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Examines the latest scientific and archaeological evidence from Easter Island, which suggests that its culture was a success, and not a failure as previously thought....
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00:00:15This is Easter Island, known to its own people as Rapa Nui.
00:00:21From the vast, empty expanse of the Pacific Ocean,
00:00:25a relentless wind blows across ancient volcanic rock,
00:00:29sucking moisture and topsoil from the land.
00:00:33The only fresh water collects in the craters of its extinct volcanoes.
00:00:39To live in the haunting beauty of this bleak and lonely landscape presents a challenge.
00:00:47And yet, the people who settled this island
00:00:50established one of the most remarkable societies on our planet,
00:00:54developing a richly expressive visual culture
00:00:58and dramatically changing their environment.
00:01:02These iconic monuments are the Moai,
00:01:05now as familiar to us as the pyramids or Stonehenge.
00:01:08But they're just one part of a sophisticated landscape
00:01:11created to serve Rapa Nui beliefs and way of life.
00:01:17The tiny size of the island and its limited natural resources
00:01:22were such a contrast to the majesty of the stone gods
00:01:25that from the moment Dutch explorers made the first European contact,
00:01:31people questioned how its inhabitants could have achieved this level of sophistication.
00:01:39In the 20th century, when archaeologists began to seek answers to some of these questions,
00:01:44it became clear that the island had once supported a diverse and rich tree cover.
00:01:50This barren landscape now suggested a new scenario,
00:01:53a tragic story of collapse.
00:01:58What could account for the toppled monuments in the treeless landscape?
00:02:02There was no one left to explain.
00:02:05The Rapa Nui people had almost been annihilated
00:02:08and their history forgotten.
00:02:12Gradually, though, one theory became dominant.
00:02:16Ecocide. Ecological suicide.
00:02:19In this reading of the evidence,
00:02:21the Rapa Nui people caused their own downfall,
00:02:25over-exploiting their natural resources to build the Moai,
00:02:29bringing about an environmental catastrophe that destroyed their society.
00:02:34Civil strife, starvation and even cannibalism followed,
00:02:38spelling the end of one of the world's most amazing civilisations.
00:02:44For centuries, Rapa Nui has stood as the closest example
00:02:48of the human experience in miniature.
00:02:50Its isolation on the planet mirrors the isolation of Earth in space.
00:02:56This has profound implications,
00:02:59not just for the development of this culture,
00:03:01but for our understanding of how all societies live with their environment.
00:03:07If the Rapa Nui self-destructed,
00:03:10then what hope is there for our planet?
00:03:13This pessimistic view of human nature
00:03:16plays very well with our current concerns about climate change
00:03:19and our voracious appetite for limited resources.
00:03:22Rapa Nui seems like a potent warning from history.
00:03:26But what if there's another explanation?
00:03:28If there's another reason, I hate this escalating ohly,
00:03:49but I do have that for months.
00:03:56You really feel the isolation of Easter Island on the journey in.
00:04:00The coast of Chile is 2,300 miles behind me, and it's another 2,600 miles before you arrive
00:04:07in Tahiti.
00:04:08This is the largest expanse of open ocean in the world, and in the middle of this vast
00:04:13expanse of nothing is the volcanic outcrop of Easter Island.
00:04:19The Polynesians call this place Tepita Otehanua, which means the navel of the world.
00:04:26Flying to Rapa Nui today, crossing thousands of square miles of featureless ocean, you can't
00:04:33help but marvel at how anyone ever found this tiny island in the first place.
00:04:41This small cluster of houses makes up the only town, Hungaroa.
00:04:45And the daily flight from the mainland keeps the population connected to the global economy.
00:04:51Everything they need, down to the milk that they drink, arrives by air.
00:05:00Rapa Nui folklore not only tells us the name of the leader of the first group of colonists,
00:05:05it tells us where he landed.
00:05:09This is Anakena Beach, and the Rapa Nui legends say it's where a Polynesian king came ashore
00:05:15from an ocean-going canoe.
00:05:17His name was Hotu Matua.
00:05:20His arrival on this beach had another significance in the story of our planet, because it was the
00:05:25final link in the chain of human migration.
00:05:31somewhere around 70,000 years ago, our modern human ancestors left Africa, and began spreading
00:05:40across the globe.
00:05:42In the following 60,000 years, they gradually colonised the whole planet, completing their
00:05:49easternly migration by crossing from Asia into the Americas.
00:05:56The last part of this process was the spread of Polynesian people across the Pacific, moving
00:06:03on from island to island over the last 2,000 years.
00:06:06And so when Hotu Matua set foot on this sand, he was completing the final step of an incredible
00:06:13journey.
00:06:13To the east is empty ocean until you arrive in South America, which was already colonised.
00:06:18So in many ways, this is the final step in the colonisation of our world.
00:06:25Whether Hotu Matua was really the name of the first human settler to arrive here, what is
00:06:31certain is that he came from the west.
00:06:34And his journey was an extraordinary feat of navigation, sailing against the prevailing
00:06:39winds.
00:06:41Te Ranga Hiroa, one of the most famous Polynesian anthropologists, called them the Vikings of
00:06:46the sunrise, and I think that's a great name, because they were surely among the greatest
00:06:51navigators and voyagers in world history.
00:06:54Technologically, it was the double-hulled canoe, the idea of replacing the outrigger with another
00:06:59hull, so you get this big craft capable of carrying substantial numbers of people, cargo, pigs,
00:07:06dogs, chickens, planting stocks, for voyages of up to a month or so at sea.
00:07:10Along with that went navigational techniques, knowing the stars well enough that you could
00:07:14determine your latitude by stars.
00:07:17So when you go out on exploratory runs of wind reversals against the normal trades, discover
00:07:23islands you could get back on a return voyage by knowing the latitude of your home island.
00:07:28If you knew latitude could run back to your home island, you were okay.
00:07:37Hoku Leia is a modern replica of a Polynesian voyaging canoe.
00:07:42And today I'm joining one of its regular training runs along the coast of Hawaii.
00:07:48Since its launch in 1975, Hoku Leia has completed many open ocean voyages, sailing across the Pacific
00:07:55using only ancient wayfaring techniques of celestial navigation.
00:08:01What we call it is a performance accurate replica of a voyaging canoe you would have seen a thousand years
00:08:06ago.
00:08:07Some of the materials are modern.
00:08:09It was built around the idea that you have the same kind of carrying capacity, as well as speed capacity,
00:08:14as well as sailing characteristics that you would have found in a vessel a thousand years ago.
00:08:19There's a tradition about a canoe load of just young men going out from the home island,
00:08:25finding Easter Island, planting yams on it, preparing for the colonization voids,
00:08:29and coming back and telling the chief, yes, we found this island.
00:08:32And then they prepare two double-hauled canoes and go and settle Rabanui.
00:08:36And I think that oral tradition encapsulates a lot of the strategy that was used
00:08:41to settle many of the different islands of Polynesia.
00:08:47Once you start to get out of sight of land and you start to use only the clues that you
00:08:52would have
00:08:52had many hundreds of years ago, it really starts to show the brilliance of our ancestors, that these
00:08:59individuals figured out that these points of light rose and set with some kind of cyclical manner and
00:09:04allowed us to navigate, you know, many hundreds of miles out of sight of land for sometimes 10 or 20
00:09:11or 30
00:09:12days and still find that destination. And the sea of today is awe-inspiring. There is no feeling like it
00:09:17when you see land come out of the sea after many days.
00:09:28When they first arrived on Anakena beach, Hotumatua and his fellow settlers only had what they brought with
00:09:34them and the resources the island could supply. The die was cast. But even on this opening page
00:09:44of the island's history, we come upon a controversy. When did they arrive?
00:09:50Certainly in the early centuries AD, possibly even at 100 AD.
00:09:54Rapa Nui could have been settled as early as 800 AD.
00:09:57We have, I think, very good radiocarbon dates to support Rapa Nui colonisation at about 1000 AD.
00:10:03Well, I think the evidence now really points to some time in the 1200s.
00:10:07Do we really need to be any more accurate? On any other Pacific island, perhaps not. But here we do,
00:10:13because of the Moai. In order to fully understand the achievement of the people who made these figures,
00:10:21we need some sense of how long it took their culture to develop.
00:10:26I think the statue buildings started small. The shrines were small. They were individualised,
00:10:31family by family. Over time, the sites themselves became more extensive. The statues became bigger,
00:10:38grander and more standardised. That doesn't happen in a very short time. That takes several generations.
00:10:48The evidence for how this society grew and flourished during this period has to be pieced
00:10:55together from the fragments that remain. There is no written record, and the oral history
00:11:01is connected to that distant past by the most fragile of threads. Scientists are continually uncovering
00:11:09more of this history. But it is already clear that this was a remarkably complex society.
00:11:15of which the Moai were only one part.
00:11:19These are the most iconic symbols of Rapa Nui culture. And a great deal of time has been spent
00:11:25studying how the Moai were made and moved. The numbers of people involved in the task of creating
00:11:31them. The resources used. The time taken. And they are important. Because if we could work out the role of
00:11:40the Moai in the Rapa Nui belief system and how they were made and transported, we'd be in a much
00:11:46better
00:11:47position to judge whether the conventional story of a collapse holds up against the evidence.
00:11:54Almost all the statues are carved from a volcanic stone called tuff. A compounded volcanic ash cut from the
00:12:02quarries on the slopes of this volcano, Rana Raraku. During the main period of quarrying, probably from
00:12:11around 1200 to 1600 AD, a steady flow of statues left Rana Raraku and moved around the island. Some along
00:12:20the road. Some positioned around the quarry itself. But many located on ceremonial platforms called Ahu.
00:12:27Located around the coast.
00:12:32The sheer effort involved in making the statues is impressive enough. But the platforms they stand on
00:12:39are equally challenging to construct. Consisting of massive cut stones, they are beautifully formed
00:12:46to knit together without mortar. They all follow a similar design, with an elaborate plaza of pebbles
00:12:53from the beach spreading out in front of the Ahu, with extended wings to each side, completing an integrated
00:13:01ritual landscape.
00:13:05Several of the statues also sport large red pukau. They're top-knot hairstyles or round hats made of
00:13:13scoria, a different stone from another quarry. And each of these can weigh several tons by themselves.
00:13:20These monumental figures were fascinating and perplexing to outsiders, including the Norwegian
00:13:26archaeologist Thor Heyerdahl. In 1955, accompanied by a film crew, Heyerdahl arrived on the island.
00:13:34He examined the statues and the volcanic rock to try to understand the process by which the Moai had been
00:13:41created. It seemed clear how the original sculptors had gone about their task. An outline was cut
00:13:49into the tuff, the features carved into the face, and the deep incisions at the sides curved under to form
00:13:56the body, leaving a keel of rock along the underside of the statue. The whole Moai would then have been
00:14:03supported while the keel was cut away and the statue moved out of its rock cradle. In an early example
00:14:10of
00:14:11experimental archaeology, Heyerdahl worked with the Rapa Nui people. They demonstrated how a group
00:14:18of men could work together on the statues.
00:14:23In nine days of chipping away at the rock, a recognisable Moai began to emerge.
00:14:29What became clear from this decidedly unscientific experiment was that despite their size, a relatively
00:14:36small group of people could manufacture one of the figures in quite a short time. There are nearly 400
00:14:44statues standing on the hillside of the volcano, almost half the total number on the island, and in
00:14:51most cases only a third of the figure is visible above ground. While Heyerdahl felt confident he understood
00:14:59how the statues were made, it was, and remains, not so clear what their function was.
00:15:05We don't know the exact role of statues in the hillside, but we can compare the rest of the
00:15:12Polynésia, and there is a system of family gods, or tribal gods, or ancestors of great chefs who are
00:15:22became divinised, and that this system allows the functioning of society, each small tribe or family
00:15:29on its side. And the platforms of the Isle de Pague, with the great statues, are dispersed
00:15:34throughout the territory and correspond well to this kind of system.
00:15:38The main platforms do have a very big plaza in front of them. Certainly ceremonies would have been carried out
00:15:44there.
00:15:44We really don't know what kind of ceremonies. All we have is a little bit of testimony from the very
00:15:48first
00:15:49European accounts. The islanders did show respect to these things, sometimes they knelt before them,
00:15:54sometimes they lit fires in front of them, but that was about it.
00:15:57I think what we're looking at is this marvellous sort of creativity that somehow we're unwilling to
00:16:03say or to accept could have sprung from that community, but in fact that probably is what happened.
00:16:12One or more small groups of individuals who over time tested and developed this
00:16:18symbol and realised that what they had created expressed perfectly what people believed.
00:16:26And once you do that, my goodness, you have a really successful object.
00:16:36All of this signifies a very successful society. In their first few centuries on the island,
00:16:43the Rapa Nui thrived and the population grew. The statues and their platforms began to be built
00:16:52across the whole island, sometimes in ones or twos, but sometimes in vastly more complex formations.
00:16:59The people lived in small settlements based around family or clan groupings.
00:17:03But the communal effort required to construct and build the statues shows that this was a very cooperative society.
00:17:19Every year more Moai were erected in honour of the ancestors who formed such an important part of Rapa Nui
00:17:26cosmology, reinforcing their shared belief systems. But these figures don't look out to sea like you might expect.
00:17:34The Rapa Nui weren't waiting for people to come from overseas. Instead, they gazed inland, watching over the lives of
00:17:41their creators.
00:17:48We can't be 100% certain, but there is a distinct possibility that once the island was settled, there was
00:17:54no continued contact with other Polynesian groups.
00:17:58Clearly, they turned in on themselves in many ways. They thought they were the whole world. Everything else had drowned
00:18:04and there was nothing out there.
00:18:06This is probably why the statues of the ancestors are placed around the edge of the island, facing inwards.
00:18:12They're like a protection from whatever unknown is out there, because there is nothing out there that they know of.
00:18:17This island was the whole world to them.
00:18:23This extraordinary degree of isolation just adds to the mystery of this place.
00:18:29Thor Heyerdahl later published a book with the optimistic title, Easter Island, The Mystery Solved.
00:18:36But it didn't satisfactorily answer the first question everyone asks when confronted by a stone figure weighing many tons.
00:18:45How was it moved?
00:18:52Perhaps the most unlikely suggestion was put forward by a Swiss hotel manager and convicted fraudster called Erich von Daniken,
00:19:00who wrote a bestseller called Chariots of the Gods, that suggested the statues were brought here by extraterrestrials.
00:19:08I think the Rappanian people moved those statues in the ways that worked best for the individual statue and the
00:19:13terrain.
00:19:14I don't think there's one answer and I don't think there's one motivation.
00:19:18I think that each statue had its own individual biography, but logic dictates they were moved horizontally.
00:19:25Some of the moai from the quarry at the Ranaruraku volcano travelled as much as nine miles to their final
00:19:32locations on the coastal Ahu platforms.
00:19:35The island is crossed by a network of ancient trackways spreading out from the quarry,
00:19:41and it is thought that these moai roads were used to transport the statues.
00:19:47The islanders who had so confidently set about carving a moai were less successful in demonstrating to Heyerdahl how to
00:19:54move one.
00:19:55They tied ropes to a statue and 180 of them dragged it a few hundred yards lying on its back.
00:20:02But it was immediately clear that this would have significantly damaged the figure.
00:20:07Some more sophisticated system must have been used.
00:20:18This puzzle goes right to the heart of our understanding of the Rappanui,
00:20:23and what caused the decline of their culture.
00:20:27Could the statues have dominated the life of the island to such an extent that the people cut down their
00:20:33trees
00:20:34to provide timber rollers and levers to move these leviathans?
00:20:39Was the island cleared to grow food to support a huge workforce,
00:20:44labouring to keep manufacturing the moai?
00:20:47And was there some kind of calamitous collapse brought about by the pressures of an
00:20:52expanding population and diminishing resources?
00:20:57That is the traditional ecocide narrative.
00:21:01So the popular story of Rappanui that was told really throughout the 20th century is that the
00:21:08islanders quote self-destructed. That really began with the work of Tor Heyerdahl when he and other
00:21:16researchers had been told this story of collapse and of widespread warfare and anarchy.
00:21:22People became very obsessed with building larger and larger statues. They were very competitive
00:21:29and that led to them cutting down all their trees and losing sight of what they were doing in terms
00:21:36of their
00:21:36resource base on the island. At the core of this narrative of collapse is the implicit suggestion
00:21:43that the Rappanui themselves were to blame for the destruction of the island paradise that they discovered and settled.
00:21:51I think many things probably went wrong. Clearly whatever happened on the island was
00:21:55very largely brought about by themselves. It was essentially the destruction of the forest which
00:21:59led to their decline because once they got rid of the forest pretty much completely by about 500
00:22:06years ago there's no timber anymore. They'd lost the ability to make lots of rope which they would have
00:22:12needed. This is why the statue building and moving stopped. They simply didn't have the means to do it
00:22:16anymore. They had done something quite radical to this environment which was irreversible.
00:22:23It's not difficult to find a pacific island that looks like Rappanui would have done before it
00:22:29lost its tree cover. This is Oahu, part of the Hawaiian archipelago and this is just the kind of dense
00:22:38palm forest that once covered Rappanui.
00:22:42When the first settlers came to the island they really found a paradise. They found an island which
00:22:48was covered by a thick subtropical forest which consisted of at least 20 species of trees and shrubs
00:22:57dominated by a huge palm species. The palm which provided very nice nuts which could be eaten. The palm stems
00:23:09provided a sweet sap like palm honey and the palms provided of course leaves and wood which could be used
00:23:17for building houses, building canoes and so on. The crowns of the palms provided shadow. They protected
00:23:26against harsh weather conditions, against storms, against heavy rainfalls. We are very sure that far more
00:23:36than half of the forest consisted of the palms. It may have been paradise for a few but as the
00:23:43island
00:23:44population expanded it's evident that more and more forest was cleared. The Rappanui oral traditions,
00:23:51mostly recorded by Europeans in the late 19th century, tell of a period of conflict and warfare
00:23:58which occurred around the same time. Once the trees were gone they recount that the island became less
00:24:05fertile, leading to a crisis when they couldn't grow enough food to support themselves. Ultimately,
00:24:11these legends say, the islanders began to regard each other as a source of protein and cannibal feasts
00:24:18became a feature of the conflicts.
00:24:21Polynesia is well known for constant strife between families and clans and tribes and islands and so
00:24:27it's actually quite miraculous as far as we can tell. Easter Island was a model of peace for its first
00:24:32maybe 1500 years and it looks as if the different communities of the island must have helped each
00:24:37other in the building and moving of statues and platforms and so on. But then when crisis hits,
00:24:43it's a very very different picture and we have all kinds of different evidence for a flare-up of violence,
00:24:49quite vicious violence in some cases. We have the toppling of the statues, it's very clear to anyone
00:24:54who goes to the island and sees these things, they were toppled quite dramatically in tit for tat raids
00:25:00probably. Then you have the mass production suddenly of these what are called matah, these obsidian
00:25:07points which were probably used for all kinds of different things for domestic use but certainly
00:25:12some were spearheads and daggerheads. The oral traditions support this, there was warfare, there was strife
00:25:17that came about presumably through the deforestation, the loss of resources, possibly overpopulation that we
00:25:27don't know but it's just too much of a coincidence that all of these things suddenly appear in the record.
00:25:34These circumstantial coincidences may paint a gripping picture of civil war but in archaeology such bold
00:25:41claims require hard evidence. The Bishop Museum in Honolulu is the most important centre for the study
00:25:48of the history of Polynesia in the Pacific. It has a large collection of items from Rapa Nui including
00:25:55several hundred of the matah, the obsidian artefacts found in abundance on the island.
00:26:02But although the archaeological record clearly contains potentially dangerous objects,
00:26:07new evidence suggests that they were not used for violent purposes.
00:26:12They've commonly been interpreted as spear points but as you can see they don't most of them don't
00:26:18really have a defined point like we think about in other areas of the world and so what evidence has
00:26:25suggested is that these cutting edges were actually used to cut plant matter and wood. What archaeologists
00:26:31have found on the surface of them is sweet potato and taro which of course were the mainstays
00:26:37of the agricultural economy and that is the economy that really supported the statue building industry
00:26:43and craft specialists in society. So projectile points were seen as one strand of evidence leading
00:26:48to this idea of intercommunity warfare on Rapa Nui. Is there other evidence for warfare on the island?
00:26:53Well in terms of the skeletal evidence it's not unsurprising. We have about two percent of fatalities that
00:27:02bioanthropologists attributed to violence in terms of the skeletal population. So if you look at that line
00:27:09of evidence that's not unnaturally high. Most Polynesian societies are competitive of course and
00:27:15Rapa Nui probably was no exception to that. Another common group of Rapa Nui artefacts often misused to support
00:27:23the idea of a period of general starvation and environmental collapse. Are these wooden figures
00:27:29known as Kava Kava?
00:27:30We often use this kind of statue to prove that there is a famine because on this kind of statue
00:27:38we see the
00:27:39coasts, the vertebral column, the basin and it seems to represent a person who has
00:27:45problems with food. But this statue here has a datation of Carbon 14 and we know that it dates from
00:27:54the 1400s
00:27:56and that so it is at least two centuries more old than the possible famine on the island of Pag.
00:28:03But we also know that in Polynesian there are many mythes and legends that talk about the importance
00:28:10symbolical importance of the skeletal. So there are all kinds of symbolism like that which make
00:28:14think that this kind of statue has not a lot of rapport with the famine but has a symbolic charge
00:28:20very important. And there exists another type of statue, the man lézard, and we also see his
00:28:27côtes and his vertebral column. And I have difficulties to think that even the lézards
00:28:33have had an end to the island of Pag. It's a funny situation.
00:28:38But perhaps the most persuasive signs of a violent conflict are the shattered remains of many of the statues themselves.
00:28:47These moai lying toppled on their ceremonial platforms are like the fallen monuments of any vanquished
00:28:53civilisation. In fact, until the 1960s there were no moai left standing on their Ahu platforms.
00:29:00They'd all been toppled at some point. And it's easy to imagine that this is the result of some sort
00:29:05of
00:29:05intra-island warfare. But close examination throws this into doubt. There's something revealing about the way
00:29:13these statues fell. They're lying face down in positions that suggest they were lowered with some care.
00:29:20It's not in basculating them that they broke.
00:29:23In fact, often the nez, which are the first to touch the ground, are intact, even for the statues.
00:29:29We can see that the nez is intact, which is incredible.
00:29:32When they laid the statues, sometimes they even cover their funeral doors, and they're really
00:29:38well-positioned on the doors. And then they put all of the caverns on top of them.
00:29:43They're not ruins. When we see that, for the first time, we think that they're ruins,
00:29:47but when we remove the caverns, we find the monument intact below.
00:29:51So it's a process that's done with care and that's voluntary.
00:29:55So there's a lawful reason behind that we don't know exactly exactly.
00:30:00Could the anger of whoever toppled these statues have been directed not at each other but at the ancestors they
00:30:06represent?
00:30:07And if that's the case, what could the ancestors have done to fail them so spectacularly?
00:30:12What happened to lead to this sudden loss of faith?
00:30:16Could it be that after hundreds of years of splendid isolation, someone else showed up that changed their view of
00:30:23the cosmos?
00:30:37The Dutch explorer, Admiral Jacob Roggeveen, sailing with a small flotilla of three ships in search of the riches of
00:30:46the fabled great southern continent,
00:30:49sighted land on the morning of Easter day 1722.
00:30:53The following day, as they approached their newly named discovery, Easter Island, they were disappointed by what they saw.
00:31:02This was plainly not Terra Australis Incognita, the unknown land of the south, that Europeans fully expected to exist in
00:31:11the southern hemisphere.
00:31:13His commercial backers in Holland would not be making their fortunes with this discovery.
00:31:20They circumnavigated the shoreline, but the rough seas kept them at anchor for several days.
00:31:27Then, on Friday, the 10th of April, Roggeveen ordered a party of 134 men to brave the surf and make
00:31:35a landing.
00:31:37As Friday mornings go, it was quite a significant one for the Rapa Nui.
00:31:42The Dutch spent several hours ashore, only marred when the islanders seemed to have enthusiastically mobbed the new arrivals,
00:31:50leading to muskets being fired and several Rapa Nui getting killed.
00:31:54Fortunately, peace was very quickly restored, and the Europeans began to inspect the village and its inhabitants.
00:32:03They were duly astonished by the statues, but otherwise only completed a curtery reconnoiter of the island,
00:32:09recording it in the admiral's log before leaving the next day.
00:32:13But the consequences of this brief visit were far-reaching.
00:32:17The island now had a name, a latitude and longitude.
00:32:21It would soon appear on maps in Europe, ultimately enabling others to follow in Roggeveen's wake.
00:32:28Not least because of the tails of a coast lined with giant idols.
00:32:34But as the first European visitor to Rapa Nui, Roggeveen was also the first person to start asking questions.
00:32:42At first, these stone figures caused us to be filled with wonder, for we could not understand how it was
00:32:49possible
00:32:49that people who were destitute of heavy or thick timber, and also of stout cordage, had been able to erect
00:32:56them.
00:32:57This visit gives us our first fixed historical pin on the timeline of the island's story.
00:33:03So what did Roggeveen tell us?
00:33:06For such a brief visit, quite a lot actually, the Moai were still standing on the Ahu, with no evidence
00:33:12of fallen figures.
00:33:14Deforestation had occurred, but it was by no means complete.
00:33:18But perhaps most significantly, the people were happy and well-nourished.
00:33:22There were abundant crops of yams, sweet potatoes, sugarcane.
00:33:26This doesn't seem like a society who has just undergone civil war, starvation and cannibalism.
00:33:36Roggeveen's visit to Rapa Nui coincided with the first publication of Robinson Crusoe.
00:33:42And tales of cannibalism were part of the thrill of these voyages of exploration.
00:33:48But in the unlikely event that cannibalism ever happened here,
00:33:52I don't believe it was because, as the ecocide narrative argues, the people had run out of food.
00:33:59These legends persist though, and tourists are still taken to supposed cannibal picnic spots today.
00:34:06What better place for your cannibal feast than inside this picturesque cave?
00:34:10It's one of the many underground caverns and ancient lava tubes that form in this volcanic rock.
00:34:16This one is called Anakai Tangata, which means Eat Man Cave.
00:34:20But I'm pretty sure that no one's ever been eaten here.
00:34:24Well, there's really no evidence for cannibalism whatsoever.
00:34:29When we do see it in the archaeological record, it's fairly clear.
00:34:32You know, you see butchered bones and you see people in soup pots and stuff.
00:34:36We don't find that on Easter Island.
00:34:37All of the evidence is basically tradition and lore about cannibalism.
00:34:42And all of that lore seems to have come from the 19th century, when Europeans arrived.
00:34:46If we look into other cultures, cannibalism is very seldom based on the need of food.
00:34:55It has more spiritual meaning.
00:34:59But the reason was for sure not lack of food.
00:35:03So it doesn't seem to have been the gruesome venue its name suggests.
00:35:07But there is evidence of human activity here.
00:35:11The roof of the cave is decorated with colourful rock art.
00:35:15Far from being the site of barbarous cannibalism, the walls of this cave once again show the sophistication of the
00:35:21Rapa Nui.
00:35:23Raghavine tells us that the people showed every sign of friendship.
00:35:27He saw no weapons.
00:35:29Not only were the statues still standing, they were clearly still venerated as the people were observed lighting fires in
00:35:37front of them and kneeling before them.
00:35:39There is nothing in his report that remotely suggests the culture of the Rapa Nui was in decline.
00:35:46Far from it.
00:35:47His observations suggest it was flourishing, with new cultural traditions emerging.
00:35:53These drawings depict the Birdman, a human figure with the head and beak of a bird.
00:36:00Similar images can be found all over the island.
00:36:04The Birdman ceremonies took place in the most dramatic spot on Rapa Nui,
00:36:09a dizzying 1,000 feet above the waves on the southern tip of the island.
00:36:16This is Orongo, precariously perched on the Rano Kau volcano.
00:36:20It's a whole ceremonial landscape, centred around the Birdman.
00:36:27They had a competition, the Birdman competition, which was essentially a stuntman race,
00:36:33which involved going out to the furthest islet, Motunui,
00:36:37and waiting there for the sooty terns to arrive and to lay their eggs.
00:36:41And then the one who could bring an intact egg back all the way to his sponsor at the top
00:36:46of the cliff
00:36:47would then turn his sponsor into the Birdman for the year.
00:36:50Birds were important in their eyes because birds could come and go at will, unlike the islanders.
00:36:59These low stone buildings are claimed to have been the site of elaborate ceremonies that took place each spring.
00:37:07In the 1860s, Catholic missionaries witnessed the enactment of the final Birdman rituals,
00:37:13a practice they were largely instrumental in wiping out.
00:37:18The island is still a largely Catholic community today,
00:37:22and at the harbour in Hangaroa, St. Peter stands triumphant on a pedestal decorated with the motif of the Birdman
00:37:29he superseded.
00:37:32We still don't know how the Rapa Nui developed these different strands of their culture.
00:37:37It has been suggested that the Birdman rituals grew in importance as the Moai were being abandoned.
00:37:43But whatever the connection, they both reinforce the sense of a people at one with their landscape.
00:37:50Orango is fascinating because it is very different culturally.
00:37:53It's very possible that this idea of someone going and getting something that's rare shows up as a sort of
00:37:59response to European interaction.
00:38:00When Europeans arrive, they bring private goods with them, sort of foreign goods.
00:38:05And those goods become very sought after.
00:38:09And you see this over and over and over again, that people for the first time in their lives could
00:38:15have something that no one else could have.
00:38:16And it was simple as a hat or a piece of cloth.
00:38:20The art inspired by the Birdman rituals is everywhere up here.
00:38:25Over 1,300 separate low-relief rock carvings or petroglyphs cover this site.
00:38:32This decorative rock art is a way of marking the skin of the earth.
00:38:37And the Rapa Nui marked their own bodies with tattoos in much the same way.
00:38:41Bringing together the people, the ceremonial sites and the landscape within which they lived.
00:38:53That the Rapa Nui tattooed and painted their bodies was recorded by the earliest European visitors.
00:38:59And today, you'd be hard-pressed to find a Rapa Nui person who doesn't have some form of tattoo.
00:39:08The most popular images are taken from the visual culture of the island's history.
00:39:14In the beginning, when I started tattooing, I did it because I liked it, for girls, for playing, for money.
00:39:24So, at the end, I realized that this is a preservation of a culture.
00:39:29Because if I do not do more tattoos, no one will do more.
00:39:33So, this will be lost.
00:39:34Yes, yes.
00:39:35So, I am a preservation of the culture of Rapa Nui.
00:39:38Yes, yes.
00:39:38Very important.
00:39:39You know that the world is changing very quickly.
00:39:42Many things are losing, many old things.
00:39:45So, as we are in a very desolated island, that's why it has been maintained.
00:39:50Yes, yes.
00:39:51And for the culture of the generations.
00:39:53Exactly.
00:39:54Because we are very few and we are in danger of extinction.
00:39:58Yes, yes.
00:39:59Although it looks ugly, but it's true.
00:40:01We are in danger of extinction.
00:40:02Yes.
00:40:03So, every time I do a tattoo on a Rapa Nui, you can see a Moai walking.
00:40:11A real-life walking Moai might sound absurd, but they do feature in Rapa Nui legend.
00:40:18And legends can sometimes point us towards facts.
00:40:21In this case, a plausible explanation of how the Moai were moved.
00:40:26Two American archaeologists began to look again at the thorny issue of how the statues were moved,
00:40:32when they noticed significant differences between the Moai on the Aahu and the so-called road Moai,
00:40:39the statues that appeared to have been abandoned whilst being moved across the island.
00:40:44Were these figures made in such a way that they could be moved standing upright?
00:40:49The difference between the road statues and the Aahu statues is night and day.
00:40:54When you look at just the road statues, you see that they're shaped in a way that doesn't allow them
00:40:59to stand up.
00:41:00They carefully constructed these statues and you have to get all the details right.
00:41:05The center of gravity, the basal part, the angle of its form were all vital in terms of allowing it
00:41:11to move.
00:41:12It's that falling point that actually makes it possible for the statue to move.
00:41:16It puts it in a dynamic position so that all you need to do is add the rocking part and
00:41:21it starts to walk.
00:41:25Using a scaled down statue based on the dimensions of a road Moai,
00:41:30a small team of students were able to move it standing upright using only its own momentum and equilibrium.
00:41:39I love it. It really brings them alive.
00:41:41Yeah, I know it does. It must have been an amazing sight to see these things.
00:41:44Especially, you know, the taller ones moving because they become alive.
00:41:47They really are walking. And it makes sense. If you're going to move a gigantic thing, like, you know,
00:41:52especially ones that are three times this height, you're going to be really good at it.
00:41:57One intriguing idea is that the process may have changed over time.
00:42:02As trees became more scarce, the Rapa Nui may have adapted their techniques.
00:42:09Maybe even affecting the shape of the Moai themselves.
00:42:15The Museums of Art and History in Brussels have one of the earliest statues removed in 1934 by a Franco
00:42:23-Belgian expedition.
00:42:25If you look at the earliest statues, you find a lot of variability.
00:42:29I mean, you find statues that have big wide heads, statues with round heads, kind of triangular shaped things,
00:42:35all kinds of weird shapes. Many of those aren't suited for walking.
00:42:39The walking shape, this particular sort of bowling pin type shape, this wide base and narrowing at the top,
00:42:44you find the larger statues in the later statues all looking more and more like that shape,
00:42:49which probably relates to, as they get bigger, that's the only way to move them.
00:42:53There are certain other resources they probably used when those were more abundant.
00:42:57You could imagine rails and something to help slide things along.
00:43:01But they came upon this walking idea along the way of moving them.
00:43:05They are amazing engineers, amazingly talented for taking rock and doing things with it.
00:43:11So, the Rapa Nui may not have used many trees to move their moai at all.
00:43:16But even if they did, it is far from certain that this alone could have caused their downfall.
00:43:22We have about 1,000 moai on the island.
00:43:26Maybe half of them were transported, perhaps with support of palm trunks.
00:43:33We can figure out about maybe 1,000 trunks per moai.
00:43:39Then we have in total about half a million of trunks used for transporting moai.
00:43:46But on the other hand, we have 16 million palm trees calculated on the island when the first settlers came.
00:43:55Where have the other 15 half million palm trees gone?
00:44:00We don't know yet. We have ideas, but surely not only for transporting and construction of ahu and moai.
00:44:09If the Rapa Nui were worried about running out of trees, they certainly didn't behave like it.
00:44:14Knowing what I do about the ingenuity of these people and other aspects of their lives,
00:44:19I find it so hard to believe that they couldn't foresee such an obvious problem, figuratively cutting off the branch
00:44:26that they were sitting on.
00:44:28The more we uncover about the island's past, the clearer it seems to me that it wasn't the moai that
00:44:35led the Rapa Nui to cut down their trees.
00:44:37And there's even less evidence that there was a civil war and a collapse of Rapa Nui society.
00:44:43In fact, the birdman rituals suggest their cultural traditions were still evolving.
00:44:48But regardless, some deforestation did occur.
00:44:52So why did they do it, and did it lead to their downfall?
00:44:55What was it about their island that precipitated such a radical transformation?
00:45:01What makes Polynesia so fascinating is this tremendous environmental variation in the kinds of islands that we have.
00:45:07Big islands, small islands, islands that are in the temperate zone, islands in the tropics, coral, volcanic and so on.
00:45:13So we have a kind of set of natural experiments, if you will, of the way in which the same
00:45:19culture, the Polynesians,
00:45:20adapted to and used resources on these very different kinds of islands.
00:45:26Rapa Nui is a volcanic island of moderate size, but it's way down in the southeast of Polynesia.
00:45:35So it's really getting almost into the temperate. It's subtropical to temperate.
00:45:38So the climate had a lot of influence.
00:45:41And the geology is fairly old, so the soils have less nutrients than they would on very young volcanic islands.
00:45:47So you have to have other sources of nutrient input in order to sustain intensive agriculture.
00:45:54When the first king, Hotumatua, arrived on his double-hulled canoe with his new island starter pack of crops and
00:46:02animals,
00:46:03he would have found an island largely covered by this kind of dense undergrowth.
00:46:09So you can easily see that his first task would have been to start clearing the forest.
00:46:14In this respect, the Rapa Nui would have been no different to most other new colonists the world over.
00:46:21Slash-and-burn clearance for agriculture is the most common cause of deforestation,
00:46:27and is still happening today in the world's rainforests.
00:46:32By felling and burning the trees, the Rapa Nui not only cleared more land to grow food,
00:46:38but enriched the soil with nutrients from the wood.
00:46:42Far from reducing the food supply, cutting down the trees would have greatly increased the island's productivity.
00:46:48The palm itself is extinct. It does not exist anymore, but we found these carbonized traces here,
00:46:57coming from when the entire forest was slashed and remains had been burned.
00:47:05Charcoal was used for improving fertility of soils.
00:47:09We can date the chart wood to find out the chronology of deforestation.
00:47:16We took samples from all over the island and we found that deforestation started on the island about 1250
00:47:25and ended roughly about 1650.
00:47:31Deforestation involved high labor efforts.
00:47:35We calculated from the number of about 16 million palm trees that at least 400 people daily were involved in
00:47:46the slash-and-burn activities on the island.
00:47:59Cutting down and burning the trees may not have been unusual.
00:48:03However, it seems to have gone far beyond what was necessary for agriculture.
00:48:09The various theories proposing statues, civil war or just mismanagement to account for this are still hotly disputed.
00:48:19Relative to its tiny size, Rapa Nui has probably been the subject of more conjecture and speculation than any other
00:48:26place on earth.
00:48:27And still manages to draw together regular conferences at which some of the world's leading scientists argue over its past.
00:48:36Ultimately, whether we prefer one or other of the theories or elements of all of them, the fact is the
00:48:43island ecology had changed.
00:48:45The local palm tree had become extinct.
00:48:49This is the Poike Peninsula and it was the first area of the island to become deforested.
00:48:55The soil quickly degraded and it appears that the Rapa Nui then abandoned any attempt to grow things here.
00:49:05The hillsides are scarred with patches of bare ground, without any vegetation, where storm waters and runoff have washed the
00:49:12soil into the sea.
00:49:16But though the Rapa Nui gave up the fight here, elsewhere on the island they fared rather better.
00:49:22In fact, they showed remarkable resilience and a technical ingenuity that was easily the equal of their statue building skills.
00:49:38Their goal was to maximise and stabilise agricultural production.
00:49:42And they developed a method that allowed them to hang on to their topsoil and replenish its nutrients.
00:49:51The first Europeans to see this landscape would have had a very clear idea of what fertile farmland looked like.
00:49:58Back home, you cleared the land of stones and rocks for the plough to grow crops.
00:50:04These rock-strewn fields would have struck them as very poor land for cultivation.
00:50:10But they were wrong.
00:50:13These stones aren't the remnants of the weathered bedrock.
00:50:16Incredibly, they've all been brought here and distributed deliberately.
00:50:20And they have a dramatic effect on the land that they cover.
00:50:26The stone layer protected the soil from wind and water erosion.
00:50:31It improved the microclimate for the crops they planted, protected the soil from the drying effects of the sun and
00:50:38deterred weeds.
00:50:40300 years later, these stones continue to preserve fertile, cultivable soils on the land they cover.
00:50:48This was an ingenious solution to the effect deforestation had on the soil.
00:50:54It's a process known as lithic mulching.
00:50:58Lithic mulching or stone mulching is a very special technique which was invented on Easter Island in its kind, unique
00:51:08in the whole world.
00:51:10The stones now functioned as a protection layer.
00:51:16They compensated the loss of the palm trees which before protected the soils against harsh weather conditions.
00:51:24Now the stones took over this function.
00:51:30In much the same way that the Rapa Nui were able to organise themselves to manufacture the statues and clear
00:51:37the land for farming,
00:51:38so too they worked together on the huge task of covering nearly half the island with lithic mulch.
00:51:46These people were no shirkers.
00:51:49We figured out by calculations of the number and size and weight of stones that over about 400 years daily,
00:52:03at least 100 to 150 strong men must have been involved in this technique.
00:52:11I can see from this that it's entirely possible.
00:52:14The Rapa Nui wanted to clear some of their island of trees.
00:52:17Not to move the statues, but because they wanted to eat.
00:52:24Lithic mulching was not the only sustainable technique they developed to increase their productivity.
00:52:30The French botanist Jacques Barraud made a distinction between farmers and gardeners.
00:52:36A farmer grows a multitude of identical anonymous plants together in a field,
00:52:42but a gardener cherishes each plant individually.
00:52:46I like to think the Rapa Nui would fall into the second category.
00:52:50Another of their solutions to increase their food supply were little protected gardens they called manavai.
00:52:57A small low wall enclosing a circular space a few metres across protected a mix of crops,
00:53:04retaining moisture and providing shelter from the salt wind.
00:53:08There are thousands of these manavai, protected gardens, all over Rapa Nui,
00:53:14and they show that personal solution to the food supply.
00:53:17And there were other innovations in this landscape too.
00:53:26A hidden resource unseen from the surface.
00:53:30A caverns formed by the collapsed roofs of the island's network of volcanic lava tubes.
00:53:39Sonia Haua is a Rapa Nui archaeologist who has spent years surveying the island to document all its prehistoric sites.
00:53:49Without extensive tree cover, many of the crops that need shade to survive were grown in these caverns.
00:53:56So this has all been planted then?
00:53:58It's all banana. It's a type of banana.
00:54:00Yeah? Yeah.
00:54:01They seem to be growing very well down here. They're protected from the wind.
00:54:04Yeah. They have protection, but also the nutrition of the rocks.
00:54:09And they create like a, how do you say?
00:54:13Microclimate?
00:54:14Microclimate inside.
00:54:16And it's not only good for banana, but you can put taro, uhi, chi, sugar cane.
00:54:22And how extensive are these caves?
00:54:24You can have three or four kilometres of caves. And inside there, of course, is divided for different reasons.
00:54:36These caves are the inner landscape of Rapa Nui. They stretch under as much as 30% of the land
00:54:43surface.
00:54:45Accounts from Europeans who visited the island in the late 18th century often mention how few women they saw.
00:54:52Possibly that may have been because they were hidden in these caves for protection.
00:54:58But the most important role these caverns played in the well-being of the islanders was to offer them more
00:55:04variety in their diet.
00:55:07At the end, you can understand the relation of humans with the rocks was very important.
00:55:14And their way of surviving and using and using and using rocks.
00:55:21When you are isolated, you need to create.
00:55:26Because you have to survive.
00:55:28These people, they have to think like a rock.
00:55:32And they have to live with the rock.
00:55:39The sweet potatoes, yams and taro supplied the carbohydrates the Rapa Nui needed to support their labour-intensive agricultural practices.
00:55:51They seem to have had plenty of protein too.
00:55:54In addition to the chickens that the first settlers brought with them, they supplemented their diet with seabirds.
00:56:00The island had one of the largest bird colonies in the Pacific.
00:56:04Though later, overhunting would force the birds to retreat to the offshore islets.
00:56:10There was one other resource that the Rapa Nui could rely on, the sea.
00:56:14They could always fish the waters around the island.
00:56:17But even here, the particular characteristics of Rapa Nui didn't make it easy for them.
00:56:25Launching a boat is difficult on this rocky, volcanic coast.
00:56:30Storms are frequent and the shore slopes dramatically into the ocean, without any reef to provide protection from the surf.
00:56:42Nonetheless, fishing has always been a part of the Rapa Nui way of life, and still is today.
00:56:48The wind, which is so noticeable on land, is just as significant out at sea, where the waters are almost
00:56:55always choppy.
00:56:59Carlos is a spear fisherman, and we're going to see just what the ocean has to offer.
00:57:19Don't be deceived by the wetsuit and snorkel.
00:57:22Carlos' only breathing apparatus are his lungs.
00:57:27Once beneath the waves, it soon becomes clear just what a rich resource this would have been.
00:57:34One benefit of the deep water and the rocky shore is that the ocean is very clear, and spotting your
00:57:40prey is a simple matter.
00:57:56Taking into account their various ingenious agricultural practices, and considering they were surrounded by an ocean full of fish,
00:58:04I'm pretty confident that the Rapa Nui always had plenty to eat.
00:58:09Through their innovations and their careful cultivation of their landscape,
00:58:14they had developed a sustainable way to live in one of the most difficult places on Earth.
00:58:24This security allowed them to develop a society in which cultural expression could flourish.
00:58:30Even today, we are still uncovering previously unrecorded aspects of the cultural life of this island.
00:58:40There are no permanent watercourses on Rapa Nui, but on the slopes of Mount Terravaka, the highest point on the
00:58:46island,
00:58:47there is an ancient gully that takes runoff down the hillside after heavy rainfall.
00:58:52In the last few years, excavations by a team from the German Archaeological Institute
00:58:57have uncovered a very elaborate complex of dams and stone pavements,
00:59:03which have been hidden under the turf for centuries.
00:59:06You can really see the different kind of material and how the different layers have formed.
00:59:11The whole area was all covered with pavement, a very elaborate pavement with some very interesting structures inside.
00:59:19We have three parallel water channels.
00:59:22The amount of water that came down this creek has always been very, very little.
00:59:26It cannot be imagined like a real river or anything in that sense.
00:59:30We think that the water could have been channeled as another aspect of transforming the landscape.
00:59:36We don't know for what purpose these huge constructions were built.
00:59:42Perhaps for a very special type of water cult.
00:59:46But the dam-like structures were not for retaining water behind the dam,
00:59:51because the stone structure is very loose and lets the water through.
00:59:56Perhaps this was a culture connected to the loss of palm forest on the island,
01:00:03connected to the importance of water after deforestation.
01:00:09Overlooking this valley, a small arhu with its fallen moai alludes to the ritual significance of this site.
01:00:16We found inside the pavement planting pits for palm trees,
01:00:20which is a really spectacular find in that sense that we always hear about the Rapa Nui having cut down
01:00:27the palm tree vegetation.
01:00:28But now we also have evidence that they planted them,
01:00:32that they in a way cherished them to have them as part of a transformed landscape.
01:00:40How far do you think these pavements spread?
01:00:42Well, we have pavements all over, we have them up on the slopes,
01:00:47and even going up the ravine you have paved areas, also hydraulically active structures.
01:00:55Further up the slope, this stone-lined basin was uncovered.
01:00:59More evidence that water was at the heart of this complex.
01:01:04This impression shows how the site might have appeared in the past.
01:01:08I believe this evidence of carefully engineered water features and plantations of Easter Island palms,
01:01:15fundamentally alters our ideas about the Rapa Nui's stewardship of their island.
01:01:21These new discoveries show that quite late on in the life of their society,
01:01:26the Rapa Nui were not just cutting palm trees down, they were planting them.
01:01:30The picture I get of life here in 1722, when first European contact is made,
01:01:37is of a people who, above all else, were able to live with the challenges of a limited and isolated
01:01:43environment.
01:01:44A people who understood their own island, its advantages and disadvantages.
01:01:49Above all, I think there's every reason to believe that they were thriving.
01:01:54They could feed a large population and support a rich, diverse and creative culture into the bargain.
01:02:00Statue building may even have been in full swing.
01:02:04The idea that ecocide had brought the society to its knees just doesn't fit with the available evidence.
01:02:12But as we know, this culture was destroyed and its story lost to us.
01:02:17So what is the alternative explanation?
01:02:21The spotlight that Jacob Roggeveen shone upon their lives was all too fleeting.
01:02:26When he sailed off across the horizon, it would be another 50 years before the next visitors.
01:02:31And as European contact became more and more frequent, life was going to get tough for the Rapa Nui.
01:02:45In 1770, three Spanish ships visited for a few days, followed in 1774 by Captain Cook,
01:02:53both looking for the same mythical southern continent that Roggeveen sought.
01:03:01But in the 50 years since the Dutch visited, it seems something dramatic had happened to the Rapa Nui.
01:03:08Nature has been exceedingly sparing of her favours to this spot, said Cook.
01:03:13And one of his officers described the people as destitute of tools, of shelter, of clothing.
01:03:19And he couldn't work out how the natives had been degraded to their present indigence.
01:03:27He also notes that several of the statues had been thrown down.
01:03:33When the Europeans arrived here, the only contact that the Rapa Nui had with the outside world beyond the horizon
01:03:42was the occasional arrival of sea birds and maybe driftwood.
01:03:47At least for several centuries, the island was devoid of big trees.
01:03:52So it was impossible to make a sea-worthy canoe.
01:03:55So when the Dutch arrived, it would be like aliens coming to planet Earth.
01:04:02It was the same kind of impact for this tiny environment.
01:04:05For them, for centuries, the universe was a small island. That was it.
01:04:11When the Dutch came, everything changed.
01:04:13And most likely, these Dutch people brought some disease, flu, whatever, cold,
01:04:22a virus against which the immune system of the population, of the local population, had no defences.
01:04:30So probably this disease decimated a big part of the population at that time.
01:04:38I believe that the visit of Jacob Roggeveen was the trigger for a paradigm shift in the Rapa Nui universe.
01:04:47We'll never know for sure, but it seems to me that he unwittingly left behind diseases that destroyed the basis
01:04:54of their society
01:04:55and undermined the faith in their stone gods, the ancestors who they believed would protect them.
01:05:03When Captain Cook arrived 50 years later, the seeds of this demise were already evident.
01:05:11There were signs of disease and malnourishment, and they were beginning the painful process of dismantling the Ahu.
01:05:18Many of the statues, their most extraordinary achievement, were already lying in the dust.
01:05:25Their faces hidden from the misery their descendants were suffering.
01:05:31We now think that some of the population declines may have been as much as 90% on Polynesian islands
01:05:37within a few decades after European contact.
01:05:40And that had implications in terms of the collapse of social organization in many cases.
01:05:45You just can't sustain all of the, you know, elaborate hierarchy and specialized roles of priests and craftsmen and all
01:05:53this when your society is declining by 90%.
01:06:05In the first half of the 19th century, a steady flow of ships visited the island, whalers and merchantmen crossing
01:06:13the Pacific,
01:06:14and others that would have a more devastating impact.
01:06:18In 1805, for the first time, an American ship came here because they needed workers.
01:06:25And they kidnapped a handful of Rapa Nui.
01:06:29And from then on, every foreign ship that approached the Easter Island shore was rejected by the natives.
01:06:37People started throwing stones against them, and they made all kinds of menacing gestures.
01:06:43Sticks and stones were not sufficient to protect the islanders from the visits of these ships.
01:06:49And as the century wore on, things got considerably worse.
01:06:54During this period, the Polynesian islands were subject to raids known as blackbirding.
01:06:59Essentially the conscription of indentured labour to work in the South American mines and plantations.
01:07:05But not surprisingly, the blackbirders could rarely fill their ships with volunteers, so they resorted to kidnap, taking the islanders
01:07:13by force.
01:07:15The worst period for sure was the period between 1862 and 1863.
01:07:20Big expeditions with all kinds of weapons came to the island.
01:07:24And they were able to kidnap, in 10 months, more than 1400 Rapa Nui.
01:07:30The cultural or intellectual elite, people who knew how to write and read the ancient script.
01:07:37So it was catastrophic. It was a terrible thing.
01:07:42And the ones who arrived to Peru, most of them died very quickly because of the diseases that existed there,
01:07:50especially measles and tuberculosis.
01:07:55After international protests, including a campaign by the Bishop of Tahiti, the Rapa Nui were rounded up to be repatriated.
01:08:03But of those that had been taken, barely a dozen returned, infected with smallpox.
01:08:12Most people would say that the Easter Island culture died there at that time.
01:08:19Not only because of the death of so many people.
01:08:23Also because of the completely demoralised state of the survivors.
01:08:27And because the French Catholic missionaries who arrived shortly after this slave trade started converting the population to the Catholic
01:08:37religion.
01:08:38So these two things working on parallel killed most of the cultural aspects of Easter Island.
01:08:47But this was not the end of the Rapa Nui's woes.
01:08:53You might think, having suffered almost complete annihilation, that things couldn't get much worse for these people.
01:08:59But their homeland was about to suffer one final act of change.
01:09:08In the late 1860s, a French adventurer called Jean-Baptiste de Trebonnier began buying land on Rapa Nui from the
01:09:17islanders for insultingly small sums, and often at gunpoint.
01:09:23He used his newly acquired property to graze 435 head of merino sheep, imported from Australia.
01:09:31They would eventually number 70,000.
01:09:37After a short period of despotic rule, de Trebonnier was murdered by the islanders.
01:09:43But his sheep were bought by the Scottish firm of Williamson Balfour, and they remained the sole permitted agricultural land
01:09:50use.
01:09:51The remaining Rapa Nui were rounded up and confined in Hangaroa, while the livestock roamed free, completely destroying the environment,
01:10:01leaving behind the barren steppe we see today.
01:10:04The island was all but deserted, a place of ghosts.
01:10:08In 1877, a French survey ship recorded only 111 people living here.
01:10:15Only 36 of these people had offspring, and all of the Rapa Nui people today are descended from them.
01:10:24Just 150 years after the first Europeans sailed over their horizon, the Rapa Nui had very nearly been wiped from
01:10:33history.
01:10:37Whatever the future holds, I feel strongly that by looking back at their past, we can clear the Rapa Nui
01:10:44of the accusation of ecocide.
01:10:46There's absolutely no evidence that they willfully destroyed their environment. Quite the reverse.
01:10:52The landscape that they cherished, and which worked so well for them, was destroyed by the imposition of an inappropriate
01:10:59monoculture in the most heartless way by the supposedly civilised Europeans.
01:11:07In 1888, in a treaty they neither understood nor had any choice in assenting to, the island was finally annexed
01:11:15by Chile.
01:11:17It seemed as if one of the most remarkable civilisations in the world had come to an end.
01:11:22But it wasn't ecocide, it was genocide. The sheep had the place to themselves.
01:11:29But even at this darkest hour, there were still memories to be salvaged from the handful of people who could
01:11:36recall a period when the island's culture still had a pulse.
01:11:40Salvation was at hand, in the most unlikely of guises.
01:11:57On a warm August afternoon in 1910, a middle-aged couple, Catherine and William Routledge, visited the British Museum in
01:12:05London to admire the statue known as Hoa Hakananaya.
01:12:09This figure was given to the crew of HMS Topes by the Rapa Nui in 1868, and subsequently donated by
01:12:17Queen Victoria to the museum.
01:12:19As a result, it is the single most viewed Moai in the world, visited by more people than any of
01:12:25its companions on Rapa Nui.
01:12:28Catherine was a wealthy woman with a fascination for archaeology, formidably well-educated for the time.
01:12:34And William was keen to persuade her that Easter Island would provide them with an opportunity to make their names
01:12:40in intellectual circles.
01:12:43This visit was to have immense consequences for the little island on the other side of the world.
01:12:49Catherine Routledge would write a book that would make Easter Island internationally famous, helping to establish it as one of
01:12:56the world's great mysteries.
01:13:00Catherine and William commissioned an ocean-going schooner and set sail for the South Pacific, arriving on the island 13
01:13:07months later on the 29th of March 1914.
01:13:12For nearly 200 years, every European who had visited Easter Island had gazed in awe at the Moai and wondered
01:13:20about their history.
01:13:22Catherine Routledge was the first person to come equipped with the tools to make a modern archaeological survey and start
01:13:28to seek some answers.
01:13:30She was the right woman in the right place at the right time, and she was interested in the archaeology,
01:13:36but she was equally interested in the people and in their language and in their history.
01:13:41I think her contribution is the intuitive way she approached collecting ethno-historical data on Easter Island.
01:13:48I think her presence on Easter Island was so positive for many reasons.
01:13:55Catherine Routledge preserved all this knowledge for the next generations.
01:13:59All these elders that she managed to interview who were born long before the Peruvian slave trade, long before the
01:14:07arrival of the Catholic missionaries,
01:14:10they could give her information about the lifestyle in those days, pre-Christian times.
01:14:17Her translator, Juan Tepano, my great-great-grandfather, realised that the elders had something interesting to tell.
01:14:27Lots of people realised only after Catherine Routledge's visit that people abroad, people in other parts of the world,
01:14:35found Easter Island culture and the achievements of the Rapa Nui as something interesting.
01:14:43The most extensive dig Routledge was able to conduct was inside the crater at the quarry in the Ranararaku volcano.
01:14:51She called these two statues Mama and Papa.
01:14:56Despite being a self-financing amateur, Catherine Routledge ultimately put Easter Island on the map, publishing a book about her
01:15:03time here under the inevitable title The Mystery of Easter Island.
01:15:08Though her archaeology was helpful in the early understanding of the island, it was the information she recorded by talking
01:15:16to the Rapa Nui people that constitutes her most valuable legacy.
01:15:21She was obviously an empathetic listener and became quite involved in the day-to-day concerns of the villagers imprisoned
01:15:28in Hungaroa, unable to visit their own ancestral lands which they could see beyond the pale.
01:15:35In the summer of 1914, during the first months of her stay on the island, there was a native uprising,
01:15:42led by a charismatic woman known as Angata.
01:15:47Angata's rebellion in 1914 had a very strong religious aura.
01:15:54Everything was done in the name of God, of the Christian God.
01:15:58But this Christian God had lots of Rapa Nui traits.
01:16:02I mean, he wanted sacrifices of sheep.
01:16:06When she gave the order to bring 100 sheep from the company and kill them in the name of God,
01:16:11they made all kinds of big feasts, just like in the time of the Birdman competition.
01:16:17So lots of people thought she was like a priestess or she was a prophet.
01:16:22The uprising was diffused partly by the calm, level-headed negotiations between Catherine and Angata, but ultimately by the arrival
01:16:31of a Chilean warship.
01:16:33The sense of injustice remains though.
01:16:36The theft of their land and their barbaric treatment by successive groups of outsiders have left the legacy that simmers
01:16:43to this day.
01:16:46In 2009, the airport was closed for two days by a pro-independent sit-in.
01:16:51And other protests have resulted in violent clashes with the island's largely Chilean police force.
01:17:00Working out how a post-independence island would function is a challenge.
01:17:05Devising some fair way to redistribute the land amongst the Rapa Nui families has been a hot topic in this
01:17:12parliament chamber.
01:17:12Look, our king left there in the map, divided in 18 parts that correspond to every chief of family,
01:17:23to their territory, to every tribe.
01:17:27The king left like this.
01:17:28And it is like today.
01:17:30There is a bit like that the state of Chile wants to disappear, and we do not accept that.
01:17:38Today, we continue to be citizens of our territory.
01:17:42Every tribe is their territory.
01:17:45This map that delineates these territories, supposedly drawn up by Jotumatua a thousand years ago,
01:17:52is in reality based on one drawn by Katherine Routledge only a century ago.
01:17:57And you think that the way of life for the future is sustainable using the wisdom of the past times
01:18:04of the people here?
01:18:05The future here is today, because we are very few.
01:18:10We are 2.500 inhabitants of the Rapa Nui.
01:18:13And the tourism, today, there are 85.000 tourists that come to the Rapa Nui.
01:18:18Yes.
01:18:19At the end of the year, anual.
01:18:22And there are 250 million dollars that correspond to the Rapa Nui.
01:18:26We do not need anyone.
01:18:28We only want to respect them.
01:18:32And do you think that the island has more isolation?
01:18:36If the people here can live their own lives,
01:18:39do you think they can make a sustainable island?
01:18:42I think that yes.
01:18:44Because through time we have survived,
01:18:47without the need for another country to bring anything here.
01:18:52Because Rapa Nui has always traveled to their own land,
01:18:56which is agriculture, the moai, the fishing,
01:19:01and today the tourism.
01:19:03I think that yes.
01:19:04I think that yes.
01:19:11In many ways, Rapa Nui has recovered.
01:19:15Its population is approaching 5,000,
01:19:17just over half of whom can trace their ancestry back to the original families.
01:19:24The statues have given it a source of income,
01:19:27but tourism is both a blessing and a curse.
01:19:33A program to re-erect some of the statues and restore their Aahu was begun in 1960.
01:19:41A member of the Hayadal expedition, William Malloy,
01:19:45stayed behind on the island,
01:19:47and became the driving force behind this process.
01:19:52Using Rapa Nui ingenuity and muscle,
01:19:54and employing only modest lengths of timber and rope,
01:19:57they showed once more how effective these simple techniques were,
01:20:02allowing a small group of men to erect the figures with relative ease.
01:20:09This undoubtedly makes them more impressive to visitors.
01:20:12But what the 18th century Rapa Nui would have thought of this process,
01:20:16having spent so long lowering them to the ground,
01:20:19we'll never know.
01:20:22The construction of the airport in the 1960s completed the infrastructure,
01:20:27under which the island operates today.
01:20:29Accessible to tourists, but dependent on the global economy.
01:20:36The extraordinary isolation of this island,
01:20:39which was such a significant factor in its history,
01:20:42is no more.
01:20:44And the environment is changing with increasing speed.
01:20:48Even those running the island during its time as a sheep ranch,
01:20:52recognised that deforestation was a problem.
01:20:54But their well-intentioned attempts to introduce non-native trees,
01:20:59have often made matters worse.
01:21:01These eucalyptus groves were planted in the 1870s.
01:21:05But though they provide some shelter from wind erosion,
01:21:09they draw large amounts of moisture from the soil.
01:21:12And their bark and leaves create a highly acidic layer of litter,
01:21:16in which no other plants can grow.
01:21:19The most shocking evidence of erosion damage is on the northern slopes
01:21:24of the Poique Peninsula,
01:21:25where the run-off from the frequent storms
01:21:27washes the red volcanic soil into the ocean.
01:21:32This soil is not a renewable resource,
01:21:36and once it is gone, it cannot easily be replaced.
01:21:41The high precipitation that it receives,
01:21:45the strong winds, and all that,
01:21:47somehow it influences the erosion process.
01:21:50But also the bad management of the human activities
01:21:53of the people here,
01:21:55has made this process
01:21:58to advance in a very accelerated way.
01:22:01And the species that they are growing here,
01:22:04are they native to the island?
01:22:06Mainly the Aito,
01:22:08which is an introduced species,
01:22:09but it is polynesic.
01:22:10We can find them in other islands of the Pacific,
01:22:14and the foliage that it has,
01:22:16when it falls to the ground,
01:22:17gives them a number of nutrients
01:22:20that other species don't give them.
01:22:22We try to reintroduce the Makoi,
01:22:24which is a native species of the island.
01:22:26It is already forming a organic surface,
01:22:28superficial,
01:22:29and little by little,
01:22:31it will form a sotobosque under him.
01:22:33And those are already signs of recovery.
01:22:35And we know that it is a work
01:22:37at a very long term,
01:22:38that perhaps we will not see the results,
01:22:41but our children and grandchildren,
01:22:42right?
01:22:43Yes.
01:22:44No, this is completely true.
01:22:56So what are the lessons we can learn
01:22:58from this extraordinary tale?
01:23:00Is it really helpful to saddle this island
01:23:03with our own fears for the future of the planet?
01:23:06Well, maybe,
01:23:07but only if you stop the clock on Good Friday, 1722.
01:23:12Had they been left to develop by themselves,
01:23:15with no contact to the outside world,
01:23:18no foreign diseases,
01:23:19no slave raids,
01:23:20no missionaries,
01:23:21and no sheep,
01:23:23passing their wisdom down the generations
01:23:25through an oral tradition,
01:23:27and growing fat on the produce
01:23:29of their innovative farming techniques,
01:23:31then they might make a good stand-in for the Earth.
01:23:34Because so far,
01:23:35no one else has contacted this planet,
01:23:37and we too are isolated in the cosmos.
01:23:41As we know,
01:23:42that's not what happened.
01:23:45But there seems one respect
01:23:47in which the island has a lesson for us.
01:23:49Even if the Rapa Nui themselves
01:23:51coped with it in the most ingenious of ways.
01:23:55The island has now lost its trees.
01:23:59Its ecology has changed.
01:24:01It has now moved beyond the tipping point,
01:24:04where it can no longer recover.
01:24:07The basic lesson is very clear,
01:24:09in that they thought this island was the whole world.
01:24:11From the highest point of the island, Terribaca,
01:24:13you can see the whole thing.
01:24:15They could see what was happening.
01:24:17And so we, on our planet,
01:24:19which is the only world we know of
01:24:21with our species on it,
01:24:23we could see very clearly
01:24:24what we're doing to the planet,
01:24:25and our population is rocketing up,
01:24:27and we are using natural resources
01:24:29at an ever-increasing rate.
01:24:31And there is going to come a crunch at some time,
01:24:33and we just hope and pray that science
01:24:35will be able to make us sustainable
01:24:38and keep us going beyond that crisis.
01:24:40But we shall see.
01:24:43One of the single most important ways
01:24:45in which Rapa Nui people adapted
01:24:47to the changing circumstances of their island
01:24:50was they pushed the envelope of creativity.
01:24:54They pushed the envelope of belief.
01:24:57They caused people to question
01:24:59the very ideas that they had held sacred.
01:25:02And then they created new symbols
01:25:04for enacting those new beliefs.
01:25:07So this is a remarkable intellectual
01:25:10and artistic way of addressing
01:25:13a very real economic and social problem.
01:25:18I think the most important message
01:25:21that people could get from Easter Island
01:25:24would be the resilience.
01:25:26And I think it's because people here
01:25:29learned how to survive,
01:25:30and they have survived with the chin up.
01:25:34Always with seeing the bright side of things.
01:25:39And I think that's the best message
01:25:42we can give to the outside world.
01:25:44The ecological situation in the island is
01:25:47like a decline.
01:25:49It's a great job.
01:25:51But that's not an excuse to stop.
01:25:55It's a motivation to keep going on
01:25:58and keep trying to recover
01:26:00what we had before.
01:26:03That the island is like
01:26:05what we can do
01:26:07to what our ancestors left us.
01:26:10Yes, I agree with that.
01:26:13If the young people of Rapa Nui
01:26:16can marry this kind of optimism
01:26:18and the intelligent management
01:26:20of their ecology
01:26:20with political solutions
01:26:22to their disputes
01:26:23with the Chilean government,
01:26:25there is every reason to believe
01:26:26they will have a home
01:26:27to be proud of once more.
01:26:30Their ancestors,
01:26:31whose faces lay buried in the earth for so long,
01:26:35not seeing the loss of their incredible inheritance
01:26:37and hidden from the pain and sorrow
01:26:40visited upon their descendants,
01:26:42might finally have a reason
01:26:44to stand tall once more
01:26:46in silent respect for their achievements.
01:26:54If this island is to rediscover a sustainable future,
01:26:58it's not going to happen anytime soon.
01:27:00The ecological timescales for recovery
01:27:03will stretch into the future
01:27:05beyond the lifetimes of its young people today.
01:27:09But Rapa Nui is a magical place,
01:27:11complex and intriguing, challenging and enigmatic.
01:27:15And if it is to stand as a metaphor for our planet,
01:27:18then we have a great deal to learn
01:27:20from its extraordinary history
01:27:22and remarkable people.
01:27:37Digging up some stories from the dark earth
01:27:40here on BBC4 next this evening,
01:27:42meet the ancestors revisited in just a moment.
01:27:46in fact,
01:28:01He was a man named the king,