I'm not sure I agree with the premise - "we should be scared because these people's lives sucked and apparently they just sorta soldiered on." …well, yeah. You just spent 800 words saying "whoops, rats, ergo, ecocide." What were they gonna do - Amazon in some D-Con? It's 1300AD and your great-great-great grandparents sailed an outrigger canoe a thousand miles from Polynesia. Now here you are on 63 square miles of dirt and the trees, birds, and critters are all gone, except for the rats. Here's a better question, following this line of thinking: WTF are the Inuit doing north of the Arctic Circle? You'd think "walking south" would be the killer idea since, I dunno, they hit permafrost. I prefer narratives that aren't tidy. Appreciate the share. It was an interesting article, if maybe a little over-wrought in its conclusions.
I agree that it's a bit overwrought. I don't know that the premise works so well for this piece, but I think there's some merit to that idea, as in, it's the extension of a person in the present making a decision without considering the consequences because those consequences will be dealt with by their future self, who will somehow be better equipped to deal with it. I agree. Or, people that live in the desert and have done so for untold centuries. Why?! People sure do live in some crappy parts of the world, but I guess there's always people who figure, "the devil you know . . ."Here's a better question, following this line of thinking: WTF are the Inuit doing north of the Arctic Circle? You'd think "walking south" would be the killer idea since, I dunno, they hit permafrost.
The desert thing makes sense to me. In many cases, it didn't used to be desert. The Southwest of the Anasazi was green and verdant like Northern Colorado. That's why they descended into cannibal nomads who became the Navajo, Apache and Hopi, who were stuck in a parched wasteland. It's one of the principal complaints of the Jews against Islam - "When you kicked us out of Palestine it was green and healthy and now it looks like the Golan Heights." There's definitely merit to the idea but the environment it's presented in doesn't support the argument. It's not like the Rapa Nui intended to bring their rats with them. It's almost more accurate to talk about the Dutch and their chickens, which are now the apex predator of Kauai.
I've been trying to find information on this and so far I haven't hit on anything related to a common origin of these three peoples, but then, the sites I've looked at aren't exactly scholarly in nature. Care to point me in the right direction?That's why they descended into cannibal nomads who became the Navajo, Apache and Hopi, who were stuck in a parched wasteland.
http://www.learner.org/interactives/collapse/chacocanyon.htm... http://cpluhna.nau.edu/People/anasazi_collapse.htm The search string I used was "anasazi collapse."
I didn't know that the Dutch introduced chickens to Kauai. I thought that chickens were generally part of the Polynesian colonization. Here's an article I read about the spread of chickens.
My bad. Got my stories mixed up. The dutch brought Mongooses. The chickens are due to cockfighters' roosts being destroyed by hurricane Iniki.