Collapse Assignment 1

Easter Island was once known for its riches of paradise. The Island was consumed with tropical fruits, delicious fish, several culture festivals and activities, and most important the abundance of trees that surrounded the Island. These beautiful things later on lead to famines, epidemics, civil war, slave raids and colonialism, and the crash of their ecosystem. Slave raiders struck Easter Island for several months, eventually capturing or killing around 1500 men and women, about half of the island's population. Some islanders managed to escape slavery, but brought back smallpox to the island which started the epidemic. This also decreased the population of the island not including the violent clan wars starting over the remaining newly available lands. These clan wars lead them to chopping down there islands trees, this became a competition of chopping trees to build statues (Moai). They did this to have this symbol of whos clan was most powerful.

This destroyed the culture because the trees was the islands main source of supply, it contributed to every aspect of the island inwhichh the more chopped trees the less supply of the island had to survive off of. This is an example of culture values colliding with environmental reality. This connects to our own environment with Easter Islands main resource being there trees, and our main resource being our oil. An economy grows by its constant growth of its main resource, meaning if something begins to decrease or decline its takes a toll on the society. In class we talked about the fact that inorder for things not to collapse work must be applied. The collapse of an economy is everything startes to exceed until it reaches nothing. Today, our economy is based on economic growth. If our oil begins to deminish, the economy will crash drastically.