In the beginning was a mystery and the mystery was thought-provoking enough that some people felt that extra-terrestrial beings created it. Many years ago, Dutch sailors noticed an isolated island in the middle of the dark Pacific. Headed by the navigator Jacob Roggeveen, the explorers decided to land on what appeared to be an island of sand dunes. The Europeans, especially the Spaniards, were already exploring the New World and encountering strange sites-the Spanish viceroy of Peru already reported that the Incan capital was protected by high walls built by the Devil himself. So on 5 April 1722, there was an eerie feeling sweeping over the Dutch sailors as they approached the strange island.
If the Spaniards were horrified by the demonic walls of the Incas, the Dutch sailors were soon to find out that the devil-while Europe was facing the demons of Christianity-have been building his fortresses across the American continent and towards the Pacific. As they drew nearer the island they noticed large stone images floating over the dunes. "We could not comprehend how it was possible that these people, who are devoid of heavy thick timber [or] strong ropes, nevertheless, had been able to erect such images, which were fully thirty feet high," wrote Roggeveen in his journal. And then they discovered that it was not dunes they were looking at but barren hills devoid of forests and timbers.
Thousands of stone images extremely larger than the simple phallic monuments of Southeast Asia dotted the bald island. "The great mystery that struck all early visitors was not just that these colossal statues stood in such a tiny and remote corner of the world, but that the stones seems to have been put there without tackle, as if set down from the sky," said the historian Ronald Wright, and added, "The figures stood there mockingly, defying common sense." And there is indeed a certain degree of common sense education that can be learned from these statues of the "Devil"; but one may ponder as to what evil the statues caused or was the Devil a narcissist who carved his face on a thousand stones.
Rapa Nui, as the Polynesians called the island, "was once well watered and green, with rich volcanic soil supporting thick woods of the Chilean wine palm, a fine timber that can grow as big as an oak." Around 500 CE, Wright explains, "migrants from the Marquesas of the Gambiers arrived in big catamarans stocked with their usual range of crops and animals." Rapa Nui became a thriving society of around 10,000 people divided into nobles, priests and commoners. But what catastrophe occurred in Rapa Nui that made the famous Captain James Cook, who visited the island later after the Dutch, wrote that nature had "been exceedingly sparing of her favours to this spot"?
Just like the other Polynesians, the inhabitants of Rapa Nui worshipped their ancestors through the erection of statues. It became a source of pride: the larger the statue, the greater the prestige. And as generation to generation the urge for greater prestige increased, the statues too increased in size; dramatically "demanding more timber, rope, and manpower. Trees were cut faster than they could grow." The inhabitants were consuming the natural resources of the island like greedy piranhas swarming over their prey. But just as most things in this world, the perfection of an art also means the destruction of it. The sabre-toothed cat once perfected the art of killing the mammoths that they hunted them down to the last one. The extinction of the prey also meant the extinction of the predator; and in the island's case, the greater the monuments became-the more they reach perfection-the greater the pace of the destruction of the environment.
Man was the catastrophe of Rapa Nui. It is indeed chilling to hear when Wright wrote that by 1400 CE, "no more tree pollen is found in the annual layers of the crater lakes." Chaos took over as the contest for resource set in. There were skirmishes between families and tribes, and "the Europeans heard tales of how the warrior class had taken power, how the island had convulsed with burning villages, gory battles, and cannibal feasts." The "mini-civilization" of monuments, great houses, and large villages was pushed back to the early culture of the Cro-Magnons as their resources dwindled down to the last chickens they have kept. As the land resources minimized dead, sea foods could have been the only salvation. However, no timber meant no new boats; and as the last old boat faded away into oblivion, the people were doomed. Cook described them as "small, lean, timid and miserable."
There is a very strong analogy between the island called Rapa Nui and the planet called Earth-the former was destroyed by man's insatiable nature while the latter is being ravaged by man's incalculable cruelty. One can remember the Brothers: "Human beings are a disease in this planet. You are a plague." Environmentalist can argue that humanity must save earth, but one must also remember that in the 99.9% of the Earth's existence it withstood the burning hell of gravitational pull, the sea of fire created by wicked storms, ice ages that can freeze even a refrigerator, the appetite of the dinosaurs, and the impact of a thousand asteroids. Earth always had a period of rejuvenation; so there is no need to worry about earth, it can handle itself. The question is: can humanity handle Earth handling itself?
The answer is obvious enough: we hang on a balance of a 50-50 survival rate. What happened in Rapa Nui was not just an omen; it was a warning by Earth: "you can worship a million gods beneath a billion souls of your ancestors, or you can roll them all into one, I do not care. When the time comes when I declare war on humans and the living species that damaged me, no army of God will be powerful enough to stop me from changing myself!" And the earth is indeed dramatically changing. Temperatures have enormously risen since the beginning of modern civilization. Perhaps humanity may have pushed its experiment of civilization to its limits-always wanting to make the largest statue. Like Rapa Nui, everything will have an end.
Armageddon is not the coming of God on Earth; it is the day the Earth will reclaim everything it lost from the quick burst of human greed and human arrogance. Perhaps humanity should learn that what it is doing is suicide-religion made humanity blind to the fact that they came out of Earth, children of its soil, nurtured by its air, given life by its resources. The time we placed the gods and the goddesses on the pedestal of our consciousness was the time the Earth stood still. Time to relearn, what was unlearned! Then maybe, just maybe, the story of what happened on Isla de Pascua (Easter Island, also called Rapa Nui) may bring a new life for humanity.
Artchil Daug finished his Bachelor and Masters degree on History from the Mindanao State University - Iligan Institute of Technology. He was also a former columnist of the Philippine Post and presently a contributor to the university textbooks on Philippine history. He is currently a History Instructor in the said university and specializes on the life and works of Jose Rizal, general Philippine history, Asian Civilization, Philosophy of History, and History of England.
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