It's a pretty good example of how destruction of the environment is bad for people. Same as the American Southwestern desert. There's a good chapter on Easter Island in The Third Chimpanzee by Jared.
People arrive. They cut down forests. They make small and then huge statues. They break into at least two groups. A huge civil war kills many. The island is discovered by Europeans. Remaining indiginous poeple made slaves. Some slaves allowed to return. They die of small pox.
Posts: 2207 | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote:He's the one who wrote Guns, Germs, and Steel right? Was The Third Chimpanzee good?
Yes, same guy. If you liked GGaS, you'll like TC. Same accessible writing style, same underlying theories. It has much the same weakness as well - you have to remember that he's writing from a particular scientific perspective which relies heavily on evolutionary theory. It's valid as far as it goes, but he sometimes seems to think it can explain everything. Recognizing the feedback between culture, the environment, and natural selection, he gets cought up in the feedback cycle and ignores possible other causes of both cultural development and religious thought.
I don't think it's a fatal weakness - in fact, I think both books are excellent. He's up front about what branch of science he's writing from, and he doesn't denigrate other ways of looking at things. But you need to keep in mind that the books present a single point of view; they're so sweeping it's easy to forget that.
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Thor Heyerdahl also wrote a really good book about his work on Easter Island. I am not near my library, but I think it was Aku Aku. As part of his adventures there, he and his group, with the help of the islanders, make another of the gigantic head statues (the first in hundreds of years). Apparently, there is some kind of lore passed down to a medicine man about the building and moving of the statues, but it had not been used for a long time.
Also, you will find out that if you dig up the heads, they have short bodies buried under the ground.
As a reminder, Thor Heyerdahl was the same man who build a balsa log raft and crossed the Pacific in Kon Tiki. He also built a reed boat and sailed from Egypt in The Ra Expeditions.
Posts: 279 | Registered: May 2004
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Gotta like a man willing to put his life on the line to prove his ideas. Was he accompanied by a safety boat on those trips, or were they really left to the mercy of the sea?
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