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Managed to save up enough vacation days to go traveling again! These blog posts document my trip to South America in late October / early November of 2017 with Lucy. It was mostly planned around visiting Easter Island, but also included stops in Santiago (Chile), Buenos Aires (Argentina), and a brief day trip to Uruguay.
(Mostly historical context, skip to the next post for actual start of actual travel blog). Easter Island is one of the most remote places that one can go in the world, and arguably the inhabited island furthest away from any other inhabited place (see here for excruciating detail). Only 64 squares miles, it’s over 2000 miles west of South America, and 1400 miles from the nearest habitable island (Pitcairn Island, itself one of the world’s most remote places). It gets its name from its European discovery on April 5, 1722 (Easter). And it’s of course famous as the site of the mysterious moai, huge statues carved out of rock by the island’s native Polynesian people.
It first appeared on my travel radar after reading the book Collapse by Jared Diamond (the author of Guns, Germs, and Steel). As you’ve probably guessed, Easter Island is one of the historical collapses he discusses. In his telling, it’s a classic story of environmental exploitation and perhaps human hubris. On this isolated island, the people cleared the trees, harpooned the porpoises, and over-hunted the birds. And all while expending massive effort in the construction of these fabulous stone statues, with individual chiefs constantly seeking to outdo one another (see here for a version of this fascinating account).
I’ll shamelessly steal here from a National Geographic tour guide that I overheard. There seems to be this popular conception that “native” societies, e.g. Native Americans or Polynesians, were somehow more “in tune” and respectiful of nature. But, evidence often suggests the contrary. Older civilizations and peoples probably faced the same incentives and trade-offs that we do: societal progress at the expense of the environment. And unsurprisingly, many of them made the same choices that our society has, by and large: exploiting the environment. The fact that they co-existed more peacefully with nature may not necessarily be a testament to their great attempts at sustainability, but rather the inadequacy of their technology. And as Jared Diamond claims, sometimes they really were able to cause irreversible environmental damage, much to their own detriment. As an aside, the National Geographic Around the World Jet Tour is ridiculous in a sort of awesome way.
Finally, I should note that this account is somewhat in dispute, with recent scholarship suggesting that the islanders may not be to blame for, e.g., the deforestation of the island. See here for a response by Jared Diamond to these new claims. I have no reason to trust Jared Diamond in particular, apart from having read two of his books and generally finding them interesting.