Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm editor Kandi Gibson, joined by staff writer Jane mccarno
Speaker 1: pay cannas Jane, I think that if I could go
Speaker 1: any place in the world, it would be Easter Island.
Speaker 1: Really is a beautiful place. Have you been. I haven't.
Speaker 1: I've just seen pictures, but it looks beautiful. I am
Speaker 1: kind of obsessed with that. And I was looking at
Speaker 1: videos of Easter Island the other day and I stumbled
Speaker 1: upon this fabulous piece of information, and that is that
Speaker 1: Easter Island has its own marathon. And now I love
Speaker 1: love running long distances. I love half marathons and full marathons.
Speaker 1: And I'm very slow. I won't profess to be the
Speaker 1: first of the line or even like the eight hundred,
Speaker 1: but I don't think there'd be anything cooler than running
Speaker 1: around the moi of Easter Island. And it's not that
Speaker 1: big of an island. Actually, I was looking at it.
Speaker 1: I mean I saw that it was about sixty four
Speaker 1: square miles and that's about I mean, just to see
Speaker 1: the point of reference, Like it's about the same size
Speaker 1: as Washington, d C. It is itty bitty. Furthermore, it
Speaker 1: is in the middle of nowhere. I think it's closest
Speaker 1: land neighbor. I guess a big land neighbor. I think
Speaker 1: there are other islands smattered around. Nearby, but not too
Speaker 1: close by would be Chile, and that is about two
Speaker 1: thousand miles away. That's right. If you look at a globe,
Speaker 1: it looks like just a tiny little stock on the globe,
Speaker 1: and it's fascinating that people were able to find it
Speaker 1: as early as they did. Yeah, considering that these are
Speaker 1: the Polynesians who lived probably in South America, we're not
Speaker 1: quite sure where they came from, and we're not quite
Speaker 1: sure why they left, whether there was some sort of
Speaker 1: dispute the Rows, or whether some got ambitious and wanted
Speaker 1: to start their own colony elsewhere. But because the Polynesians
Speaker 1: are such great sailors and navigators, they were able to
Speaker 1: make it to this island. We know that they sailed
Speaker 1: and wooden boats that were probably lasted together with reds
Speaker 1: wrapped really tightly like ropes, and they were probably a
Speaker 1: drift in the ocean for about two weeks before they
Speaker 1: hit land. Easter Island, and that was around four hundred
Speaker 1: a d. And so you can understand how archaeological evidence
Speaker 1: can't really indicate like what exactly motivated these people because
Speaker 1: they ended up being isolated on this island for so long. Furthermore,
Speaker 1: speaking of isolation, we're not sure how many went the
Speaker 1: first time, and when they arrived at Easter Island, We're
Speaker 1: not sure if they settled there because they had picked
Speaker 1: it and they knew it existed and that was their
Speaker 1: final destination, or if they were so desperate they picked
Speaker 1: any land that they could have seen. And you've regardless,
Speaker 1: they actually came very prepared for for being ready to
Speaker 1: survive wherever they landed. Yeah, they had a type of
Speaker 1: leafy green with them to grow. They had sweet potatoes,
Speaker 1: and my fan as I now, who doesn't love a
Speaker 1: sweet potato gosh um. I think they also had a
Speaker 1: couple of chickens. And again when they pulled up to
Speaker 1: Easter Island, I just I can't imagine how they must
Speaker 1: have felt because parts of Easter Island were just gorgeous,
Speaker 1: a very verdant paradise. I think that today archaeologists suspect
Speaker 1: that there may have been at one time sixteen million
Speaker 1: palm trees, just you know, an Eden in the middle
Speaker 1: of the ocean. But the part that they docked at
Speaker 1: was a less welcoming landscape. And that's the thing about
Speaker 1: Easter Island. As tiny as it is, this little triangle
Speaker 1: shaped island has very diverse landscapes that has white sandy beaches,
Speaker 1: and then it has these very jagged and forbidden cliffs,
Speaker 1: and it has a volcano and volcanoes and palm trees.
Speaker 1: So who is what they thought. But they set to
Speaker 1: task and they did pretty well. They cultivated the land,
Speaker 1: and they increased their population and they became a very
Speaker 1: sophisticated society. Yeah, you can see how it was probably
Speaker 1: pretty hard at first, especially because they brought most of
Speaker 1: their sustenance with them, as we said, and what was
Speaker 1: actually on the island itself before they came there was
Speaker 1: not much. There were there were lizards, maybe an insects
Speaker 1: um but that. But they actually had to start from
Speaker 1: the ground up mostly exactly. They were able to hide
Speaker 1: dolphins and other types of fish in the waters. But
Speaker 1: it's important to note that Eastern Island is not just
Speaker 1: remote as far as people go and animals. Like you
Speaker 1: were saying, there aren't very many nutrients in the water,
Speaker 1: or there weren't at that time, and so not much
Speaker 1: could be sustained. So there were birds that would pass over.
Speaker 1: And some people think that's how it got to be
Speaker 1: such a verdant little paradise, is that the birds would
Speaker 1: bring seeds that they deposited. And for this is actually
Speaker 1: a point of contention about like how things got there
Speaker 1: and and um, etcetera, because some historians claim, like, we're
Speaker 1: trying to figure out where the original people came from,
Speaker 1: and some historians claim, oh, these people came from Chile, obviously,
Speaker 1: like that's the closest land. Um. But when explorers eventually
Speaker 1: stumbled upon the island, a European explorers, uh, a Polynesian
Speaker 1: on the ship was actually able to converse with the
Speaker 1: people there, and so that's so they were obviously speaking
Speaker 1: of variation on Polynesian. So they think the people came
Speaker 1: from Polynesia. And so we could tell y'all about Easter
Speaker 1: Island all day, and if you don't know much about it,
Speaker 1: you may be saying, Okay, sure, so it's a tiny
Speaker 1: little island, things are green, people came from nowhere. Great.
Speaker 1: But the really important thing about Easter Island is the Moai,
Speaker 1: and ultimately the Moai brought about the height of the
Speaker 1: civilization and then they're very very darkest hour and the
Speaker 1: history of Easter Island. Not just how they got there,
Speaker 1: because that part is interesting in and of itself, but
Speaker 1: it gets so haunting and it really gives me to
Speaker 1: chills every time I think about it. These people had
Speaker 1: a very specific religion and culture, and um their spirituality
Speaker 1: was manifested through art, you know, storytelling and string figures
Speaker 1: and sculpture. And so they got to Easter Island. The
Speaker 1: volcanoes and the quarries had all of this ash that
Speaker 1: was perfect for making sculpture, and so they made these
Speaker 1: giant heads and they're very stylized looking. If you've never
Speaker 1: seen a picture of them, I would encourage you to
Speaker 1: look at the Easter Island Moi and what people usually
Speaker 1: asso associate with Easter Island is these huge hits, huge
Speaker 1: And what I found interesting is that there actually found
Speaker 1: other places, like other other cultures did have something like this,
Speaker 1: but it was the Easter Islanders who actually like they
Speaker 1: had the most sophisticated and the biggest and the most
Speaker 1: incredible ones. Well, and you have to wonder too, I
Speaker 1: think they might have gotten bored, and there was a
Speaker 1: sense of competitiveness among them because they would build these
Speaker 1: giant giant heads. And just to give you guys an
Speaker 1: idea average average wise, they could weigh up to eighty
Speaker 1: two tons instead up to thirty two ft high. They
Speaker 1: were huge. They were just giant heads. They didn't have nacks,
Speaker 1: but they had these really long earlobes, and they were
Speaker 1: very stylized, and their features with their long noses and
Speaker 1: their eyes were sometimes ornament with coral or obsidian. But
Speaker 1: they look very phallic, and perhaps archaeologists say that's because
Speaker 1: the population was always struggling to reproduce and they were
Speaker 1: fertility guys. I believe they were. They were so they
Speaker 1: could be phallic in homage to fertility GUIDs and um.
Speaker 1: Speaking of which, because the population was the challenge they
Speaker 1: had to end read and so even to this day
Speaker 1: you'll find some Easter Islanders who have six toes on
Speaker 1: each foot. It's very interesting, and I guess it also
Speaker 1: probably stems from the fact that they had a class
Speaker 1: system even within this tiny island. Um their population had
Speaker 1: a class of like an upper class and a working
Speaker 1: class sort of thing. And I imagine that contributed to
Speaker 1: separating how people bread. I think so, and when it
Speaker 1: came to the Moi, this was such a manifestation of
Speaker 1: honor and spirituality. I think everyone was a participant, no
Speaker 1: matter the class. I don't know that far a fact,
Speaker 1: but I would assume that people would come together and
Speaker 1: there was a very specific process with creating the moi.
Speaker 1: The artist would start in the quarry and start, you know,
Speaker 1: putting the rock together and carving it down and chiseling it,
Speaker 1: and essentially it would be sort of on like a
Speaker 1: little block when Tommy finished carving it, and they would
Speaker 1: create these deep rivets alongside the block. So finally there
Speaker 1: was just like a tiny little sliver of stone that
Speaker 1: connected the head to the quarry, and this was the keel.
Speaker 1: And once they could sever the keel, they would lay
Speaker 1: the head on a series of logs, we'd imagine, and
Speaker 1: archaeologists are in dispute about how they transported these heavy,
Speaker 1: heavy monoliths, and it's sort of like the stone Hinge
Speaker 1: of Eastern Island, because people are historians are boggled by
Speaker 1: the fact how could these people have the technology in
Speaker 1: the in the in the ingenuity, I guess to move
Speaker 1: these humongous structures, and that's like a huge feat it is.
Speaker 1: And so people either imagine that about seventy men got
Speaker 1: together and pulled them with ropes fashioned from parts of trees,
Speaker 1: or else they laid them on a series of logs
Speaker 1: in which two layers of logs be perpendicular to each other.
Speaker 1: They'd grease them with palm oil and they'd roll them
Speaker 1: on a platform. And I imagine this was such a
Speaker 1: painsticking process. I think that it could take up to
Speaker 1: two weeks to move the moi. Important to them exactly,
Speaker 1: It's very important to them because they put such labor
Speaker 1: into it, and their final resting spot were on ahu
Speaker 1: or platforms, and the moi faced inland towards the island.
Speaker 1: It was obviously meant to watch over the residents and
Speaker 1: to protect them. So they with these around the perimeter, right,
Speaker 1: it's like, and so all of these all around the perimeter,
Speaker 1: we're looking inward. Yeah, and it's really interesting. We think
Speaker 1: over the course of five years, about nine hundred of
Speaker 1: them were carved, and you can see where the artists
Speaker 1: got competitive because there were so many that were left
Speaker 1: unfinished in the quarry and archaeologists found them later. On um.
Speaker 1: Ones that had a flaw maybe are ones that were broken,
Speaker 1: you know, whether in transit or whether in construction, they
Speaker 1: were just abandoned completely. And they were perfectionists. They were
Speaker 1: a perfectionist. This is, you know, how they were expressing
Speaker 1: their division to the gods. And they got bigger over
Speaker 1: time too. They started out more modest, and then there
Speaker 1: was one that they call El Gigante, and it's so big.
Speaker 1: Of course it's in the quarry. No one could possibly
Speaker 1: have moved it. But here in lies the problem with
Speaker 1: what they were doing. Uh yeah, So if we go
Speaker 1: back to how they transported them, they obviously candid suggested
Speaker 1: that they were using logs and and it must have
Speaker 1: taken a lot and obviously they made a lot of
Speaker 1: these moi. So they ended up cutting down a whole
Speaker 1: lot of trees and ended up being their huge flaw.
Speaker 1: They're they're huge mistake. You're right, because over time they
Speaker 1: had such an abundance of resources. I think that they
Speaker 1: used it throwing cautins to the wind and Credaly, we
Speaker 1: sort of think of trees as the most renewable resource
Speaker 1: there is, but of course, like on that isolated island,
Speaker 1: they must have just used. No, you're right. When you're
Speaker 1: living in isolation like that, when you use up your resources,
Speaker 1: no matter how renewable it is, if you're not getting
Speaker 1: any more seeds to plant and you're cultivating the landscape,
Speaker 1: it's over. And that's what happened, because not only did
Speaker 1: they cut down all the trees, but they essentially caused
Speaker 1: all the top soil on the island to wash away
Speaker 1: because the roots were in there to hold it down. Furthermore,
Speaker 1: they were using the trees to make boats to go
Speaker 1: out and fish for dolphins and purposes. This is especially
Speaker 1: said to me. It's just that they couldn't make boats anymore.
Speaker 1: You know, they couldn't fish because they couldn't make both
Speaker 1: because they didn't have trees. And what's worse than that,
Speaker 1: not only did they not fished on only at they
Speaker 1: not grow crops. After they realized that they had destroyed
Speaker 1: their island and all the treas were gone, they didn't
Speaker 1: have anything left to make pots with to flee the ivan.
Speaker 1: They were prisoners of their own making, and that's when
Speaker 1: things got really dark and really dangerous. Beau started starving.
Speaker 1: Some scholars posit that maybe some may have resorted to cannibalism. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. And this is a point of contention because
Speaker 1: some some historians, notably UM Jared diamond says that these
Speaker 1: Um Islanders resorted to cannibalism after like other food sources
Speaker 1: dwindled UM and he points to how cannibalism is the
Speaker 1: their oral tradition. The islanders oral tradition is rife with
Speaker 1: with cannibalism and talk of it. And there's a little
Speaker 1: bit of archaeologic archaeological evidence that um human bones were
Speaker 1: found in these pits of of garbage that where these
Speaker 1: are the pits where they threw their their food trash
Speaker 1: and so um people like Jared Diamonds used this to
Speaker 1: to say, oh, well they must have resorted to cannibalism.
Speaker 1: Other historians are like, oh no, there's not an evidence
Speaker 1: to say then we shouldn't say that unless it's unless
Speaker 1: were sure, and they say that maybe you know, after
Speaker 1: people naturally died, they there were rituals that people did
Speaker 1: with people, don'tes we know what that happened too, So
Speaker 1: it's a point of contention. So however you interpret these
Speaker 1: relics of bones, you can look at the things that
Speaker 1: are alongside them that the date to around the same time,
Speaker 1: and you see that this is the first time and
Speaker 1: Eastern Island that they've manufactured weapons like spears and arrows
Speaker 1: and things like this. Between the tribes were yeah, and
Speaker 1: we know that when they came there were very very
Speaker 1: few of them. Around eleven fifty day, the population was
Speaker 1: somewhere from seven thousand to nine thousand, sixteen hundreds. That
Speaker 1: was the height of the civilization. It was around ten
Speaker 1: thousand population done. But then when things started declining and
Speaker 1: the population started dwindling, we say that people broke off
Speaker 1: into different clans and essentially they were all fighting for
Speaker 1: the very tiny parcels of arable land that were left.
Speaker 1: And it was very, very difficult to stake a claim
Speaker 1: to this because I think that the Easter Islanders they
Speaker 1: were respectful of their gods and they're respectful of women
Speaker 1: and children. Even the scholars who point the fact that
Speaker 1: they may have resorted to cannibalism point out that women
Speaker 1: and children never watched this happen, which I don't know
Speaker 1: if that means that men were the only ones who
Speaker 1: resorted to cannibalism if they ate it in private away
Speaker 1: from women and children, but I think that they you know,
Speaker 1: they were still trying to hold their civilization together, but
Speaker 1: it got harder and harder, and finally there was this
Speaker 1: cult that rose out of all the distress, and it
Speaker 1: was called the Birdman cult. And the premise was pretty simple.
Speaker 1: Be the first person to grab the egg from a
Speaker 1: city turned nest and you're gonna be the leader for
Speaker 1: twelve moons. And that may sound like a pretty simple feet,
Speaker 1: but the city turns nests are in the highest cliffs
Speaker 1: on the islands. It would involve like a swim and
Speaker 1: the rock climb and then a massive track back to
Speaker 1: be the first person to have this egg. And if
Speaker 1: you lost this contest, it was all bets off because
Speaker 1: the losers were typically expected to stab themselves with spears.
Speaker 1: So the Barman cult dies sound pretty drastic, but through
Speaker 1: this there actually wise every birth and arable land and
Speaker 1: cultivation of crops. I think the sweet potater reared its
Speaker 1: head again, so I think goodness for tuvers. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: they were struggling. They were they were still struggling to
Speaker 1: to um an extent, and this is when you know
Speaker 1: Europeans actually started stumbling upon these people and they finally
Speaker 1: had sort of contact and access to the outside world.
Speaker 1: But this ended up causing a lot of harm as
Speaker 1: well as good, um because like obviously Europeans come uh
Speaker 1: with their own diseases like that they have become immune to,
Speaker 1: and so they exposed these diseases to the islanders at
Speaker 1: the time, and so that hurt their population even more.
Speaker 1: And I think that when the nineteenth century came around,
Speaker 1: the population had dwindled to unlate gosh, just a little
Speaker 1: over a hundred maybe a hundred ten Easter Islanders. And
Speaker 1: not only did the Westerners bring their diseases, they also
Speaker 1: brought their religion and their ideas. And one of the
Speaker 1: reasons it's called Easter Island is because when it was
Speaker 1: first discovered I guess, discovered by Europeans was that it
Speaker 1: was Easter Sunday. And it's interesting and throughout the the
Speaker 1: I guess the nineteenth century, eventually Christian missionaries did come
Speaker 1: over and start and start converting the islanders um to uh,
Speaker 1: most of them, I guess, And they ended up sacrificing
Speaker 1: a lot of their culture, which is of course necessary
Speaker 1: when you sacrifice um your religion. Right when the Christian
Speaker 1: missionaries came the exchange for giving up their religion and
Speaker 1: their culture, like their storytelling and their their tattoos and
Speaker 1: there's everything. Else was that they learned how to use
Speaker 1: their land to be a ranch essentially, so they had
Speaker 1: livestock and they were able to say, okay, so we
Speaker 1: have this very treeless land. Now that's not good for much,
Speaker 1: but it is good for using as a ranch. And
Speaker 1: at this time the Easter Islanders, I think for the
Speaker 1: most part, they were very wearied with their culture, and
Speaker 1: when things had gotten really dark, they turned to the
Speaker 1: moi and what and rather they blamed them, blame the
Speaker 1: gods for what had befallen them, or whether they realized
Speaker 1: that it was their own, you know, very overenthusiastic production
Speaker 1: of the sculptures that brought them down. They started knocking
Speaker 1: them down, and you know, like you said, like, we're
Speaker 1: not really sure why it happened. I remember reading One
Speaker 1: theory was that, like when when the population split into
Speaker 1: different clans, one clan would destroy those those statues because
Speaker 1: they believe those are the source of their power, the
Speaker 1: opposite clans power. And so there's all kinds of theories
Speaker 1: about this, but um regardless, it is interesting that they
Speaker 1: made such amazing feats and yet they ended up tearing
Speaker 1: it down. They did, and you can you can see
Speaker 1: where they galuged out the eyes, then a city and eyes,
Speaker 1: and they would arrange really sharp stones underwear. The head
Speaker 1: would fall so and then when they knocked it from
Speaker 1: the yahoo, the head with sever So they were in
Speaker 1: essence decapitating these gods. And it wasn't until archaeologists came
Speaker 1: back and tried to restructure them that they were able
Speaker 1: to rehoist the moai. And I think that today the
Speaker 1: Easter Islanders very much accept that as part of their culture.
Speaker 1: But another thing that they lost forever was their language,
Speaker 1: which was Wrongo wrongo, and it actually came about from
Speaker 1: a very dirty trick that the Spanish pulled back in
Speaker 1: seventy two. They came over and essentially they tricked the
Speaker 1: tribal leader into signing a treaty that turned Easter Island
Speaker 1: over to Spanish control. So while that in itself was
Speaker 1: not diplomatic to any extent, it inspired the Easter Islanders
Speaker 1: to create their own system of writing. And so there
Speaker 1: are still tablets today with Wrongo wrongo that exists, and
Speaker 1: I think Easter Islanders continue to carve these little symbols
Speaker 1: that no one knows what it means, because again, part
Speaker 1: of giving up the culture to Christian missionaries was getting
Speaker 1: you know, ranches established and getting their crops re established
Speaker 1: and essentially surviving. So they made that choice. That's interesting
Speaker 1: that both the introduction of writing sort of hurt and
Speaker 1: helped them sort of in a way like, uh, it's
Speaker 1: certainly in a trick to be like, hey, this is
Speaker 1: what writing is. Write anything on this line and you're
Speaker 1: sacrificing your island and knowingly sort of thing. But it
Speaker 1: also brought about to fall up the Birdman cult too,
Speaker 1: because the tribal leader was able to reassert his power
Speaker 1: through writing. So it's just such an interesting history and
Speaker 1: the Easter Islanders are very very proud of their history.
Speaker 1: I think that today there are maybe around two thousand
Speaker 1: people on the island. Yeah, their population is really rebounded.
Speaker 1: Thankfully they have and they have i think joint citizenship
Speaker 1: with Chile, so they can go back and forth. And
Speaker 1: if you want to go to Easter Island, I think
Speaker 1: that you have to fly to Chile first, and then
Speaker 1: there are flights certain days of the week that go
Speaker 1: out to Easter Island. And that's what I mean. It's
Speaker 1: awesome that Easter Island has has an um an airport
Speaker 1: now and so people can come and they like argaelogist
Speaker 1: can study and tourists can can find out the rich
Speaker 1: culture and it's pretty interesting. And yeah, they had Chili
Speaker 1: actually has control over it because they annexed it in
Speaker 1: eighty eight. We should probably mention that. But um, but
Speaker 1: the culture of Easter Island is still alive. The people
Speaker 1: are incredibly friendly, and I think that people have written
Speaker 1: that as I've traveled to Easter Island. If hotel rooms
Speaker 1: are booked, you can stay with any Easter Island family
Speaker 1: in their house and they'll happily welcome you. So it's
Speaker 1: just it seems like such a great place to visit.
Speaker 1: I can't wait to go. Mark my words. If I'm
Speaker 1: not there or someone comes, shake me please. So if
Speaker 1: you want to learn even more about Easter Island and
Speaker 1: other ancient civilizations, be sure to check out how stuff
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