Påskeøya med sine tause statuer som skuer utover havet er nesten en norsk myte på grunn av Thor Heyerdahl. Da bør vi få det med oss når forskningen kommer frem til at Heyerdahls teorier om sjøfarende fra Inka-riket er feil. Skulpturene er et resultat av lokal kultur.

Heyerdahls navn var det som fikk meg til å lese essayet i New York Review of Books:

Twilight at Easter
By Jared Diamond.

Han anmelder to bøker som gir oppsiktsvekkende ny informasjon om øya, og langt på vei løser gåten om hvordan statuene ble reist og hvorfor. Påskeøya ble oppdaget av nederlenderen Jacob Roggeveen 1. påskedag 1722. Derav navnet. Innbyggerne han fant var forkomne og levde et kummerlig liv. Hvem hadde reist statuene som det er 387 av og veier helt opp til 270 tonn. Noe dramatisk måtte ha skjedd.

From Flenley and Bahn’s and from Van Tilburg’s accounts, it becomes clear how both Heyerdahl and von Däniken brushed aside overwhelming evidence that the Easter Islanders were indeed typical Polynesians, speaking a Polynesian language and making stone tools in the usual Polynesian styles. Around AD 900 they colonized Easter Island from Polynesian islands to the west and built up a population that peaked at around 15,000 people. At the time of the European arrival they were subsisting 2_kommentarly as farmers, growing yams, taro, bananas, sugar cane, and sweet potatoes, as well as raising chickens, their sole domestic animal. While Easter Island was divided into about eleven territories, each belonging to one clan under its own chief and competing with other clans, the island was also loosely integrated religiously, economically, and politically under the leadership of one paramount chief. On other Polynesian islands, competition between chiefs for prestige could take the form of inter-island efforts such as trading and raiding, but Easter’s extreme isolation from other islands precluded that possibility. Instead, the excellent quality of Rano Raraku volcanic stone for carving eventually resulted in chiefs competing by erecting statues representing their high-ranking ancestors on rectangular stone platforms (termed ahu).

Det som gjør historien ekstra interessant er den skremmende økologiske lærdommen: Forutsetningen for storhetstiden var store skoger med høye palmer. De ble hugget ned, for å gi tømmer til havgående kanoer, og for å gi land til dyrking. Det endte med katastrofe. Hva kan de ha tenkt da de hogg ned trærne. Forsto de ikke at de ødela sitt eget livsgrunnlag? spør anmelderen og sammenligner Påskeøya med Jordkloden. Vi har heller ingen som kan komme oss til unnsetning. Men prosessen var selvgående. Ingen Chief ville frivillig gi avkall på sin status og unnlate å reise statuer og bygge båter. Det låter mistenkelig likt nødvendigheten av å utvide oljevirksomhet, bygge atomkraftverk eller hva det måtte være. Det finnes ingen belønning i å si nei. Sannsynligvis det motsatte. Mens det er lønnsomt å fortsette å gjøre det alle andre gjør.

Det er flere tankställare i denne historien. Øya ble overrasket av rotter som var blilndpassasjerer på skipene. De anrettet stor skade. Parallellen er spredning av arter og genmanipulasjon, som kan gi uventede resultater.

The giant palm and all the other now-extinct trees disappeared for half a dozen reasons that we can document or infer. Identified tree charcoal fragments from ovens prove directly that trees were being burned for firewood. Trees were being cleared for gardens, because most of Easter’s land surface ended up being used to grow crops. From the early midden abundance of bones of open-ocean porpoises and tuna, we infer that big trees were being felled to make seaworthy canoes; the frail, leaky little watercraft seen by early European visitors would not have served for harpooning platforms or venturing far out to sea. Trees furnished the timber and rope not only for transporting and erecting statues, but undoubtedly for a multitude of other purposes. The introduced rats «used» the palm tree and doubtless other trees for their own purposes: every Easter palm nut that has been recovered shows tooth marks from rats gnawing on it and would have been incapable of germinating. From several types of archaeological evidence, we deduce that the clearing of forests began soon after human arrival, reached its peak around 1400, and was virtually complete by dates that varied locally between the early 1400s and the 1600s.

Katastrofen som fulgte resulterte i forferdelige kriger og utbredt kannibalisme.

In place of their former sources of wild meat, islanders turned to the largest hitherto unused source available to them: humans, whose bones became common not only in proper burials but also (cracked to extract the marrow) in late Easter Island garbage heaps. Oral traditions of the islanders are obsessed with cannibalism; the most inflammatory taunt that could be snarled at an enemy was «The flesh of your mother sticks between my teeth.»

De tradisjonelle sjefene ble styrtet sammen med gudene da de ikke lenger kunne levere. Vi føler det som fjernt. Men er det ikke noe av det samme det handler om når våre politikere ikke synes å levere, verken trygghet eller pensjoner? Hva ville folk finne seg i i dag før de tok drastiske midler i bruk?

Easter Island’s chiefs and priests had previously justified their elite status by claiming relationship to the gods, and by promising to deliver prosperity and bountiful harvests. They buttressed that ideology by monumental architecture and ceremonies designed to impress the masses, and made possible by food surpluses extracted from the masses. As their promises were being proved increasingly hollow, the chiefs and priests were overthrown around 1680 by military leaders called matatoa, and Easter’s former complexly integrated society collapsed in an epidemic of civil war.

Det er spennende at forskere våger å trekke gjør studier av historiske samfunn aktuelle for vår tid. Jeg føler det skjer mye spennende ¨på den fronten som bare i liten grad kommer oss til gode. Eller er budskapet for mørkt?

The Easter Islanders’ isolation probably also explains why their collapse, more, perhaps, than the collapse of any other pre-industrial society, haunts readers and visitors today. The parallels between Easter Island and the modern world are chillingly obvious. Thanks to globalization, international trade, jet planes, and the Internet, all countries on Earth today share resources and affect each other, just as did Easter’s eleven clans. Polynesian Easter Island was as isolated in the Pacific Ocean as the Earth is today in space. When the Easter Islanders got into difficulties, there was nowhere to which they could flee, or to which they could turn for help; nor shall we modern Earthlings have recourse elsewhere if our troubles increase. Those are the reasons why people see the collapse of Easter Island society as a metaphor, a worst-case scenario, for what may lie ahead of us in our own future.