Diamond, Jared "Easter's End"

Human history has a lot of mysteries that can hardly be explained and it is not so easy to find out answers to questions concerning the existence and disappearance of numerous civilizations that were created by different human societies. One of the most strange and unusual mysteries is the Easter Island’s civilization, its starting point, history and particularly its end and what caused its decline. I strongly believe that we have to analyze thoroughly the experience of this civilization and at this point I fully agree with Jared Diamond who, in the article “Easter’s End”, also speaks about the necessity of learning from the experience of this particular disappeared civilization as many others because it really gives us a necessary knowledge that could help the modern civilization to solve some actual problems. However, I do not think that Jared Diamond is absolutely right by emphasizing so much the role of human race in the process of destroying of the island and, consequently, its population, flora and fauna. I wouldn’t be so categorical because we should take into account different factors that led to the disaster such as natural conditions, past experience of the inhabitants, their level of technological, scientific, cultural, socio-economical and political development, and a very complicated relations within the society, etc., while the author stands on the point that the cause of the disaster was a severe exploitation of nature by local population and disability or even unwillingness of local authorities to prevent these destructive trends.

In order not to make my statements unsubstantiated I would like to evaluate and analyze critically the article of Jared Diamond though it doesn’t necessarily mean that I completely disagree with the author, on the contrary, in certain points I think in the similar way. First of all it is necessary to start with key points of the Diamond’s article. So, the author starts with views of the island as the first Europeans saw it, namely it was the island without habitual plants, particularly trees, lacking animals, completely abandoned by birds, with a comparatively small population about 2000 people. The only thing that amazed and puzzled newcomers were gigantic stone statues erected on the stone platforms. On analyzing the causes of such devastation, Diamond presupposes that the Easter Island was inhabited by Polynesians approximately in 400 A.D. by people originated from Polynesia. Then the newcomers began to exploit natural resources of the island which were quite rich, according to the researches results that the author refers to. As natural resources became less and less significant and regeneration of trees gradually stopped, they couldn’t take sufficiently food from nature, since the deforestation meant the death for local birds, the corrosion of soil by wind and sun and, consequently, decreasing crops. The author points out that deforestation was accompanied by the erection of huge stone statues that made necessary to use of the remnants of island’s forests for these needs. Diamond mentions as one of the cause of the statues erection a permanent enmity between different local clans that forced them to create bigger and richer statues which, apparently, symbolized their power. As a result, Europeans found the island agonizing, having extremely limited resources and much lower population than it used to be.

Frankly speaking, at the beginning the author’s arguments seem to be quite logical and substantiated but on rereading and analyzing the article I began to doubt in certain points of Diamond’s theory. That is why I have to focus my attention on the key points of the article. First of all, I would like to say that the question the author arises in the article is really very important and worthy of public attention. From the very beginning the author tried to explain the thesis and principal ideas of the work. However, in my opinion, the hypothesis stated by the author is not economically substantiated. I mean that for example we do not know from the article what was even approximate population of the Easter Island when Polynesians prospered on the island and could have enough food to live much better than in its later centuries as well as they were rich enough to create and erect so impressive stone statues and even fish while the author speaks about a catastrophic deforestation of the island. Consequently, we can hardly judge about the influence of the economical life of the island’s population and the effect it produced on natural resources it is particularly important because economy is extremely important for any society and to a certain extent it influences other human activities, such as political and social life and al these factors are closely related to the attitude of people to nature. That makes me think that the author’s evidences are not sufficient.

Also I would call Diamond’s judgments and opinions a bit subjective. For example, why Diamond focused his attention only on the human destructive activity on the island and I think it would more appropriate to analyze the causes of the catastrophe from different positions and we shouldn’t deny other factors that could ‘help’ people and contribute to the destruction of the island’s ecological balance. In the history we may find different civilizations which disappeared because of a natural disaster. For example, the Aegean civilization in the Mediterranean that was mainly destroyed by a terrible earthquake that made it unable to survive and it was assimilated by other cultures and in the case of the Easter island any natural disaster, even not such severe as I have just mentioned, could cause a starvation and huge damages. We should also take into account that the climate of the Easter Island may differ from a traditional one inhabitants used to live before they moved to the island. By the way, personally, I agree with the author that the local population originated from Polynesia and not elsewhere. At this point the author seems to be quite persuasive. And even if the author is absolutely right in the conclusion that only people are responsible for destruction of the Island’s nature I do not admit that they did it consciously. We have to remember that their level of development was very low and we can’t say for sure if they were able to foresee possible results of their activities. I think that we may admit that they perceived themselves as a part of nature and they took everything they need and, probably, they even didn’t realize all the consequences of their activity. We don’t know either what socio-political and economical system they had. Obviously, on their level of development we can hardly speak about any property rights that could prevent forests from chopping or severe exploitation of other natural resources of the island, probably all lands and resources belong to local communities.

One more fact we can hardly to argue with is pollen analysis that proved the existence of rich flora and fauna of the island that Diamond dates back to 30,000 years. But again the facts and results we find do not necessarily correspond to the conclusions made by the author of the article. I think that we can’t take the processes that took place on the island in isolation from the processes around it. I mean that we should think over not only about an evil genius of human beings but about the wisdom of nature because it isn’t a fact that if now we have a desert, where in the past was a sea or a tropical forest, it is because people are nearby. The real world is much more complicated phenomenon and we can’t discover its history or foresee its future only on the basis of one, though very important, factor among many others.

Finally, I can’t accept the conclusion of Diamond that the fate of the Easter Island is also the nearest prospect of the whole world because we have to take into account the difference in the level of development. Our technologies permit destroy the whole world in a few months or even days but we are still alive. But what is more important is the fact that the Easter island developed in a complete isolation from the rest of the world while our civilization is characterized by close connections between different parts of the world. Also it is noteworthy that in our history there were many ancient civilizations that disappeared but there are civilizations the heritage of which still exist, in terms of example I may name ancient Roman or Greek civilizations which are considered by some researchers as the basis of modern European civilization and, consequently, they didn’t disappear but just transformed under the influence of other cultures and peoples. As for Diamond’s article I think that despite the fact that the structure, organization and grammar of the article are not bad but still not all of author’s opinions and interpretations are consistent with the evidences offered but I do not state that Diamond’s theory is absolutely wrong, on the contrary, I agree that the Polynesian population of the Easter island played a significant role in the destruction of the island nature but we should remember that there could be other factors that also contributed to the destruction of this unique island and its civilization. Anyway, it’s hard to argue with the Diamond’s statement that we have to learn from the history of such civilizations in order to become wiser and do not do mistakes they did. We also should remember that power of human being is great but they are not almighty and can’t break laws of nature. Thus, though I disagree with certain opinions and interpretations of facts in the article I still would conclude my work with Diamond’s words: “we may now choose to learn from the fates of societies like Easter’s”.

college essa Custom Essays Buy custom essays