Collapse Assignment 1

I thought it was interesting how the inhabitants of Easter Island seemed to be obsessed with being the best. They were very patriotic. From what I understand, the famous statues were created as a display of power of their tribe. I also believe that they were made in order to impress Gods of sorts, which in turn would protect them.

The strangest thing about Easter Island is the apparent quick end that its inhabitants came to. But, it can be connected to the quick and depletion and use of precious resources on the island. It was once a rich and plentiful spot of land, but the islanders were quick to burn through it by means of apparent large numbers and also - the statues that were build required much work and use of resources. Apparently, the trunks of trees were used to roll the enormous rocks of dozens of tons to the desired locations.

The fast burning of limited resources can easily be related to that of the current day use of oil. Oil, has been the sole source of energy for the fast expansion of industrial civilization. It can be inferred that current day civilization will run out of resources and in part, die out. This happened to the Eastern Island inhabitants, and will happen to us soon. Our economy runs on oil - hell, our supply of basic necessities runs on oil these days, and it is simply running out. Eastern Island's trees were wiped out, along with most of their sources of food. Much of the food they ate, was fish, fished out of the ocean. With no more trees, the canoes they would use could no longer be made.