions were collected in the 20th century, almost 200 years after European contact. Alfred Metraux, an anthropologist who studied the islanders oral traditions, concluded that they were most likely of very recent origin (Metraux 1940). Katherine Routledge, who worked on the island in the early 20th century, also describes how unreliable and contradictory she found the oral traditions. Our work does not draw upon oral traditions, given their uneven and unknown reliability. Some traditions may well be consistent with what actually happened in the past. In other cases they may not. It is impossible to evaluate them on their own merits and independent lines of evidence are necessary (e.g., statues walking had to be evaluated in terms of evidence beyond just oral traditions).
Diamonds preserved weapons, the mataa, are agricultural tools that he has chosen to describe as weapons. Their design alone, a rounded to irregular shape, should have been enough to make him question their purpose. But if he had read the microscopic studies reporting edge damage on thousands of these artifacts, he would have seen that the damage they show is consistent with their role in cutting and scrapping plant material (e.g., Church and Ellis 1994). Indeed, our field studies show that they are found in the greatest concentrations in the lithic mulch gardening areas, right where one would expect to find them. And the island has no fortifications, such as those we see on other Polynesian islands where warfare was frequent.
Diamond points to evidence of violence in human skeletal remains. However, the published data reveal there are only two cases in which violence appears to have resulted in death, and one of these was an individual who suffered a bullet wound to the head. The skeletal evidence shows injuries and as we explain in The Statues that Walked, the ancient islanders engaged in some conflicts with one another. But as we outline in our book, statues were a focus of competitive signaling that staved off lethal violence.
Finally, Diamond ignores field research reporting dated domestic habitation sites (see Hunt and Lipo 2009 for discussion). When the habitations are plotted in fifty-year intervals, the number of those occupied clearly shows that the first and only sustained decline, as a relative measure of the population, began only in the first interval following European contact. Before contact the data show a population that is growing and stabilizing, as reflected in their habitations across the landscape. There is no evidence of population decline, let alone collapse until after European contact. Indeed, there is direct, abundant evidence that population numbers grew, stabilized, and then fell only after 1722.
The Lesson of Easter Island
Rather than address the evidence, Diamond attempts to deride our work by claiming that the people on the dust jacket are not experts in the field. Diamond is certainly no expert in the field of Easter Island archaeology, regardless of his popularity. The individuals who commented on our book are experts in the areas of human and environmental change, including extensive research in the Pacific Islands. These well-qualified, highly respected individuals know how science works and are directly engaged in research on ecology, evolution, and environmental change. Lacking quotes by experts who we have necessarily challenged in our research (perhaps such as Diamond?) is certainly no reason for suspicion. The truth of the matter rests in the hands of the reader and the factual evidence outlined in The Statues that Walked.
There are those such as popular writer Paul Bahn and and palynologist John Flenley who continue to push the old doomsday, ecocide scenario. But recent work has shown the central significance of lithic mulch (e.g., Bork et al. 2004; Stevenson et al. 2005; Ladefoged et al. 2010; Wozniak 1999, 2003), the lack of evidence for an 1680 AD Collapse event (e.g., Mulrooney et al. 2009, Lipo and Hunt 2009), that mataa are not developed weapons (Church and Rigney 1994; Church and Ellis 1995), the lack of structural integrity of palms to serve as rollers or use as canoes (e.g., Bork and Meith 2003), the lack of evidence for cannibalism (e.g., McLaughlin 2005), the shorter chronology for colonization not just for Easter, but for the entire eastern Pacific (e.g., Kennett et al. 2006; Reith et al. 2011; Wilmshurst et al. 2008, 2011), the devastating effects that rats have on island environments (e.g., Athens 2009), details about the impact that Europeans had on historic populations (e.g., Fischer 2005), direct evidence about statue transport based on analysis of moai roads (e.g., Lipo and Hunt 2005; Love 2001), the inherently nutrient poor state of soil on Rapa Nui (e.g., Ladefoged 2005) and more. These new findings point to the growing body of evidence that falsifies the basic claims made in favor of ecocide. And based on this evidence, the majority of archaeologists working on Easter and elsewhere in Polynesia now reject the notion that the island suffered a pre-European collapse.
Our work in The Statues that Walked brings a wide range of current research into focus and combines more than a decade of our own field and related Easter Island research to form a coherent picture that is the basis of a new scientific consensus. Easter Island was a story of remarkable success. And as young Native Islanders have told us, knowledge of their ancestors success, not failure, matters greatly to them. The collapse story for Easter Island is a convenient and popular parable used for shocking the public about the dangers of over-exuberance and environmental disregard. However, as we describe in our book, the islands collapse came only with the germs, guns, and enslavement brought by the outside world. Given what is at stake in terms of lessons to be learned about long-term survival on an isolated and resource poor location, the truth matters. Indeed, we have much to learn from Easter Island.
References
Ath
And Diamond's attack:
Spoiler :
n Hunts and Lipos book about Easter Island, which claims to show how those authors recent archaeological studies overturned orthodox conclusions derived from a century of previous extensive archaeological research by many scholars. Among Hunts and Lipos main conclusions, they say that Easter Island was deforested by rats, not by Polynesian settlers; that settlement was not until AD 1200 rather than earlier as widely assumed; that the tall stone statues of up to 90 tons were not transported horizontally, but were walked upright; that the collapse of Easter society was due to European impact, rather than to impacts of the settlers themselves before European arrival; and that the view of Easter societys collapse as a self-inflicted ecological catastrophe is flawed.
Unfortunately, the web postings dont recognize the compelling reasons why Hunts and Lipos conclusions are considered transparently wrong by essentially all other archaeologists with active programs on Easter Island. Ill summarize the reasons, for readers interested in these issues:
Rats. The initial reason for positing a role of rats in Easters deforestation was that some preserved seeds of Easters extinct palm tree, found in caves, show marks of gnawing by rats; and that a study of Hawaii attributed deforestation there to rats.
However, evidence that rats played no significant role in Easters deforestation includes the following. Rats occur not only on Easter but also on every other one of the hundreds of other Polynesian islands, most of which nevertheless did not end up deforested. Over 90% of preserved palm seeds outside caves were not gnawed by rats. Easters forest consisted not only of the palm but also of at least two dozen other species of trees and other plants, all of which also became extinct on Easter although most of them are not known to suffer seed predation by rats and continue to exist in the presence of rats on other Polynesian islands. The Hawaii study does not demonstrate, but merely speculates about, a role of rats in deforestation on Hawaii. Had rat predation on seedlings caused deforestation on Easter, there should then have been no regeneration of young palm trees, but continued survival of mature palms capable of living for many centuries. Instead, palm trees continued to regenerate for centuries in the presence of rats, but eventually all palms, young and old, disappeared by AD 1600. The reason for their disappearance is obvious: they were cut and burned by humans, as shown by burned palm stumps, cleanly-cut-off palm stumps, burnt palm leaves, and burned soil in many parts of Easter Island. See the attached paper by Mieth and Bork, which Hunt and Lipo did not even cite in their book.
Settle a date. On the basis of radiocarbon dates of AD 1200 for a few wood samples from a surface at Anakena taken to represent the first settlement on Easter Island, Hunt and Lipo concluded that settlement was not until around AD 1200. They rejected all of the many older radiocarbon dates obtained by other authors. However, the Anakena surface occurs at a gap in soil deposition layers (an unconformity in geological terms), indicating that archaeological layers corresponding to an unknown number of centuries are missing (blown or dug or washed away) below that surface. The surface thus provides no evidence about first settlement. See the attached book review by Paul Bahn and John Flenley, two of the leading experts on Easter Island.
Statue transport. How could tall 90-ton statues have been dragged over unpaved hilly terrain? The only reasonable solution, to avoid their tipping and breaking during transport, is to transport them horizontally and then lever them into an upright position. Jo Anne Van Tilburg, the leading scholar of Easter statues, who has spent decades cataloging the hundreds of statues, carried out an experiment in which Easter Islanders demonstrated for her their horizontal transport and levering-up of a model statue. But Hunt and Lipo claim that statues were transported vertically. This seems an implausible recipe for disaster. Imagine it yourself: if you were told to transport a 90-ton statue 33 feet high over a dirt road, why would you risk tipping and breaking it by transporting it vertically with all its weight concentrated on its small base, rather than avoiding the risk of tipping by laying it flat and distributing its weight over its entire length?
Collapse only after European impact. Hunt and Lipo, relying partly on a paper by Peiser (written apparently without first-hand experience of Easter Island), claimed that Easters collapse was due to European impact, and that the islanders were coping successfully before European arrival. No one disputes that European impact did devastate what was left of indigenous Easter society, especially by introduced diseases and by a slave raid. However, to blame it all on Europeans dismisses all the convincing evidence that Easter society had been collapsing well before European arrival: evidence such as the near-completion of deforestation (attested by the disappearance of forest pollen and of forest plant remains), the evidence of widespread warfare (from detailed oral accounts and preserved weapons and skeletal injuries), the cessation of carving statues, the disappearance of oceanic fish and mammals from the diet (because of no trees to build canoes to harpoon them), and the desperate resort to sugarcane scraps for fuel (because of disappearance of native plant fuel). These and other types of evidence that have built up our current understanding of Easter Island history are denied.
The lesson of Easter Island. Sometimes, a new study does result in previously unappreciated facts and interpretations, which eventually convince experts in the field. But we learn to be suspicious when a highly selective book claims to present an iron-clad case for a definitive solution that has hitherto escaped all experts, and when the books dust-jacket quotes and favorable reviews are not by experts in the field.
Some of us may be eager to embrace claims that those native Easter Islanders really were innocent wise stewards of their environment, and that evil Europeans destroyed their paradise. But research on Easter Island published since my 2005 book, and now fairly summarized in Bahns and Flenleys just published new third edition of their standard source book Easter Island, Earth Island, enrich and dont overturn our previous understanding of Easter Island. The islanders did inadvertently destroy the environmental underpinnings of their society. They did so, not because they were especially evil or deprived of foresight, but because they were ordinary people, living in a fragile environment, and subject to the usual human problems of clashes between group interests, clashes between individual and group interests, selfishness, and limited ability to predict the future. Does that remind you of any problems that we ourselves face today? Thats why we find Easters story so gripping, and why it may offer us lessons. Youll find good coverage in Bahns and Flenleys new book.
Unfortunately, the web postings dont recognize the compelling reasons why Hunts and Lipos conclusions are considered transparently wrong by essentially all other archaeologists with active programs on Easter Island. Ill summarize the reasons, for readers interested in these issues:
Rats. The initial reason for positing a role of rats in Easters deforestation was that some preserved seeds of Easters extinct palm tree, found in caves, show marks of gnawing by rats; and that a study of Hawaii attributed deforestation there to rats.
However, evidence that rats played no significant role in Easters deforestation includes the following. Rats occur not only on Easter but also on every other one of the hundreds of other Polynesian islands, most of which nevertheless did not end up deforested. Over 90% of preserved palm seeds outside caves were not gnawed by rats. Easters forest consisted not only of the palm but also of at least two dozen other species of trees and other plants, all of which also became extinct on Easter although most of them are not known to suffer seed predation by rats and continue to exist in the presence of rats on other Polynesian islands. The Hawaii study does not demonstrate, but merely speculates about, a role of rats in deforestation on Hawaii. Had rat predation on seedlings caused deforestation on Easter, there should then have been no regeneration of young palm trees, but continued survival of mature palms capable of living for many centuries. Instead, palm trees continued to regenerate for centuries in the presence of rats, but eventually all palms, young and old, disappeared by AD 1600. The reason for their disappearance is obvious: they were cut and burned by humans, as shown by burned palm stumps, cleanly-cut-off palm stumps, burnt palm leaves, and burned soil in many parts of Easter Island. See the attached paper by Mieth and Bork, which Hunt and Lipo did not even cite in their book.
Settle a date. On the basis of radiocarbon dates of AD 1200 for a few wood samples from a surface at Anakena taken to represent the first settlement on Easter Island, Hunt and Lipo concluded that settlement was not until around AD 1200. They rejected all of the many older radiocarbon dates obtained by other authors. However, the Anakena surface occurs at a gap in soil deposition layers (an unconformity in geological terms), indicating that archaeological layers corresponding to an unknown number of centuries are missing (blown or dug or washed away) below that surface. The surface thus provides no evidence about first settlement. See the attached book review by Paul Bahn and John Flenley, two of the leading experts on Easter Island.
Statue transport. How could tall 90-ton statues have been dragged over unpaved hilly terrain? The only reasonable solution, to avoid their tipping and breaking during transport, is to transport them horizontally and then lever them into an upright position. Jo Anne Van Tilburg, the leading scholar of Easter statues, who has spent decades cataloging the hundreds of statues, carried out an experiment in which Easter Islanders demonstrated for her their horizontal transport and levering-up of a model statue. But Hunt and Lipo claim that statues were transported vertically. This seems an implausible recipe for disaster. Imagine it yourself: if you were told to transport a 90-ton statue 33 feet high over a dirt road, why would you risk tipping and breaking it by transporting it vertically with all its weight concentrated on its small base, rather than avoiding the risk of tipping by laying it flat and distributing its weight over its entire length?
Collapse only after European impact. Hunt and Lipo, relying partly on a paper by Peiser (written apparently without first-hand experience of Easter Island), claimed that Easters collapse was due to European impact, and that the islanders were coping successfully before European arrival. No one disputes that European impact did devastate what was left of indigenous Easter society, especially by introduced diseases and by a slave raid. However, to blame it all on Europeans dismisses all the convincing evidence that Easter society had been collapsing well before European arrival: evidence such as the near-completion of deforestation (attested by the disappearance of forest pollen and of forest plant remains), the evidence of widespread warfare (from detailed oral accounts and preserved weapons and skeletal injuries), the cessation of carving statues, the disappearance of oceanic fish and mammals from the diet (because of no trees to build canoes to harpoon them), and the desperate resort to sugarcane scraps for fuel (because of disappearance of native plant fuel). These and other types of evidence that have built up our current understanding of Easter Island history are denied.
The lesson of Easter Island. Sometimes, a new study does result in previously unappreciated facts and interpretations, which eventually convince experts in the field. But we learn to be suspicious when a highly selective book claims to present an iron-clad case for a definitive solution that has hitherto escaped all experts, and when the books dust-jacket quotes and favorable reviews are not by experts in the field.
Some of us may be eager to embrace claims that those native Easter Islanders really were innocent wise stewards of their environment, and that evil Europeans destroyed their paradise. But research on Easter Island published since my 2005 book, and now fairly summarized in Bahns and Flenleys just published new third edition of their standard source book Easter Island, Earth Island, enrich and dont overturn our previous understanding of Easter Island. The islanders did inadvertently destroy the environmental underpinnings of their society. They did so, not because they were especially evil or deprived of foresight, but because they were ordinary people, living in a fragile environment, and subject to the usual human problems of clashes between group interests, clashes between individual and group interests, selfishness, and limited ability to predict the future. Does that remind you of any problems that we ourselves face today? Thats why we find Easters story so gripping, and why it may offer us lessons. Youll find good coverage in Bahns and Flenleys new book.
Diamond's Collapse is really nothing more than whitewashing and support of it, is justification of whitewashing and there is a reason no real expert accept's the Collapse narrative
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