Post #142892 by christiki295 on Wed, Feb 23, 2005 6:38 PM

On 2005-02-22 16:30, aikiman44 wrote:
In Jared Diamond's book Collapse, there's a significant amount on the history of Easter Island . . . Should I post some of it in summary?

Please do.

Regarding Easter Island, Tikibars provided the following interesting facts:

In the late 18th century, the island was lambasted with the moai-toppling tribal wars, slave raids, and smallpox all back-to-back. It was said by a missionary at the time that the total population of the island at the time was 110. He included himself in the census for a total of 111. According to Heyerdahl in his 1985 tome Easter Island The Mystery Solved (his final word on the subject and an amazing book that states his case very very convincingly), in the 1980s there was only one living original "long ear" descendant left alive.

According to moast theories, the long ears, who built the moai and arrived on the island first, were defeated by the short-ears, who arrived later and toppled the moai, and from whom just about all of the native Rapa Nui living today are escended.

To digress further... 'long ears' and 'short ears' may have been a mistranslation of the word 'eepe' vs 'epe', which would make 'long ears' translate as 'slender people' in reality, and 'short ears' into 'stocky people'. That one is in debate too.

The so-called Batlle of Poike Ditch has been completely debunked - no battle occurred and no one was roasted alive.

In spite of what I posted above or elsewhere, the most up-to-the-minute theories actually say there weren't two tribes at all: there were two CLASSES, same genetics and lineage (all from Hotu Matua) and that the thin people overthrew the corpulent people, but they were all of the same race and, if one were to go back 30-40 generations, all related.

http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?mode=viewtopic&topic=7445&forum=1&start=15