Re: off topic: different cultures, same ideas

["David B. Kronenfeld" kfeld@xxxxxxxx]

My understanding is that the trees were there when they arrived. But that
they eventually, under population pressure, cut them down for
firewood--leaving them without the means of building boats, and thus of
important ways of fishing (as well as traveling). And, I gather, that as
the wood gave out they turned to burning the books in what had been at
least somewhat extensive libraries. The story sort of looks a little like
those cartoons where, for example, Wiley Coyote, runs off a cliff and keeps
going horizontally until finally he notices that he is over a great
drop--and too far from the cliff to grab it or go back. Only it's the
population that crashes here. We seem to be trying to replicate the effect
with our own environmental policies.

                Cheers

At 08:47 PM 9/3/2002 -0400, you wrote:

Seems far more likely that the Easter Islanders are of Polynesian
ancestry -- they wound up on an island with not enough trees for them to go
into shipbuilding again, and so were trapped there.

George Scithers of owlswickpress@xxxxxxxx
----- Original Message -----
From: "Charles Knouse" 
To: 
Sent: Tuesday, September 03, 2002 7:11 PM
Subject: Re: off topic: different cultures, same ideas


> Fascinating. Have the monoliths on Easter Island been dated? If Heyerdahl
is
> right, and I'm sure he is, the original settlers of Easter Island were
from
> the western coast of South America, at a time when civilization there was
> well established and probably threatened by invaders.
>
> Charles
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: 
> To: 
> Sent: Tuesday, September 03, 2002 6:10 PM
> Subject: Re: off topic: different cultures, same ideas
>
>
> > I once labored at a 11,500-year-old mammoth boneyard in Idaho, where
> scholars
> > looked for signs of contact between man and an array of extinct
mammals.
> > Phil Adamsak
>


David B. Kronenfeld       Phone  Office 909/787-4340
Department of Anthropology       Message 909/787-5524
University of California            Fax   909/787-5409
Riverside, CA 92521           email  kfeld@xxxxxxxx

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