Chapter 758: The Destruction of an Island
Seagulls, owls, parrots, these were all food for the first Easter Islanders.
There are also mice and seals, as this is so close to Antarctica.
In short, when they first arrived on the island, these islanders ate a combination of meat and vegetables, with dolphins being the main food, which accounted for one-third of the food.
The entire social state was very simple, belonging to the gathering and hunting life unique to the early stage of human development.
"But after more than 400 years, this good life of having no worries about food and clothing came to an end. When most of the forests on the island were cut down, they did not realize the seriousness of the problem. Instead, they felt that it was a waste to leave the space empty. Now that their physical desires were satisfied, they should start to pursue spiritual enrichment."
"So the islanders began to carve huge stone statues out of the tuff on the island. The first seven statues were about 10 meters tall and all faced the sea, symbolizing the seven leaders at the time."
"At this point, the island's population has reached thousands, and we need to clear more forests, build more boats to go out to sea to catch dolphins, and have more houses to live in."
"And since the first seven statues were erected, faith has grown on the island for the first time, and that is the statues. As long as people have the energy, they spend it on making statues."
"The stones needed for the statues were taken from the three extinct volcanoes on the island. The tuff is softer and easier to carve."
"There is no metal on the island, and the best processing tool is obsidian , which can be found everywhere here."
Bifang squatted down, dug through the grass for a while, and took out a piece of black rock with rounded edges that were sawed into edges. It reflected the dark light and was extremely sharp.
Around the stone statue, the residents of the island were divided into several factions, each using different ideas to create the stone statue, and occasionally there were fights over food and other resources.
The victorious faction would erect more and larger statues, and sometimes even knock down the statues of the defeated faction. Toppling the opponent's statues symbolized absolute victory.
The size of the stone statue grew bigger day by day, as if showing off its own mansion.
This is nothing. The really terrible thing is that the population is growing. During the most crazy period of building stone statues from 1200 to 1500 AD, the population even exceeded 10,000.
It is obviously difficult for a small island of more than 100 square kilometers to support such a large population in a gathering and hunting society.
To make matters worse - or perhaps inevitably - there are fewer and fewer palm trees on the island.
Palm trees are not cash crops, so they grow very slowly. It takes two years from seed to sprout, and 15 years from sprout to grow into a tree over 10 meters tall.
People cut them down to build boats and houses, to transport stone statues, to burn for heating, and their seeds were eaten by rats.
It was in 1650 AD, when the population reached its peak of 20,000, that all the palm trees on Easter Island disappeared.
Except for palm trees, several other tall trees also disappeared during this period.
The consequences of this are fatal.
The dolphin meat that people depend on for survival is no longer available because there are no trees to build new boats to hunt dolphins in the deep sea.
However, dolphins once accounted for half of the food intake of the indigenous people on the island.
Most of the birds on the island became extinct because without forests, birds would not come here to build nests, and the few remaining land birds were also eaten by the islanders.
Shellfish and conchs, which were once looked down upon, were immediately picked up clean.
As things developed further, the residents of the island had to rely entirely on agriculture. In the past, agriculture was a supplement to the gathering industry, but now vegetarian foods such as taro, bananas, and sweet potatoes have replaced the meat they used to eat.
The only protein that can be produced stably is eggs, and those chickens are the descendants of chickens brought by our ancestors who first landed 1,000 years ago. If chickens had not been introduced, there might not have been a stable supply of protein after 1,500.
At this time, the islanders were desperately trying to find something to eat.
Rats that destroyed palm trees were eaten up, and food production dropped dramatically.
Resources are limited!
Unable to escape!
Everyone wants to survive!
All that is left is killing for resources!
As food became increasingly scarce and the war escalated, all the stone statues on the island, whether completed or unfinished, were knocked down in the war.
The head of the statue was removed, and the eyeballs that were once made of obsidian were also gouged out.
As a result, many of the stone statues that can be seen on Easter Island today only have high brow ridges and no eyeballs in their eye sockets.
As Bifang spoke, his calm tone contained a despairing darkness.
Many people shuddered and got goose bumps all over their bodies.
[This is... a bit scary]
【What is hell on earth? 】
Is this why humans want to explore the universe?
[Fuck, isn't the Earth just an island? It's just extra large and has better resilience. If humans don't develop space navigation technology, wouldn't they be like the Easter Islanders without palm trees to build boats?]
[Another pessimistic day]
[I am still young, I am only eighteen years old, why do you want me to think about the future of mankind (woohoo)]
Everyone seemed to see a vibrant paradise before their eyes, but in the end, because of unrestrained demands, one creature after another fell, and eventually only humans were left on the entire island, killing each other.
The forest began to disappear around 1500, and in the 200 years between 1722, when the first European arrived on the island, food shortages and wars caused the island's population to drop sharply from 20,000 to more than 2,000.
The islanders were skinny and bony, and their social structure had completely collapsed.
Even their own kind began to appear in the food in the pots and pans.
When the Dutch arrived on Easter Island in 1722, the guide they brought with them from Tahiti heard a very vicious curse: "Your mother's flesh is still embedded in my teeth!"
Bifang put the obsidian into his backpack and stood up again.
"The Easter Islanders now no longer mention their past glory. The worship of stone statues is history to them. In the later period of social collapse, they began to worship a new thing called bird man."
If it were any other day, many viewers would have laughed when hearing this word, but now, they couldn't laugh no matter what.
"Although the trees on the island were not enough to build large ships, they were still more than enough for carving handicrafts. They used a tree called Merle to carve images of bird-men and worshiped the big bird."
The collapse of society has made it impossible for the islanders to recreate the glory of the stone statues that are more than ten meters high. They can only achieve inner satisfaction by carving some palm-sized stone statues of birdmen.
"Perhaps their motivation for worshipping the birdman is the hope that one day they can grow wings like a bird and escape from this 'island of death'."
"Their desperation was already evident at that time. There were many reliefs of human bodies with bird heads on the cliffs of this island."
