In a message dated 9/17/2006 3:29:42 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
I think a key point in the moral tale is the assumption that the population lived on the island for hundreds of years before the deforestation took place. This fits well with people who are in touch with the land and know how to live wisely. The moral tale then has them fall from grace, and using up resources on trivial things (the statues being the best example). If, however, the problems start with the rats gnawing seeds from the very beginning, as well as human cultivation from the very beginning, a different picture emerges. I did not take Diamond to be saying that religious fanaticism was the sole cause of the collapse. Although I have not read the book in awhile I think he meant to show that the isolated population could not sustain itself for a variety of reasons including lack of accessible fish etc. A civilization may last for centuries before its actions sufficiently degrade the environment. Think of Mesopotamia. When it was the cradle of civilization it was the fertile crescent. Now it is mostly desert (that is it is Iraq). How did this happen? Over time the people living in the region degraded the environment (cut down the trees - always a bad idea). But it took quite a long time. In the Easter Islands it is possible that the civilization that was already in decline when the practice of making the statues began in earnest in response to that decline. This leads to my argument. It is dangerous to make general conclusions from limited data about prehistoric civilizations (prehistoric in the sense that we do not have a history of the civilization to study.) _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
