“The myth of unlimited production brings war in its train as inevitably
as clouds announce a storm”
Albert Camus
And the Myth of the Ancestor Cult gave way to the Myth of the Birdman Cult.
Wherever Polynesians had landed, they started eating. Not that they had ever stopped. Food on their long ocean voyages had been undoubtedly rationed, and they had likely arrived hungry. But they had still arrived, with the seeds of their new prosperity, and their ultimate destruction. The Polynesians ate the rats, but the rats, lacking any other natural predators, ate them back. The Rapanui couldn’t eat the rats as fast as the rats could eat the Paschalococos disperta Easter Island palm tree nuts. The palms took a hundred years to reach maturity. The rats took eight months. It was a massacre. The rodent population soared, until the trees were gone, and then it crashed.
In the rapid destruction of the Rapa Nui forest, the rats had all kinds of human help. Polynesians were farmers, not fishermen, and their staple diet consisted mainly of cultivated taro root, sweet potato, yams, cassava, and bananas. Slash-and-burn agriculture cleared vast tracts of woodland. Palm and Sophora toromiro trees were needed for building settlement dwellings, boats, and tools. The Ancestor Cult required more and more logs and lubrication to move the moai. From about 1650 to 1850, the climatic effects of the Little Ice Age may have hastened deforestation. Whatever the relative contribution of each of these factors, the total destruction for Easter Island’s original subtropical moist broadleaf forests became inexorable, and total. This resulted in considerably less rainfall as a result of less condensation, and a dependence on either wells or the three volcanic lakes for fresh water, as there were no permanent streams or rivers on Rapa Nui because its volcanic soil was so porous.
With no trees to protect their crops, soil erosion, the sudden reduction in fresh water flow, and the increased salinity from sea spray, led to harvest failures. The islanders took to planting below the collapsed ceilings of caves, covering the soil with rocks to reduce evaporation. With no wood to construct the kind of fishing vessels that were necessary to provide the main protein sources of tuna and dolphin, the Polynesians didn’t stop eating. Before the arrival of humans, Easter Island had vast seabird colonies containing probably over 30 resident species, perhaps the world's richest. There were five species of landbirds, two rails, two parrots and a heron. Midden history began to show a drop in fish bones and a corresponding rise in bird skeletons. With the disappearance of the last trees, no more moai were made. If the akuaku ancestor spirits could no longer provide for all the needs of the living, the allegiances of their descendents would change, and venerate the creatures than could. The symbiosis continued, but was now interspecific. You can’t eat ancestors. Geography determines climate; climate determines culture.
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