Collapse Assignment 1- Easter Island

Easter Island, was a remote island that was succesful without industrialization and very little domestication. Thye were able to build hundreds of great stone statues without very many resources, however hese statues also lead to their downfall. It seemed like the peoples sole purpose of life was to build these statues, everything they did potentially went into building these statues. I found the fact that they could survive on so little the most interesting. The main animal they had access to were chickens, and they had very little crops and water supply. since, they had little water, they drank a lot of juice form the sugar cane that they grew.

After reading this chapter, I could see the similarities between America and the people of Easter Island. Easter Island collapsed mainly because of enviromental problems and social/political problems. They used up a lot of their resources to help them make these huge statues, not thinking about what would happen if they were to run out of resources. I see this in America when it comes to things like oil. We use oil for almost everything in our society, but very rarely do we think about how it's polluting our air, or what's going to happen when our oil supply is at it's lowest. The people of Easter Island were also competing within their clan to see who could make the biggest.most elaborate statues (bigger statue = POWER). This is also similar to America, because we compete with other countries when it comes to resources (such as oil), and various technology. I think that the significance of this chapter was to see what a society could do with such little resources. I also think the significance was to see how many society's rarely think about a possible downfall. They fail to think about an alternative for when their resources run out, or what they can do to prevent thier resources from running out.