[quote=CONCHO]There are probably more stories like this that can be counted. The Easter Islanders died out after deforesting their island. Although they were descendants of the amazing seafaring Polynesian culture, they eventually destroyed so many of their trees that they could no longer manufacture large oceangoing ships. At that point they were trapped on tiny Easter Island. The Easter Islanders eventually resorted to cannibalism and were living in stone age conditions by the time the Spanish arrived.[/quote]
That was the story I’d always heard about Easter Island too. It was a good story. One that supports my belief that humans have to be careful not to shift the delicate balance of nature. (Which I actually don’t believe evidence supports, it’s not balanced at all. It’s chaos. Even without human intervention, it’s just very slow moving chaos.) But anyway, just last night on the discovery channel there was a show on (maybe it was called the wild pacific something like that. Or maybe not, I can’t remember). They crushed the story of the poor bastard Easter Islander who chopped down the last tree, dooming them forever. The claim was that it didn’t happen that way at all. Rather it was rats. Eating the last palm nuts that actually lead to the destruction of the civilization on that tiny island. The rats, though also introduced by humans don’t make for near as good a story.
