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Why Did Easter Island's Civilization Collapse? · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know from house Stuff Works
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry's over there.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Wellcome those big stone heads behind you. We must be
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: on Easter Island. Yeah we are, Chuck. We just started
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: every show like that will role play. Who are you
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: right now? I don't know I was. I'm not sure
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: what that was. He started off as me, but then
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: it went into Barney Fife or something right, Yeah, there
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: you go. Barney Fife on holiday to Eastern Island, or
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: Rapa Nui. Mr Limpett yeah, boy, that ages or Mr
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: Chicken the Ghost of Mr Chicken another good one. I'd say.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: S of our listeners are like, who is Barney five?
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: Who was Mr Limpett? It was Mr Chicken. Go look
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: it up. You'll be delighted. Yeah, man, don yeah. He
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: He also did great turns on Scooby Doo oh sure
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: in three Company. Yeah. Man, he had a great career.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: I love that guy. R I p don knots is
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: he not with us? Oh? Yeah yeah. I think he
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: died like in the last five, six, ten years. I
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: think you never know, man, you know some of those people.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: You're like, oh, sure, like a Vagoda. People thought he
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: was dead for years. It was like a part of
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: pop culture that he was dead. He just died this year.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: I think that's the way. Yeah, it's very sad. Yeah,
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: he's like, fine, here we go. I think that maybe
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: that's a good Is that the ultimate compliment or the
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: ultimate sign of disrespect that when he passed, everyone's like
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: I thought they were already dead. Disrespect. Okay, Um, we're
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: on East Tryland, that's where we were, That's right, which
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: means the big rappa in Polynesian. Yeah in Rapa Nui language.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: Did you know that? Are you alluding to Joe versus
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: the volcano? Okay, that's the pony wos. Yeah, the big
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: Wou was the volcano. I just thought you were playing
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: on that. No. I was looking high and low for
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: what rapa Nui translates into English, and all I could
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: see where jackass As you said that it translates to
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: Eastern Island. Like, that's not what I mean? Internet? Um
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: did you punch the Internet? But it turned out it
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: was just my last Um. No, the the closest I
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: found was that rapa Nui means big Rappa r A
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: p A no idea what rappa means? Did you see
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: the movie rap? No? Kevin Reynolds movie? Is that? Who
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: made it? Yeah? I think he wrote and directed it.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: I know he directed it. I'm pretty sure he wrote
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: it too. And who is he? What do I know
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: that name? Oh, he's done all sorts of stuff, the
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: water World. No, that's Kevin Um. Well, no, he was
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: in it, but I think he directed to um. Kevin
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: Reynolds and Kevin Costner's UM careers were very much intertwined.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: May I think got confused a lot. He's done a
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: lot of great stuff. But we you didn't see Revenue. No.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: I assume it's a a story, fictional story wrapped in
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: the events of probably the decline of the island would
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: be my guest. Yes, civil war, strife, possibly cannibalism. What's interesting, though,
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: is that that fictional story wrapped in the true life events. Yeah,
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: it turns out the true life events are probably fictional
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: as well. Yeah. This actually and maybe I should give
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: our own article a break because most people have been
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: telling the same story for years, which is basically the
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: story that author Jared Diamond told in his book In
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: two thousand five called collapse. Right, he popularized it. He
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: wasn't the first one to come up with this interpretation. No,
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: but he's he's the one that really he's the gun
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: germs and the old guy, right, one of one of
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: my heroes. You wrote one of the greatest things I've
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: ever read, um, the worst mistake in the history of
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: the human race. But like a one word book, but her. Yeah,
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: I was trying to think of something. But that's better
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: than anything I could have thought of. No, he was
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: saying that he made the case that moving from hunting
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: and gathering to agriculture was the worst mistake humans have
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: ever made. Great, it's all over the internet if you
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: want to go read it. Really great easy read. Um
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: and life changing change my life? Is that why you
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: stalk buffalo today? By hand? Raise my own crops? You
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: come home, You're like, you mean skin that thing? I
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: need a pelt. She's like, I just got done skinning
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: the last one from me yesterday. Uh, you skin it
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: and you go okay. Um, where were we We were
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: talking about Kevin Reynolds rep New Week and there we
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: were saying that um. And by the way, Kevin Reynolds
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: did direct water World. It did Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves,
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: a lot of Kevin Costner movies with the Postman too. No,
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: he did Fandango. That was a good one. Um, he's
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: done a bunch of stuff, all right. So I think
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: I remember where I was, which is, um, we should
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: take it easy on our article a little bit. I
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: was a little annoyed that this article didn't say theorized
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: things like that. It kind of just said, like, no,
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: this is what happened, and and it was really judgy,
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: Like the thing that it bought into is an extremely
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: judgy interpretation of things, and it bought it as fact.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: It's the judgest article on the whole site. Well what
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: about the one I sent you earlier today? Yeah, how
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: did you deal with brown Nosers? Yeah? An article on
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: our site called how the Deal with Brown Nosers? Four pages? Yep,
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: if you're looking for advice, go check it out. Good
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: miss me, um, weird times my friend. Uh so, Yeah,
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: I was a little annoyed that it kind of treated
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: us all as absolute scientific fact when it certainly isn't. Um.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: It just seems like one of those things that like
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: someone said it, someone else wrote a popular book, and
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: then everyone's like, oh, well, that's what happened, right, and
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: that's really unusual for anthropology and archaeology. Frankly, Jared Diamond
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: should have known better. Um, he's really taken a lot
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: of heat. Um, his star was pretty high at the time.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: He had like a neat geo show. I think he
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: wrote guns, Germs and Steel. He wrote this book Collapse,
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: How civilizations decide to choose or choose to succeed or fail,
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: And like even the wording in that title, like how
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: is a society chooses to fail? You know, it's really
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: judging in and of itself. So his he he definitely
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: you know fell There are a lot of um plays
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: on the word collapse and Jared Diamond collapsing as a result.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: So now he goes in that geo and knocks on
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: the door and like everyone's like, light up, No, if
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: we turn it off, 'll see that, right. But Yeah,
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: the point is is that there is a a set
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: of fact related to Rappannui to Easter Island that when
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: you put together, form a mystery, a mystery that's basically
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: been around since the first Europeans set foot fann Easter
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  Speaker 1: Island then came back and brought news of this place
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  Speaker 1: to the rest of the world. People have puzzled over
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  Speaker 1: what happened there, and Um the problem is, is the
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: oral traditions that came along or that that came from
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  Speaker 1: Rapanui from Easter Island, Um came along in like the
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  Speaker 1: eighteen eighties, a good hundred and fifty years after Europeans
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  Speaker 1: came and christianized everybody, when the population had been down
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  Speaker 1: to like a hundred people. And even today anthropologists and
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: archaeologists say like, we don't really trust the oral tradition
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  Speaker 1: from Rapanui at all, Like it's not a they don't
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  Speaker 1: it's not a trustworthy source of information, even like in
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: a folkloric way. We're saying, like the basics of it
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: might not even be correct. So they're having to go back,
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: which is very weird. That's a very unusual position to
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  Speaker 1: be in UM, both for the people from the indigenous
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  Speaker 1: culture and the people who are trying to figure out
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  Speaker 1: what happened UM. But so the challenges to take what
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  Speaker 1: we do know for a fact about Rapa Nui and
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  Speaker 1: then interpret it correctly and not in a way that's
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  Speaker 1: like this is it. This is the end all, be
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  Speaker 1: all explanations, which seems to be this weird thing that
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  Speaker 1: rapa Nui has over academics who should know better. They say,
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  Speaker 1: this is it. And the part about Jared Diamond, the
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  Speaker 1: reason he felt so hard is that his interpretation, or
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: the interpretation that he glomped onto and like popularized in
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  Speaker 1: his book was really really judge, really judgey, really like
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  Speaker 1: these people screwed up with their stupid faith and some
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: wacky tiki god and um and look what brought him.
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  Speaker 1: And now we all need to learn the lesson because
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: we're going down the same road and that's just not
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  Speaker 1: thought and you're not supposed to do that, all right,
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: So why don't we do it this way? We'll we'll
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  Speaker 1: give you the story as has been theorized and popularized
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  Speaker 1: for many years, and then we'll hold off till the
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: end for some new insights. They give away too much. No,
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  Speaker 1: I don't think so just judge, I was judge? No,
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: okay uh. Just because you say the word judge doesn't
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  Speaker 1: make you judge, is that right? I think? So? Okay uh?
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: And also just want to tease us. We have a
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: very special listener mail later too. How about that? Lots
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: of reasons to stick around, all right, so you keep
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: saying these words like Easter Island and Rapa Nui like
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: they're the same thing, because they are. Rapa Nui also
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: called East the Pasqua, which means Easter Island in Spanish. Right,
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: that's right, Easter Island. It's actually named, of course, when
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: it doesn't matter what your islands called. When the Dutch
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: or the British or the Spaniards would come a call
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: and they would say, oh no, no, no, here's what
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: we'll call. It doesn't matter what you say. So we'll
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: call it Easter Island. Because I'm a Dutch admiral name uh,
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: Jacob rogue Vine, And um, it's Easter when I landed
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  Speaker 1: here in seventeen two, So what a great name. Obviously
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: it's Easter Island. Rogue Vine also gets credit for discovering
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: Easter Island. Um. Actually he was looking for an island
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: that was Easter Island that had been described by a
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: pirate named Edward Davis in seven Davis didn't come ashore,
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: but um, even rogue Vine was convinced that Easter Island
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: was the island that Davis had described. Did he say
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: they're large stone heads? No, he didn't. He didn't mention
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: the heads at all. Well, of course, weird Easter Island
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: is I'm sure everybody knows this, but we should say
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: right away that they are very well known and most
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: well known for their mo i m o ai. These
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: um beautiful, enormous carved stone statues, not just stone heads
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: and that whole boy, it's annoying the internet thing. It
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: still pops up like once a year when people like, look,
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: there were bodies too. It's not just heads. They've discovered
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: their bodies are buried underground, like they've known that since
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: like the early nineteen hundreds. But its this, it's this
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: weird look up snopes, like, it's this weird internet thing
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: where every couple of years, the same stinking article gets
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: shared the shows all these archaeologists like have dug down
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: and discovered their bodies beneath the earth, even though we've
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: known this forever. So anyway, these beautiful, beautiful statues, which
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about in greater detail, but let's talk
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: a little bit about the how the original island was,
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: uh well what it was like. They're who these people were,
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: the originally calling yeah, the Wapoos, which to the island
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: is Rappa Newi towards and the inhabitants of the island
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  Speaker 1: are called the Rapa Nui clean simple, I love it, right,
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  Speaker 1: So the rap and we they think we're probably a
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: single family. Um that was headed up by a guy
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  Speaker 1: who was considered the first chief of the island um
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  Speaker 1: His name was Hotu Matua or the great parent. Hold on.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: You know what just occurred to me. Vagoda was the
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: leader of the Yeah, all right, God, was there a
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: better movie than that one. It's one of my faiths.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: We've talked about it a lot. Yeah, it's Kevin reynolds masterpiece.
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: So Hotu Matua is originally the first chief of um
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: A Repnue, and he allegedly came with just his family.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: They don't know exactly what they were doing out in
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: their canoes, but they had seaworthy canoes because they hailed
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: from Polynesia and they were great, great sailors, very experienced
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: and hardy at sea. Yes, so I mean and they
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: this would have been a longstanding edition trying out setting
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: out for new unknown islands because they believe that Polynesians
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: are descended from Southeast Asians who somewhere between thirty four
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: thousand years ago left Southeast Asia started moving eastward um
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: toward the western coast of South America in that general direction,
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: and would come across an island, stay there, popular populated,
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: move on to another one populated, And that's how Polynesia
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: got populated. Rapa Nui I believe is the easternmost island
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: in Polynesia. So they think that that was settled last. Yeah,
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: go to Google Earth if you're in front of your
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: computer and just type in Easter Island and then it'll
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: pop up this little triangular shaped island and uh then
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: just start zooming out and keep zooming out and you'll
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: see a lot of blue. And it's amazing to think
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: that people got there in a canoe. Yeah, yeah, because
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: it's like through eight thousand or thirty five hundred miles
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: from from Tahiti, right, Yeah, like miles from right but
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: Chile is not where they came from, so they would
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: have traveled by canoe. But that's the closest land that
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: right is still away. It's amazing, Yeah, our remote, but
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: they traveled like three thousand thirty miles in a canoe.
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: Unbelievable to get from one one island to another, and
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: probably less. I think there's probably islands between Tahiti and
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: Easter Island. But even still they traveled a very substantial distance.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: And then they clearly were intending to either make it
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: to another island or to colonize Rapanui because they brought
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: with them supplies, right, they brought with them plants to plant,
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: like the Tarot route, which is like, I believe a
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: cousin of the sweet potato. It's like a purple sweet potato.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: That is correct, uh, Nanners and Tarot and this whole
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: sweet potato thing too. Was there was somebody who put
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: out there that thor hired All, Yeah, maybe they came
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: from South America because that's that's where the sweet potato
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: comes from. And then other people have since said, no,
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of evidence that suggests us not true. Right, well, Thorie, Yeah,
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: thor hired All said, hey, they're sweet potatoes here. Sweet
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: potatoes are indigenous to South America, therefore they're from South America. Yeah,
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: he didn't really put a lot of thought into that.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: And well, he was an explorer, you know, that's what
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: he did. He explored. He built a raft contiki and
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: saled it himself from South America to Eastern Island back
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: in the fifties. I mean it was cool, but he
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: was a doer, a little more than a thinker. Right,
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: And I believe they've concluded that the sweet potato actually
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: originated in Southeast Asia, which just lends support even more. Um.
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: But yeah, so they came here, they settled this island,
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: they landed on. The shore it's tiny, it is. It's
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: about three times the size of Manhattan. Yeah, it's a
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: sixty four square miles. Like I said, it's triangular. And
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: it was created, like a lot of the islands, um
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: from volcanic eruptions, which also come to play with these statues,
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: as we will see. Yea and uh. When they landed,
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: his family said, well, we're family, but we better get
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: to populating the place. So here's some wine, here's some
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: taro root, let's get to it. Right. The island they
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: landed on, though, was potentially, they think, much different than
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: the island that we know today. Um, if you go
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: there today, it's it's you're gonna see some white sandy
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: beaches and not a lot of trees. Um. They believed
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: that there could have been as many a sixteen million
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: palm trees at first, just like rife with palm trees. Yeah,
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: like so many of the islands, like god damn with
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: the palm trees whenever another one grows. Yeah, And it
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: wasn't the most Uh, it wasn't the friendliest. I mean
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: I say friendly. It was friendly, but it wasn't hospitable. Yeah,
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: that's the word. There wasn't like just food everywhere, and
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: like tons of seafood. Like apparently the waters around there
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: are lower nutrients, so no coral reefs, and that means
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: not a lot of fish. So you had some lizards,
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: you had some molluski, had some insects, and there was
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: if you went fishing, you had to go deep sea fishing,
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: like away from the island. But again like get a dolphin,
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: right dolphin, that's um, which which they could do because
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: they had really great canoes. Um. But they they it
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: was it was, it was in ordeal. They had a
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: lot of vegetables basically, and a lot of those they planted, so, um,
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: they're living this way. This article says they settled about
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: four sea right um, which was what years ago I
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: saw elsewhere from are reliable sources. Most people think it
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: was about a thousand years ago instead of six hundred,
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: so about one thousand. See, they settled the island and
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: the population starts to grow pretty quickly. Apparently having six
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: toes was a fairly normal trait among Rapa Nui originally
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: because they might be in bread sure um and uh,
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: everything was going kind of honky dorry. They started they
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: started ostensibly slashing and burning trees to clear land for fields,
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: um and uh they made they made their way. Yeah.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: They were very spiritual people. They believed in the idea
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: of mana, a sense of mana, which is uh, this
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: spiritual and political authority. And they uh they instilled this
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: through their arts, through cave drawings and through these statues
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: which still haven't really gotten to and through carvings, music, dance,
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: and it was it was a big deal. At meant
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: a lot to them, right. So they the Repanuians followed
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: the traditional Polynesian um structure of governance, which was there
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: was a different clans right um and then there was
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: one head chief, one tribal leader um that was in
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: charge of everybody, right basically like a vogoda. Who else
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: would you want? And the authority of that chief came
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: from de sease ancestors, other chiefs that had lived and
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: died and were now venerated as basically idol, supernatural idols
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: by the people who lived on the island. And this
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: power came through the came from these ancestors to the
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: living chiefs in the form of this manner the spiritual
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: power and one of the most um but one of
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: the most focused, laser focused ways Manna was emanated was
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: through the moai. That's a great place to take a break,
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: my friend. Hey, Chuck, Blue Apron is an amazing way
• 20:18
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• 20:46
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• 21:01
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• 21:13
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• 21:19
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• 21:22
  Speaker 1: com slash s t U f F blue Apron a
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: better way to cook? All right? These mo i, which
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: you refer to as heads because you believe that internet
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: mean well, it's not so much that it's a lot
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: ahead to the body. Yes, proportionately speaking, it's almost all ahead,
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: that's right. Which some people think that one of the
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: reasons is because they were meant to be a fallast. Yeah,
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: and of course that's taken as literal fact by the
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: how stuff Works article. That's right. All right, So um,
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: these uh moai, these beautiful statues that it's not something
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: that you will only find on Easter Island. If you
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: go to Hawaii or Tahiti, you will see similar type things. Uh.
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: And this was, like you said, this was like the
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: purest expression of that mana and how they felt about
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: their ancestors. I think that what they how they understood
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: it was that the man of this divine energy or
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: divine power literally transmitted through the um. Moi man, I'm
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: gonna have trouble with that the whole time. So it's
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: a lot of vowels together. Moi, it is m a
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: O m o ai. I think that's a mistake you're making.
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: You're thinking a moi, you're thinking maori. Right? Maybe not? Yes,
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: you're exactly correct. And um. So these things were built.
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: There's a volcano. They're called Reino Ra Roku and uh.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: In the pits of this volcano they have this volcanic ash,
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: this rock that's very lightweight. Even though these things still
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: weigh a lot, doesn't weigh as much as you know,
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: like granite would let's say lightweight rock. It's very porous,
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: it's malleable, it's very hard, and it's originally it's tinted
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: in like orange and ochre and um. At first, they
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: would start around you know, twelve a D or what
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: do you say now? But even that is um kind
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: of a nod to that whole thing. Uh. Instead, I
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: think in scientists just say years ago okay, oh I
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: like that, so they'd be like eight hundred years ago
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: that's clean, or or they say X years before present,
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: so y bp okay, that's not as clean, but I
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: still like it. Yeah, um I'm done with hye bp
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: yeah you know me so um terrible. Uh. They started
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: off kind of small. They were not as big as
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: they would eventually get because they were just kind of
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: learning and teaching themselves how to do this. Uh. They
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: were they were still large though, but um, they weren't
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: as large as like later on they would find something
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: that they couldn't even move and we'll get to this,
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: but they would eventually move these things. But like L
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: Gigante was the largest one they found, and that was
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: like almost seventy two ft tall. Yeah. Um, I think
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: up to a hundred and sixty five tons is how
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: much they estimate L Gigante ways yeah, but the the
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: initial ones that they started with were much much smaller,
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: and so like let's go with ten feet or so
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: and five or six tons Yeah, even that's still nothing
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: to sneeze at though, you know, correct, um, no matter
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: how big your head is. So um l L gigante
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: specifically though, it is representative of I think one of
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: the late um the late moi be because it's still there.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: It's still left in its volcanic kit. It was never
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: even excavated. Fully. Yeah, it's just laying there, I think,
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: um horizontally to the ground. Because you know that, like
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: they would go in and be like, this area is
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: going to be the moi, and they would carve it out.
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: They carve out the outline of it, and then they'd
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: start carving down around it and start carving out the features,
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: carve out beneath it um or if it was standing up,
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: they would carve out around it and then just leave
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: a little pedestal yeah, called the keel. Uh. This article
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: says it was flat, but as we'll see later, that
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: may or may not be true. And then they would
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: separate it from its keel and then bring it down
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: the mountains somehow, maybe rope something like that to their aho,
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: which would be the platform on which the mo i
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: would eventually stand, and they would line them up on
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: the island's perimeter facing in into the island, not out
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: to the sea. Yeah, which it says here, possibly they
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: were you know, guarding, watchfully guarding the islands. I would
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: think that they would be looking out towards the sea
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: if that were the case. I don't know who knows, um,
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: But yeah, that that point though, where they were brought
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: down the mountain and brought to their ahu. I mean,
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: like this this island was again it's three times the
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: size of Manhattan. That was not a just a quick
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: thing necessarily. And that's actually like a huge mystery. How
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: did they get these things that? Again some like the
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: small ones weighed six tons um. Big ones weighed you know,
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: scores of tons. How many How did they get these
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: things from one place to another? Um, especially considering that
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: all they had were palm trees. Palm trees are not
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: the sturdiest trees on the on the planet, and the
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: kind of rope you can make from like palm is
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: not the strongest rope. So um, it's been a longstanding
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: mystery of how they did this. Yeah, And here's one
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: prevailing theory that from many years and a lot of
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: people still believe this is how they moved them. Was
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: that they would finish the statue. Uh, like we said,
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: cut it from the keel, uh, lower it down with
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: ropes from the area in the volcano, and then uh
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: put it on these palm logs and use those as
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: like a conveyor system, essentially rolling these things along very
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: slowly over great distances, even though, like you said, to
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: small island, to the whole one of these things was
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: no easy task. Right. So that's the prevailing theory, and
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: it's actually been tested um more than once. Um an
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: archaeologist named Joe and von Tilburg who um said, you
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: know what if you took one of these things and
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: you laid it on its back on top of some logs,
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: like basically make a sled out of logs facing say
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: in north south direction, uh, and then you roll them
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: over logs that are in east west alignment right perpendicular
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: to it. That that could probably work. And they tested
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: out her theory and apparently it took twelve people to
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: move like a six or eight ton uh MOI a
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: hundred and fifty feet took him two minutes. Yeah, so
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: that is a theory. Um. There's this other guy that
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: we're going to talk about a little bit later who
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: has some theories that just smack diamond right in the face.
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: His name is Carl LiPo or Lippo l I p
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: O of a cal State Long Beach. Um, go bananas lugs. No, No,
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: that's San Jose State, right, cal State Long Beach, the Longshoreman.
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: We're gonna hear from them, the cal State Long Beach
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: Port Authority. I like that. Uh so Terry Hunt of
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: the University of Hawaii. No, well we're yeah, yeah, Carl
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: Lippo and Terry Hunt, right, yeah, these two dudes, um
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: who have their own theories about the other stuff. Like
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: I said, but they said and tested, they said, you
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: know what, these things they had broader shoulder I'm sorry,
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: broader bases than shoulders, and it wasn't exactly flat on
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: the bottom. You could actually walk these dudes. Stand them upright,
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: get three ropes, get people on the side on each
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: side of this, and one person in the back holding
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: it up and just kind of rock it back and
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: forth and it sort of waddles forward. It's amazing to see.
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: There's this really cool there's a National Geographic video on
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: YouTube that um shows all these different ways that they
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: were tried, all these different theories tried out done with
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: the anima action figures or something. Yeah, well you can
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: see the real thing too. Right at the end, they
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: show these guys trying out the real thing. And this
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: thing is like walking down the road. It's really neat um.
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: And it actually jibes with the Rapa Nui oral tradition
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: that the the moai walked to their aho their pedestals. Yeah,
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: they actually said we tied rope and walked them. Well,
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: supposedly they whoever had a lot of manna, was in
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: charge of making these things walk, and they did it
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: with their manna. But that the idea that you could
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: make these things walk with some rope and the I
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: and and tying into you know, the oral tradition that
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: they walked him, that's pretty fascinating, agreed. Uh. And in
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: their real tests they only used eighteen people, so that
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: ties in with their theories about how many people lived there,
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: which we'll get too later. But a few ropes eighteen
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: people and they maneuver to ten foot five time replica
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: a few hundred yards. Uh. People poo poo this and say,
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: you know what, not all these bases were larger than
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: the shoulders first of all, and second of all, you
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: basically carved a runway to do this, and it wasn't
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: like that for them. They were taking this over terrain.
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: There's no way you could have walked these dudes, let's see.
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: But maybe they did both, you know, well, there's there's
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: plenty of other theories this. Um. This Czechoslaw Slovakian engineer
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: named Pavel Pavel great name, right, Yes, the magicians so
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: nice you had to right he said that, um, and
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: the same magician because I assume he's gonna say magic,
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: yeah right, I don't think so. No, No, that's Eric
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: van Dakin who said that it was UFOs that did it. Um. No,
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: Pavel Pavlo said it was kind of like it was
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: similar to that walking thing, but rather than the thing
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: actually like kind of wobbling down the road, he uh
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: postulated a um, a twisting motion. Right, so it's it's
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: kind of like walking, but no part of the base
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: actually leaves the ground, just like one part twist four
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: and then you twist the other side forward and it
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: slowly makes its way forward kind of the same. Um.
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: And then there's a big debate over okay, if you
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: had him on a sled that was rolling over logs.
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: Were they standing up or were they laying down? Um.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: The key thing to remember whenever you're talking about, or
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: hearing somebody else more importantly talk about Rapa Nui is
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: that no one knows for certain anything. No, but they're
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: making their that's not assumptions, but they're theories, hypotheses at
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: bestes at best, and and they're they're all their interpretations
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: of the few facts that we do know. Right And
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: and one of the one of the things that has
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: long been debated to is um the idea of the
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: population collapse that must have happened on Rapa Nui. Right.
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: So when Admiral rogue Vine showed up, uh he he
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: he was the first European to see the um the
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: moi in person, and he's like, these things are amazing,
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: they're huge. But I estimate there's something like maybe three
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: thousand people living on this island. So something must have
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: led to this population declined, because it would have taken
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: ten thousand or twenty thousand people to build and construct
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: and move these things down the volcano, construct their ahu,
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: their pedestals and get them up there. Um. So what
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: happened to the Rapa Nui and it from the moment
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: he got back to Europe and shared this story about
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: Easter Island. This mystery has plagued archaeology in the West.
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: What led to this population decline among the Rapa Nui?
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: What happened on Easter Island. It's one of the great
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: mysteries of archaeology. All right, buddy, we let's take a
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: final break here and we will come back and talk
• 33:26
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• 34:48
  Speaker 1: squares Space. So chuckers were back, um and again just
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: to go over Jacob Rogevine admiral landed on the island.
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: By the way. First thing he did was killed twelve
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: Repnuians who apparently, no, I didn't see anywhere we're posing
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: any threat whatsoever. Well, that's what you do to say
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: we mean business. And I'm sure they were thinking could
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: have killed a couple of us, And we get the picture,
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: even one that would have done it one and then
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: make eye contact for an extended period of time does
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: the same thing as killing a dozen people, or just
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: fire your boomstick in the air. Um. So rogue Vine
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: shows up and it's like something really bad happened here.
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: The people have built I think it's something like almost
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: nine hundred moai on the island, um, but only a
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: couple of hundred are on there. A who and we
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: didn't say they're a who. Um. Actually, these platforms, according
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: to revenue tradition, were burial grounds, the burial the tombs
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: for the um chiefs that the Moai represent, so very
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: much the same way. It's very much the same way
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: that like the Egyptians UM built uh statues or edifices
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: that were likenesses of the person who was buried there.
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: This is basically the same thing. Yeah, their ancestors. Uh wow,
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: let's said Rice, you did said it right right? So
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: he so he shows up and he's like, there's hundreds
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: of these things. A lot of them are abandoned en
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: route from the mountain down to the Ahu. Some of
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: them are left in the pit um. This place doesn't
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: have any trees and there's only three thousand people living here.
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: Something really bad took place, and everyone wants to know what. Yeah,
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: so that's um. Like we said, Jared Diamond did not
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: invent this, but the theory that he popularized in two
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: thousand five was that what they did was they basically
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: decimated the island's resources because they used all these palm trees.
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: They burned them down, they cleared pass they built huts,
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: they built canoes, they used them to roll the the
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: moi with. Yeah, so they basically took away and didn't
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: understand what the outcome of this would be. So they
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: took all these trees out, made these pathways, and then
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: what happened was the there were no roots to keep
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: and we I think the we do want on erosion
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: or yeah, so if you don't have tree roots, just
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: the rain is just gonna wash away all the top soil,
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: the land's gonna erode. You're not gonna be able to
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: plant anything. And they were relying because, like we said earlier,
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: they didn't have like tons and tons of fish and
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: food everywhere, so they were relying on the vegetation for
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: their food food source, plus the few animals that they
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: did rely on, like uh, lizards, birds. When they cut
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: down the trees, they were um ruining the those animals habitats,
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: so they affected their food supply and that they stripped
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: the land and couldn't grow crops. But they also got
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: rid of the birds and the lizards that we're living
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: on the island as well. That's right. So the populations
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: declining because of essentially starvation, people then begin to turn
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: on one another. The head chief they split into a
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: couple of different factions. Uh, I don't think a couple
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: like several factions and then started fighting each other for
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: the small bits of land that we're still fertile. Right. Yeah,
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: the the chief definitely lost control of the island, um,
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: and apparently warfare broke out, which is evidenced by these
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: things called matta supposedly evidenced. Right. So these are like
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: very very sharp obsidian spears that Rogue Vine even mentions
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: in his chronicle, um, that are supposedly implements of war.
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: And if you scour Rapanui, you're gonna find these things everywhere.
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: So but not the very sharp there's. Right. So there's
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: evidence of like these spear like implements all over the island,
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: which further suggests that there was a lot of warfare there.
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: And then um also this motif pops up, this birdman motif. Yeah,
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: I love this. So a birdman cult popped up in
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: the power vacuum that formed when the chief lost control
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: in the face of this ecological crisis, and the birdman
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: cult actually um created like a parallel government government I
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: guess based on this uh this god Makimaki. Yeah, so
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: there's a power vacuum. Birdman cult forms because they need to,
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: you know, feel the leadership void. Uh. There was an
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: idea that if the first person it was basically a
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: contest um, whoever finds the first egg of this turn
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: um of the year, gets to be the birdman, the
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: leader of the bird men. Right, And so they would
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: go scrounging around, climbing up the volcanoes in the in
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: the mountainous areas. So okay that this article says that
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: I saw elsewhere that they went down the cliff, swam
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: to it offshore island and rated some turn nests. Yeah,
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: well they're way egg. Yeah, they're looking for the Sudi
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: Turn Egg. It's a great band name. Yeah, that's not bad.
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: Or maybe Birdman Cult. That's a good one with the
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: album title Sudi Turn You know the cult, the band
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: the Cult, they were originally called Southern Death Cult. Yeah,
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: that's true. Uh so whoever, like I said, found this
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: would be the the leader of the cult. Yeah. And um,
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: second prize said a steake knives. Third prize, you're fired. Actually,
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: second prize was you would stab yourself with a spear supposedly.
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: Supposedly again, not a lot of evidence to suggest, no,
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: but this how stuff works article takes it as fact.
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: That's right, and it sounds like something like a six
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: year old telling the story you through into and if
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: you if you didn't find the first day, you had
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: to stab yourself with your own spear. So the Birdman
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: cult supposedly in this prevailing theory and I don't even
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: know if I can say prevailing anymore. And this one
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: theory put forward was um, they were responsible for building
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: back up the population and the culture of Easter Island. Uh.
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: They started seeing all these cave drawings of birds and things,
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: which kind of makes sense, and life on Easter Island
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: was starting to pick back up again supposedly when the
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: Dutch came in seventeen twenty two. Yeah, so all of this,
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: this this collapse um that led to famine and warfare
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: and cannibalism supposedly supposedly, um, all took place right before
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: the Europeans showed up. Um. And then as the Europeans
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: came first, it was the Dutch in seventeen twenty two,
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: the Spanish showed up in seventeen seventy two, Captain Cook
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: James Cook. Uh, he showed up in seventeen seventy four.
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: And as when when James Cook showed up, um. After that,
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: the missionaries started to come I think the Spanish actually
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: annexed Easter Island. Yeah, in a very sneaky way. They said, oh,
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: look at this, this is a writing tool, and this
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: is something you can write on. You should practice by
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: just doing whatever you can do with this right here
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: on this dotted line. And they said, oh, well, thank you.
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: You just signed over the rights of the island to
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: the Spanish. Right yeah, this scribble that you just put
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: down that works for us. And I think in the
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: eighteen eighties eight Chile um annexed Easter Island, and today
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: Easter Islanders are Chilean citizens still. Um. But by this time,
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: by the late nineteenth century, the population of Easter Island,
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: it dwindled down to like a hundred and ten people,
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: right yeah, thanks to the influence of what the Westerners brought. Well, okay,
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: so that's basically the prevailing legend that we just went over,
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: that they they overused the resources available to them in
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: this greed and competition. Um. The there there is apparently
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: evidence that there was a lot of competitiveness among the
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: carvers of the moi. Um. I guess the idea was
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: that the bigger and better your moi, the more opportunity
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: the mana had to flow from it, right um, which
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: meant the more powerful you were in practical terms on
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: the island. Um. And that they were just using up
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: all of these resources heedlessly, carelessly, and they brought along
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: this ecological collapse right um. And then you can throw
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: in that they probably would have been totally wiped off
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: the face of the earth had the Westerners not shown
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: up and stabilized their society further. Right So, I mean
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: they christianized them. They taught them how to read, um,
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: they taught them how to raise cattle and lie of stock.
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: And today if you go to Rapa Nui there are
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: plenty of Rapa Nuians still living on the island today.
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: I think the populations back to about two thousand, three thousand, right.
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: So um. All of that is the narrative that stood
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: for many many years until UM. I think about two
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: thousand ten, maybe two thousand eleven. There was a an
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: archaeologist and her name is Dr Marrow Mulrooney. UM. She's
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: from uh Honolulu. She works for the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum.
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: I have trouble with Polynesian words, um in Honolulu, and
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: she did a study at Rapa Nui um, and said,
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: I think this interpretation is wrong. I don't think there
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: was a collapse, a population collapse at all. That's right. Uh.
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: This is published in the journal Antiquity. Uh, and some
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: other research as have gotten on board this train that
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: basically said, you know what, there, we're just going on this.
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: There must have been ten people there just because someone said,
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: well there had to be look at these statues, right,
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: and there really wasn't any archaeological evidence to prove anything,
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: no scientific evidence. So their theory is that no, the
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: population when the Dutch showed up two to three thousand
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: was kind of about right. That was a normal, stable population,
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: and that it hadn't been a bunch of people before that.
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: It had probably been about the same. Yeah. And that
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: LiPo guy that I talked about earlier, he was in
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: on this and um, he has demonstrated through evidence how
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: those mo I like I said, could have been moved, constructed,
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: built in, moved without twenty thousand people. Um. He said
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: they had plenty of food, they weren't starving like when
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: the Dutch showed up. They even offered the Dutch food
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: and said I would like your hats, not like, oh
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: my god, I'm starving. You gotta help us, Yeah, give
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: me food. So there's a lot of evidence there that
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: that you know that they were doing just fine basically. Right.
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: The thing was is that, I mean, like there was
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: evidence that some sort of collapse had happened. It's just
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: the idea that there was a population collapses, like you said,
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: based on rogue Vine's idea that there must have been
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: more people before. Right. Um, there, they're pretty much everyone
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: agrees that there was in an ecological collapse, that there
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: used to be way more trees and that this huge
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: loss of trees led to a loss of cropland of
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: arable soil. Um. But exactly how that happened is what's
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: really an issue. And it's a really big distinction because
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: the Jared Diamond camp says that the Rapa Nui went
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: crazy and buck wild, building their idols to their gods
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: and chopped down all the trees and shot themselves in
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: the feet. Right. Uh. The newer interpretation, led by people
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: like mulrooney and Hunt and LiPo say we think it
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: was rats. Actually yeah, so here's the idea. Uh, these
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: rats stow away on the canoes, they can reproduce at
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: what they say in this article furious rate. Uh, Polynesian
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: rat population can double in forty seven days in a
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: lab setting. There are no predators on the island, plenty
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: of food these tree roots, so if they multiplied, they
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: said that there could have been as many as two
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: to three million rats on this island. And you hit
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: it on the head. They eat trees, they eat little
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: tree shoots, they eat tree seeds, so they keep trees
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: that have been cut down from being replaced. That's right,
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: So the rats are eating all this. There's also evidence
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: that they were potentially eating these rats as a food source. Uh.
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: So it all is kind of lining up that it
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: was not necessarily a mystery of population decimation. But they
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: call it a success story that these people learn to
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: adapt to their new environment, do things like eat rats
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: and kind of maintain a stable population. Right. And then
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: somewhere along the the way, as a result of that
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: birdman cult taking over power, somebody figured out that if
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: you take um volcanic rock and just basically sprinkle it
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: like um, pretty decent sized chunks of it, but just
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: spread it out over former crop land, when the wind
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: blows from the sea, it's going to blow through these
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: rocks and it actually knocks some of the minerals out
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: of the rocks and into the soil, and it does
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: just enough to make the soil nutrient rich again so
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: that they could start growing crops once more. Right, so,
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: these people had some real ingenious adaptations. Like the rats
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: allegedly ostensibly came and kept the trees from growing back,
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: which denuded the island. So they started eating the rats
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: because they couldn't fish anymore because they didn't have trees
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: to build the canoes, So they ate the rats. They
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: figured out how to make the soil arable again, very
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: art so they could grow crops. So the normal, the
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: normal two thousand, three thousand person sized population learned to
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: sustain themselves even in the face of this ecological crisis. Right,
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: so that's a success. Oh yeah, that's that's the new
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: interpretation of it. I like it. Another couple of things
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: that kind of lend to this theory is that, um,
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: remember earlier we're talking about the mata, these spearheads supposedly
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: that they used when they turned on each other and
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: delved into civil war. Uh, they took a closer look
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: at these these researchers and they said, you know what
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: if these are all supposed to be spearheads, they should
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: probably all look about the same. And these things that
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: we're finding don't look the same. They're all kinds of shapes.
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: They're not sharp. Uh, they're actually kind of dulled and
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: it wouldn't be very good for stabbing. Um. And what
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: we think these are our tools for scraping, like brakes
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: and hose and things that were left behind, and they
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: weren't They weren't meant to be spearheads at all. Yeah.
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: So this great evidence that there was an enormous amount
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: of war, uh, it turns out to be um farm
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: tools in this new interpretation. Yeah. And then finally when
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: the Europeans arrived, there was a population decline and they
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: they say it's due to maybe STDs smallpox or yeah,
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: the plague, smallpox and STDs. Right, because again, yeah, when
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: they when Rogovin showed up three thousand people and the
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: eighteen eighties down to it like a hundred, a hundred
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: and ten um. Yeah, So that it's really important to
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: remember that all this new stuff that refutes diamond and
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: and that um, the idea, the interpretation that he threw
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: his weight behind this is all interpretation as well. It's
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: a new interpretation of very old facts. But um, it
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: swings the other way. It doesn't say these people created
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: what Diamond called eco side, you know where like they
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: killed their their ecosystem, they killed their environment, and they
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: s for it as a result. They say, no, they
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: had they were dealt a bad hand with these rats
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: that came aboard and and spread and and prevented trees,
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: very important trees from growing. UM and they persevered. It's
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: it's not a story of collapses, a story of continuity.
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: My favorite interpretation is Robert Crollwitch's from MPR from Radio
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: Lab and he he kind of took a look at
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: these new findings and said, I guess I see what
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: you're saying that this is a success story, But is
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: it really like learning to make do? He's like, if
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: you do want to take the rapa nui story and
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: apply it to um modern day ecology, which is what
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: everyone tries to do, He's like, this is really scary
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: because it suggests that we'll keep going along in the
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: face of like climate change getting worse and worse, but
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: we'll get used to it more and more and we'll
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: make do. We'll just keep blimping along rather than doing
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: something about it, taking the bull by the horns and
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: moving forward to to progress rather than just muddling along.
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: It's a good point, oh, kroll, which is full of
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: good points. Let's let's radio web guys. They've been doing
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: it right for years. Yeah. I still haven't met those dudes,
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: have you know? Never have I think our friends from
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: stuff to blow in your mind? Yeah, yeah we haven't. No,
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: I mean it kind of one of the neat things
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: about the podcaster community is that you end up meeting
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: a lot of these people and becoming pals. Not not
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: them though, No, I've never like, I don't think they've
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: ever been at anything we've done. It's not that they've
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: avoided us or have Oh I think they have, but
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: kind of anonymously and bood oh, come on boot, that's
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: what krow, which sounds like. No, it would be uh,
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: very much more well produced than that, right, sound effects music.
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: It would be good. Uh. If you want to know
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: more about rap ANUEI type those words into the search
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: part how stuff worst dot com? Read that, and then
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: go do more research on the web to get the
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: full story. Yeah, come up with your own theory. Sure,
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: it's the fun thing. To send it in. Yeah, I said,
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: search far in this somewhere says time for the listener man. Yeah,
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: the very special listener mail that I promised, because if
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: you remember, many years ago, we did a special two
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: part episode on our travels through Guatemala with you and
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: me and Jerry and some Yeah, we all went down
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: there on special limitation from our friends at the Cooperative
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: Cooperative for Education co ED out of Cincinnata. And um.
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: We used to talk about them a lot because the
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: great work they do with their school book program and uh,
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: I mean that they've just done some like their life's work,
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: you know, helping out the children of Guatemala. It's a
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: great program too, self sustainable. Well, they got a new
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: one we haven't talked about in a while. So we
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: heard from Anne dem c r pal down there and
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: uh and then this all came about because Anne was
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: a fan and listener. So she still listens. Huh yeah,
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: she says she is. I believe her. Yeah, So uh,
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: here it goes. They have a new program going called
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: Thousand Girls Initiative, and it's very cool. What they're doing
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: is they're ramping up efforts to keep one thousand girls
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: in Guatemala from dropping out of school. Uh. As we
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: learned when we went over there, keeping these kids in
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: school is a real challenge because parents are often like, no,
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: you know your ten Now you need to stay home
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: and work because we need that. So keeping these uh,
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: especially young girls educated is a really valuable thing. So
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: uh they've made it their mission to keep a thousand
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: girls from dropping out by it's one of the best
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: investments you can make in the developing world's education. It
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: takes twelve years of education to break the cycle of poverty,
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: and Guatemala twelve years. But poor rural Guatemalan, which we
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: met plenty of down there, they have a one in
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: twenty chance of reaching that milestone. So uh, you know
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: it's they have an uphill challenge ahead of them. So
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: what they're doing now they have You can sponsor them.
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: You can make it. Uh. You can be a sponsor
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: and pledge to keep a girl from dropping out of school.
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: Uh seventy dollars a month, or if you want to
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: do thirty five dollars a month, they will actually match
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: your donation with another sponsor to make sure that that
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: one student is able to continue her education. So either
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: thirty five bucks or seventy dollars a month. You can
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: literally keep a girl in school. How did they do it, Chuck, Well,
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: they go to they have a very special link called
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: thousand Girls Initiative dot org and that's spelled out t
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: h o U s a Indie girls Initiative dot org.
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: And you can actually pick out the student you sponsor.
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: Is one of the great things that co ED does.
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: You can put a real face and a real person,
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: send them seventy or thirty five bucks a month, and
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: like it's a really great thing that you're doing. So
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: that's from Anne and that's from co ED and they're
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: still doing great work and we just think they're they're
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: lovely people and we couldn't be more proud out of
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: their continued efforts. Yeah, thanks a lot, guys, thanks a lot,
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: and um, thanks for keeping us updated. And uh, if
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: you want to go help them, what's that you are? Elegant, Chuck,
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: Thousand Girls Initiative dot org. Nice. Uh. And in the meantime,
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: if you want to get in touch with us, you
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: and Josh um Clark. You can hang out with Charles W.
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant and Stuff you Should Know, both with their
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: own Facebook pages. You can send us an email to
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: Stuff Podcast at how stuff Works dot com and has
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: always joined us at our home on the web, Stuff
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: you Should Know dot com. For more on this and
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: thousands of other topics, is it how stuff Works dot
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: com