How Gods Die (The Collapse of Easter Island) 

Hey man I appreciate this video, your cinematography and your earnestness- but your chronology is off. Current archaeological consensus puts the timeline for settlement much later, around 1350AD. With the introduction of rats, as you stated, the island would have been treeless within a generation because of the long reproductive cycle of the palms. There is very little evidence of the use of the palms for ships or any kind of industry really. Rapa Nui society did not crumble when they lost their trees, they thrived in spite of it! Despite the pervading narrative of collapse, most archaeological models support a relatively stable society of distributed chieftains and no models support a population over 5,000. The soil, despite being volcanic, is actually relatively poor because of bad drainage and a lack of available nutrients. To cope, people would fertilize the soil with stones and make stone rings to make a sort of microclimate for their crops. For at least 300 years, Rapa Nui society maintained a holding pattern with little warfare and conflict between tribes, besides personal grudges. Why fight? There is nothing to fight over but rocks and chickens- so the clans competed in another way, the beautiful Moai that you see everywhere on the island. Now, I'm not saying Rapa Nui was a perfect paradise- far from it. Their food was unvaried and not nutritious, and if you walked outside of your ~2km stretch of land people would at the least be cold to you, and at the most kill you. What I'm saying is Rapa Nui is not a narrative of failure and decay, it's a narrative of extreme persistence against the odds and the power of human ingenuity- and boredom- to make something amazing. Despite the harsh conditions they lived in, they maintained a relatively stable and productive society that grew enough in complexity to make beautiful works of art. If you want to get updated on the most recent Archaeological arguments for the long chronology in Rapa Nui, I suggest reading "Statues that Walked" by Carl Lipo and Terry Hunt. Cheers!

They have a written history, if you can figure out how to translate Rongorongo: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rongorongo

yeah theres a lot of suckers

Fuck. Did not know my country killed their land. Jeeze

Damn Peru I say we nuke it

I thought this needed a comment so I commented.

T^T

They got Amsterdamned.

i was thinking good guys ductches gave them cats, but then the truth came and i burst laughing

real shit

New Gods will be born to replace them though, a certain amount of people will always have the emotional need for Gods and so as the old ones die so new ones will be born to replace them that has always been the case and I think that it will be with us for a long time yet if not forever.

solipsism...

"the God's may be dead, but their bones are beautiful" can there be anything said further from the truth. In Actuality, the chosen God of this Earth is money, and it's obviously not dead. Alternatively it's thriving. Unequivocally more followers and Faithful Servants who are willing to kill for it than any other belief system or religion that ever existed on Earth unequivocally this is a fact. Since Fiat currencies conception and birth daily ritual worship, globally, publicly, and in certain countries they even put the word God on the object itself.

STUART BRODIE True. But money is a tool that builds power and power is a tool built on money. None the less money is just about the most delicious thing this world has to offer. So to the ancient civilizations that once ruled I say this. Thank you for creating a system of true instantaneous happiness. Weather money rules us or we rule it what would a world without money look like? If one can come up with a better sustainable system then there we go. Yet until then money will continue to be the God of the poor and the King of the rich.

And I don't just mean this video, the entirety of the channel. I share this with everyone

Yes, it's as if it is part of all living things... how quaint.

Little more than a disease with no host to spread to.

Faithfully. It's not animals, just humans. When a lion hunts, it takes down one, eats it, feeds the cubs and spends the next few days resting. Most animals operate in this way, despite competition for food. Humans get greedy and live with emotional insecurity, no matter how abundant is our stock.

in north America there's more trees now than 100 years ago

@@gaslitworldf.melissab2897 I'm pretty sure that's not true. All species will grow to the extent allowed by the environment. Deer need to be culled periodically because they will outgrow their resources and become weak and diseased. Rats will grow explosively until they outstrip all their resources and then become cannibalistic and die in dysfunctional weakened societies. Locusts have to keep moving from place to place as they consume everything in their path. The only animals that are "successful" in the long term are the ones that are constantly culled by other predators which themselves are kept in check by something else. Humans don't have natural predators anymore.

to put it in words: you come to a place which is everything opposite one's usual surroundings. And in the end....

....you make yourself feel at home

I am afraid there are more than just a few...

get off your soapbox, Zoidberg.

I only know of Carthage and the Easter island civilization, the Yucatán península civilization, the Aztecs, incans, what are the other ones?

The Mound builders, Rome, the Bronze Age civilizations, the Byzantines and there are a good many more, societal collapse is actually fairly common in history but it’s hardly thought of. I recommend looking into it sometime, it’s actually really interesting,

Ryan McCoy thanks, I don’t know why I forgot Rome, lol and the other great civilization collapse.

well that equine right at the beginning had his schlong hangn out. that's kinda funny

@@centraltexasbear9973 Always look on the bright side of life...(whistles)

Kubi Kameho this properly covers how I or may be everyone feels after watching any of the rare earth's vids

I would say it's because these guys DON'T know a lot more than us going to these places and genuinly care about how people feel and felt. Not from a pity or empathy perspective but rather from a perspective of untamed curiosity and the need to shatter the limits of their own perception again and again. That may not sound like much but it something really special very few people dare to do. Repeatedly question your own world view!

Wow I couldn't agree more, really powerful words, amen!

Indeed. Beautiful.

LOKIUNCIA i searched far down for this comment. Maybe we are the only crude ones watching this video.

Fatty Acid right? Thank you

Ha!! Dangly parts

Floppy horse dick

Jen Burton We're just happy you're here watching, Jen.

watch all of the ads ... that's what I do to help, it's only little bit but it adds up

you are right... tale not history

No such thing as sustainable resource.There are always unintended/unforeseen consequences.Resources are used to find the next replacement.

But they survived after running out of resources. They weren't as powerful than they were, but they eventually found a balance and sustained themselves until there was outside interference.

It is very much the embodiment of "Learn from history, or you will be doomed to repeat it."

I was about to say. While he is right about the history of what happened to the people, his attempt to connect it to the idea of "gods" was less than tenuous.

. . . depends on how you define gods. In some places, ancestors function very much like gods. They are revered, prayed to, given offerings and remembered on certain occasions. So, a wider definition encompasses ancestors.(You'll find similar traditions in parts of Africa and Asia with ancestor worship. Again, this means to show reverence and put faith in. They are part of the spirit realm just as angels and demons in Christianity).

GaslitWorld f. Melissa B Durga and religion have plenty of connections The church can’t shut me down fucking diddlers

Christian's worship Jesus who most likely was just an ancestor. I think westerners like to think that their way of life is the civilized one, unlike the savages of the rest of the world, all the while not seeing the similarities they share. From an outsider's perspective christianity and its many forms are just as strange as cutting down all the trees and making giant head statues.

+Angry Kittens The Rapanui People were Polynesian and Polynesian cultures had a mixture between ancestor worship and God worship, Humans, if not seen as equal to Gods, were still seen as descendants of the Gods. Whilst we can not say what the theology of the Rapanui peoples was we can definitely show it was Polynesian in its base, even the Birdman aspect is a frequent show up in Polynesian mythologies. Also, we still don't know for sure if the Moai were meant to represent Humans or something else, perhaps they represented Guardians or Spirits of some kind which in Polynesian mythologies were sometimes represented in Humanoid forms. They are a mystery due to us losing the change to learn their culture after the slavery of their learned peoples. Also, you mention Tiki, which if you are referring to Maori Tiki (as that's the only usage I normally see online) they weren't just used to represent humans, they also were used to represent taniwha, gods and other mythical beings. it depended on context and the abstract of the art.

same is true of all organisms. Life evolves to propogate itself, at the cost of its environment. Very few creatures are alive due to long-term planning, most just exploit day-to-day, have moderately successful eras as species, then die when they hit the edges of their carrying capacity. Humans have a great ability to expand our carrying capacity, but we can't expand forever. Even if we colonize other planets, our solar system, our galaxy, eventually we'll run out of room or use up too much energy.

Ordinary Tree That "eventually" would be infinity since the universe is so.

Charles Damery We also come up with basic human rights so I thinm its a bit 50/50

@Mountain Whale good point. Thats the ideal scenario anyway. First we need to get off this rock though, and to do that we need more governments and billionaires actively endorsing space development. Elon Musk is a start, but hopefully we get even more Musks soon.

Mountain Whale I completely agree. Trying to drag our earth-made organic forms through the radiation-hell that is space would be incredibly expensive to do safely. I'd like to think it could happen, through genetic engineering or something, but the shortest and simplest method is to make AI and use them as our missionaries. Then we'd just need to worry about solar flares screwing with the circuitry.

Wow that makes me so incredibly happy to hear you have no idea. New videos this xmas back on the old weekly schedule.

I second that

That mirrors my thoughts perfectly.

the rongo rongo has been speculated, but sadly it is still uncomprehensible

There are actually some pretty interesting similarities between rongorongo and the Indus valley script. I've not done enough research to state how far those similarities go, but they are more than enough to warrant comparison. Even more interesting is the fact that the Indus Valley civilization collapsed two to three thousand years before the apparent settling of Rapa Nui. Add to that the fact that some of the Moai are full bodies, buried under what I am pretty sure is sediment (don't quote me on this one tho, its again something I need to research more), and we get a somehow even more mysterious story than we were told.

They are buried because of all the erosion from the loss of the trees.

Thanks Ale! I was just telling Francesco about your buffalo mozzarella last night!

*gods

You are supposed to capitalise God or Gods.

No you capitalise God not gods. One's a proper noun the others not.

to a person that practices a polytheistic religion Gods might be a proper noun.

Guys. Do you really want to argue about one letter? I wanted to put emphasis on the word "gods" so I capitalised the first letter.

Where are the trees?

Islam is far worse in that regard.

@@fantasia55 Lmao why? They both believe in the same thing

How can you believe in a science that kills your entire family, your entire tribe, your entire nation? Youll die anyway, believer or not, atheist or not. This isnt some "gotcha" moment, maybe watch more Sam Harris podcasts and come back with your euphoric quotes.

(They almost certainly had contact with other Polynesian societies, albeit a very limited contact. Just to be clear on that.)

@@RareEarthSeries I stand corrected. Your show is amazing.

I suspect birdman culture wouldn't have existed.

Hehe. Cat worshiping, like the ancient Egypts? ;) But the rats came long after the birdman culture, if I got that right? Sometimes *both* rats and cats come with ships to ports and then the balance is restored. An eco-system that has rats but no cats is just doomed. There is this lovely film about the cats in Istanbul, Kedi. The people love them and take care of their imported friends (some came all the way from Norway), because they take care of the substantial rodent population that always seems to come with ship trade. Of course the case of Rapa Nui is more complicated than that, people just exploited their own home too much, as humans have a tendency to do. It's just sad that other humans don't seem to be able to take an example of previous man-made destruction. :(

Different palm :)

It ain't pretty.

You guys did a number alright. It was so bad our founding father got so pissed and immediately made Asian African Conference and declared "non-bloc" group. But then USA, Soviet and China ruin it all because capitalism vs communism bullshit.

@@Kelkschiz Great statues. But no trees.