[Leanan]

I read The Mountain People for an anthropology class in college. I still have my copy.

It should be noted that the book is controversial. Colin Turnball seems to have made very little effort to do real anthropology in this case. He talked to a few people in the very edge of Ik territory, where the culture was most disrupted, and avoided the interior, and the vast majority of Ik. He did not learn the language, and relied on translators and information from neighboring, and often rival, tribes. This is widely considered poor practice. It's like studying Israelis by asking Palestinians what they're like. You are not going to get an unbiased answer.

Turnball has done some good work, so I'm not sure what happened here. Some say Turnball was so determined to support a certain theory that was hot at the time that he made things up. Others think he was miffed at the Ik, because he expected them to be like the Forest People he studied earlier, and they were not. They did not build him a hut and give him a boy, like the BaMbuti had. He disliked them from the start, and it influenced his work.

He died of AIDS some years later, and on his deathbed, expressed regret for the way he portrayed the Ik. He admitted his book was not fair to them, and not as impartial as a scientific work should be.

To this day, the Ik are outraged at how Turnball portrayed them.

[nero]

Leanan,

from what little I've read on the web, I understood it to be that Turnbull encountered the Ik when they had been recently displaced and were in desperate straights. That probably had an effect on their behaviour.

There are only 5,000 to 10,000 thousand Ik and as I understand it they don't really have their own territory, they just live in the areas that the competing tribes don't use. That and the idea that their language contains alot of foreign origin words makes me wonder about the idea that he wasn't encountering the true Ik culture. It doesn't sound to me like there was an undisturbed Ik culture.

It's like studying Israelis by asking Palestinians what they're like. You are not going to get an unbiased answer.

From the extract that I read above I had the impression it was more like he was asking a bilingual Israeli for his impression of Israelis. That also would probably contain a bias but in the opposite direction.

I defer to your greater knowledge but I would hesitate to discount Turnball's observations just because they are so outrageous. He may have had some bias but that doesn't make the Ik all sweetness and light.

[Leanan]

No, I don't mean that the Ik are all sweetness and light. And yes, their way of life had been significantly disrupted when Turnball was there. At least, in the areas he studied they were.

But whether Turnball's depiction is correct is questionable. Not many scientists want to live in the boondocks of Uganda for years to check Turnball's work. And even if they did, the Ik may not want to talk to them, having been burned before.

I always take this sort of ethnography with large amounts of NaCl. You can send two different anthropologists out, and they'll come back with completely opposite impressions. It's the nature of this kind of study. Even when you've been studying people for years, you can be surprised.

An example was in Discover magazine last year. Anthropologists had been studying a tribe in South America for twenty years. They thought they understood the culture pretty well. Until one day, when they were shocked to discover that, rather than being completely monogamous, as they'd always thought, women in the tribe were in the custom of taking "second husbands." It was believed that one husband wasn't enough to create a child. The woman needed frequent sex to have a successful pregnancy, and one man just didn't have the stamina. So she would take a second, sometimes even a third, husband to help out.

The anthropologists were astounded. How could they have lived with these people for 20 years and not discovered this element of their lives? Turns out, the natives had had some exposure to missionaries. The missionaries had been horrified at the idea of second husbands. Assuming that all white people felt this way, they were careful to hide this practice from the anthropologists. Meanwhile, the anthropologists, projecting their own cultural biases, were reluctant to ask about the subject of sex, because it's a sensitive topic in our culture. So no one brought it up, on either side. For two decades.

[JohnDenver]

I think we've all heard about Easter Island a few hundred times on this site -- how it shows that our civilization is doomed to collapse due to its rapacious consumption.

But if collapse is such a pre-ordained, mechanical process, why didn't all the islands in the pacific go the route of Easter Island?

French Polynesia, the Tuamotus, the Marquesas, the Cook Islands, the Southern Group (Aitutaki, Atiu, Mitiaro, and Mauke), Hawaii, Saipan, Western Samoa, Truk, Guam, Tonga, Vavau, Efate Island, the Solomon Islands, Micronesia...

Why aren't they all an environmental horror story of overshoot and collapse? Why, out of all those islands, can the doomers only point to Easter Island?

[eastbay]

Why aren't they all an environmental horror story of overshoot and collapse? Why, out of all those islands, can the doomers only point to Easter Island?

Excellent question.

Yes, I've thought about this too and believe they eventually would have destroyed their lands too but just didn't work at it long enough.

... and how about the Mongols (or pre-Mongols) who populated the America's prior to 1500. Given enough time they too would certainly have destroyed their lands and rendered extinct most of the fauna populating their environment.

Many believe they were off to a good start by helping render extinct by over-hunting several ancient animals including the ursa major major (in NE Asia), the sabre tooth tiger, and the mammoth.

EastBay

[ArimoDave]

Is it possible that they had religion which led them to destroy thier environment?

Just my thought.

ArimoDave

[TrueKaiser]

Why aren't they all an environmental horror story of overshoot and collapse? Why, out of all those islands, can the doomers only point to Easter Island?

it's called cherry picking. they only acknowledge the facts that support their idea's and ignore the rest.

[arretium]

Why aren't they all an environmental horror story of overshoot and collapse? Why, out of all those islands, can the doomers only point to Easter Island?

it's called cherry picking. they only acknowledge the facts that support their idea's and ignore the rest.

I've often wondered the same thing about the Easter Island example. Good point on pointing it all out.

As for cherrypicking, what else do you expect Conservatives to do?

[dauterman]

Hi,

I live on Guam which is a Pacific island between Japan and Australia.

From what I've read, no one has taken into account the extremely small size of Easter Island - it is only 64 square miles. Also, it is in the middle of nowhere - no other island within 1000 miles.

The problem with an island that size is that it is so small that there could never have been a population of more than a few thousand people. As a result the population would become progressily more inbred as several generations go by. After a few hundred years, there is no diversity. Everybody is a close blood relative to everybody else.

The same thing happened here on Guam. The descendants of the original inhabitants (the ethnic Chamorros) for the most part can't marry each other - there are too closely related, all second cousin or closer. They have to marry outsiders who have migrated here. But on Easter Island there would be no outsiders, long-distance travel was not possible at the time.

The Easter Islanders were not the only ones to build statues. Most Pacific Islands will have some sort of construction like this. The ones on Guam are called Latte Stones:

http://ns.gov.gu/latte.html

So why are the Easter Island statues such a big deal and the Latte Stones are ignored?

[erl]

As for cherrypicking, what else do you expect Conservatives to do?

Just gotta get that jab in, huh?

[eastbay]

dauterman,

Thanks for setting us straight on this.

Most Pacific islands were culturally and economically interconnected. Easter Island was an exception. It' was tiny (slightly larger than the San Francisco for comparison), isolated, and dependant upon itself for everything, much as the modern oil-age world is today.

It's not 'cherry picking'. On the contrary, it's an excellent comparison to what's happening today.

Thanks again,

EastBay

[nero]

Well to give some info to the thread

Jared Diamond's book "Collapse" discusses the problem. His observation is that Easter Island was fundamentally unsuited to polynesian culture because it was too far south and the soil was not fertile enough. Further it's isolation and small size were also factors.

Diamond also gives some info on other islands. Of the closest inhabited neighbours of Easter Island, the population of Henderson and Pitcairn disappeared and Mangareva after severely degrading their environment descended into canabalism. I believe the Marquesas also have a fairly violent history.

I think the histories of the various island groups are probably quite varied and fascinating. Does anybody have some more information on the pre-contact history of other island groups.

[eastbay]

http://ns.gov.gu/latte.html

A link to a nice article about the Latte Stone monuments of Guam. For your reading pleasure, the article has a nice musical accompaniment.

EastBay

[MicroHydro]

Well to give some info to the thread

Jared Diamond's book "Collapse" discusses the problem.

Indeed. Diamond also points out that politics was a factor. Some islands were small enough to function as a single village, and were well maintained. Others were large enough to support a kingdom with a military and professional administration which also regulated resource utilization. Easter Island (Rapa Nui) unfortunately had a geography that encouraged political balkanization. Competition between the rival clans (including statue building) led to environmental devastation and warfare.

Our very balkanized planet is Easter Island writ large.

[linlithgowoil]

whilst i think easter island is an interesting comparison to the modern world, i dont believe the earth can be compared to easter island but on a much bigger scale.

there are regions of plenty and scarcity all over the earth and there always will be. i actually dont buy into the idea that exponential growth in population, per se, leads to the ever higher consumption of resources. i think its actually consumerism and capitalism itself that causes this.

look at the facts - the western consumer nations have the lowest population growth, but the highest consumption and its still skyrocketing. areas with the highest population growth still have the lowest consumption and its barely went higher. the gap between rich and poor is getting bigger and bigger.

so - the problem is not population growth, its consumerism, captialism, corporate bodies, profit, and in the end, greed.

[oowolf]

The Easter Islanders were unable to adapt their ecological paradigm (which they brought with them) to the mini-environment of their new home.
They were "slow learners".
All human cultures have probably run up against environmental constraints. Those that adapt survive, those that don't overshoot and pay the price.

[bobcousins]

Actually, I agree. Easter Island is a poster child for doomers, but it makes me wince every time it is put forward. It is too simplistic a model. The reasons civilisations expand and collapse (or not) are very complex, and many societies collapsed without resource depletion, or survived despite it.

You can pick any number of examples from history which appear to support either side of the argument. Whether they are accepted as valid or not appears to be based on dogma.

Clearly, carrying capacity is always limited. The question is why don't societies always approach the carrying capacity and achieve equilibrium? Even if they overshoot, why do they not adjust and continue? Collapsing from an organised, civilised society to anarchy seems to be an extreme response.

There is something about the particular organisation of a society that makes it vulnerable to collapse, in the presence of factors such as resource depletion, climate change or competition from neighbours.

[Falconoffury]

We aren't achieving equilibrium because we are becoming increasingly dependant on nonrenewable resources, and we are destroying our environment in the process. We would have to turn both of those factors around if we want a sustainable civilization.

[RockHind]

... and many societies collapsed without resource depletion, or survived despite it.

Which societies survived despite resource depletion?

[gg3]

Case studies of the various islands would be very interesting in terms of lessons to be learned about adaptation to resource limits.

Easter Island is a warning-case. As in, the house down the street that had a housefire is a warning case. Paying attention to warnings is always prudent.

Conservative business planning operates on the assumption that conditions will always be less favorable to you than you would like, so among other things, you don't squander your resources. Conservative political and economic philosophy should do the same, but these days what passes for "conservative" is not that, and the word itself gets a bad reputation.

I don't believe in "fate," and think it's an unscientific concept. Humans have free will; we can choose. And regardless of whatever underlying cognitive or cultural factors predisposed various cultures to overshoot/collapse in the past, to say we can't learn from our species' collective mistakes is to write off every cubic centimeter of gray stuff inside our skulls.

We know the answers, starting with the usual list that begins "nuclear, wind, solar, conservation..." and goes all the way through to "birth control, organic agriculture, public transport, and walkable towns." All the talk about "not having the political will" is an excuse for collective laziness. Last time I checked, sloth was still a sin.