Easter Island is a Polynesian Island, which was annexed by Chile in the late 19th century. Eleven hundred miles away from the nearest island, and twenty-three hundred miles from the mainland makes Easter Island very seclusive and isolated from the rest of the world. In fact Easter Island is the most isolated island that is inhabited, in the world.
Easter Island was first inhabited between 800 - 1200 CE, by the Polynesians. The Polynesians which settled in Rapi Nau, had built over 900 Moai statues. These Monolithic Moai were built of Tuff, a light and porous igneous rock, averaging thirteen feet in height and weighing in at about thirteen tons. It is unclear as to why they were in such great size. The largest Moai, on record, clocks in at thirty-two feet tall and a whopping eighty-two pounds. It is unknown how they moved the Moai, but they were placed on ahus, which were ceremonial platforms.
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Archaeologists believe that each Moai represented a family, which is way there is such a large quantity of Moai.
There was a race to build the biggest Moai, between all of the families. With the race, the Polynesians were depleting all of their resources. Eventually they ran out of trees, without trees they didn’t have wood to build boats. A main food source for the Polynesians was fish, without their boats they couldn't fish, meaning they had no food. Along with the deforestation, there was no other vegetation growing on the island. This is what lead the Polynesians to cannibalism, with no vegetation, and no fish it was the only food they had access to. If it weren’t for Rapi Nau’s annexation to Chile, the Polynesians would have died out, their population was at its lowest less than one hundred
people. Excavations have found three different and very distinct time periods of early civilization on Rapi Nau.The earliest period 700-850 CE, this is when the island was first inhabited by the Polynesians, and the first of the Moai were built. 850-1050 CE, between the Early and Middle Periods, archaeologists believe that the first Moai were significantly smaller and that the Polynesians smashed and destroyed them, which they then built and put the larger Moai, which we know today, in their place. The Middle Period 1050-1680 CE, during this period, some ahuses contained burial chambers. This made archaeologists believe that the Moai were the deified figures who had passed away. Lastly the Late Period post 1680 CE, Rapi Nau had civil wars along with just extensive destruction. This destruction included more of the Moai toppling over, and archaeologists found spear points made of obsidian dating back to this era. Rapi Nau Island has two main groups: Short-Ears and Long-Ears. The two coexisted for years until the Long-Ears rebelled, burning many Short-Ears in large piles, in the ditched of Poike.
Food was something everybody needed. The Makah ate a lot of fish and still do today. Fish was the main thing they ate. The Makah also ate deer, seal, whale, and more. The Makah ate everything with fish oil even dessert. They loved fish oil so much they had to eat it with everything. The Makah were hunters. They would go out in canoes and catch as much as they could. The Makah ate very little vegetables. They mostly ate meat. The only vegetables they ate were in the spring when the woman would find some plants. They would dry the fish for the winter and other times when it was needed. How they cooked the food was with a cedar wood box. They would make a fire and put coals on the fire. The Makah would put water in the box and add the hot coals. Then they would add the food. They would take out cold coals and put in hot ones. The Makah ate with their hands and ate on cedar mats. The Makah didn’t have any kind of utensils so they just used their hands for everything.
To begin with, the Lorax and Easter Island have many differences but the most obvious one is that in the Lorax one person/thing (the onceler) was responsible for the destruction and the depletion of a resource. Unlike the Lorax a whole generation of people led to the destruction and depletion of many resources, and not just one individual profited from the exploitation but a whole species of people did. In the Lorax you can see that the onceler used the truffula trees for economic purposes. He got filthy rich from the exploitation. Whereas, in Easter Island a whole group of people benefited from it, they build pyramids, cut down trees to build temples, and depleted the land of all its natural sources.
The island is about 4 square miles and is today a place for tourism in the great lakes. Many thousands of years ago though this was a little piece of land with bluffs reaching high above its surroundings and was a merely a small piece of land surrounded by water. It was because of these bluffs the appearance of the island resembled a turtle and led to it being named “The Great Turtle” (Piljac, 1998). Currently the island reaches several hundred feet above the lake and it’s because of this geography that many nations saw this as a perfect military post and would be used over and over again throughout its history as such.
Foreign exploitation began, when Cook replaced the traditional island subsistence-sharing economy by the for-profit barter and afterward the money economy. Firearms, and sandalwood lumbering where just a few items that brought foreign economic and political control of the ruling ali’i, who were tricked by many greedy Western merchants. The Great Mahele of 1848 and the Kuleana Act of 1850 contained a major land redistribution act, which was forced onto the monarchy by Westerners(Blaisdell, p.44). Bringing fee simple ownership to Hawaiians, these land divisions actually alienated the land from them. The Mahele divided the lands between the chiefs, king and government. The Kuleana act supposedly guaranteed to the makaainana fee simple title to small plots of land, which would eventually separate the individual from the group. (Trask, p.10) Hawaiians depended on the land, they were not use to “private property”, which led to many problems, and the chiefs and the government were heavily indebt to the Western merchants.
A small archipelago off the northwest coast of Britsh Columbia is known as the “islands of the people.” This island is diverse in both land and sea environment. From the 1700’s when the first ship sailed off its coast and a captain logged about the existence, slow attentiveness was given to the island. Its abundance, in both natural resources physical environment, and its allure in the concealed Haida peoples, beckoned settlers to come to the island. Settlers would spark an era of prosperity and catastrophe for the native and environmental populations.
The Hawaiian culture is known throughout the western world for their extravagant luaus, beautiful islands, and a language that comes nowhere near being pronounceable to anyone but a Hawaiian. Whenever someone wants to “get away” their first thought is to sit on the beach in Hawai’i with a Mai tai in their hand and watch the sun go down. Haunani-Kay Trask is a native Hawaiian educated on the mainland because it was believed to provide a better education. She questioned the stories of her heritage she heard as a child when she began learning of her ancestors in books at school. Confused by which story was correct, she returned to Hawai’i and discovered that the books of the mainland schools had been all wrong and her heritage was correctly told through the language and teachings of her own people. With her use of pathos and connotative language, Trask does a fine job of defending her argument that the western world destroyed her vibrant Hawaiian culture.
... harvest fruits and berries and grains from the island. This will supplement the food that can be grown and harvested on the island. Everyone on the island will share the food available equally. If a point comes where there is more food than what the people can eat, at that point we will dry grains, fruit, and vegetables for use later. Even meat can be thinly sliced and smoked and dried to preserve it.
Not only did they bring diseases but they also brought merchants. These ruthless, money hungry traders wanted land and ports for shipping. As more foreigners came to Hawai’i, more problems occurred. Priest preached the word of God, Christianity, but this was contradictory to the Hawaiian religion and their way of life. The Hawaiians believed that every single thing in the world had a god. The palm trees had a god, the grass had a god, the ocean had a god, the sky had a god, etc. So when Christianity came, the idea of one God was amazing and absurd to them. I despise the fact that foreigners came here and changed almost every aspect of Hawai’i.
Goodman, Ellen. “The Culture of Thin Bites Fiji”. Everything’s an Argument. 6th ed. Boston Bedford St. Martin’s, 2013. Print.
In addition to the people, the food of the islands is the most delicious cu...
Settlers from Southeast Asia are thought to have first arrived in the Marquesas Islands, in the northeastern part of what is today called French Polynesia, around 300 AD and in the Society Islands, including Tahiti, to the west by about 800 AD. Prior to the first European contact, the islands were ruled by a hierarchy of hereditary tribal chiefs.
... new growth. Food taboos and totemism had the effect of protecting animal and other species because some people were not permitted to eat certain foods and a person could not always eat their own totem. This had the effect of providing a safe environment for particular species. Many sub-tribes moved around their land following the food chain cycles. This meant that they never stayed in the one place where they could extinguish the food sources. In some tribes particular beliefs were held about dangers that could threaten the life of animals or birds. One tribe (the Wiimbaio) were afraid of blood falling into lakes or rivers, incase storms or other disasters would result, and would kill the fish.
The Polynesian peoples have a lifestyle quite different than that of any other culture, as living on an island requires a level of flexible adaptability in order to cope with such a different, sometimes difficult environment. We see the way diverse cultures build their lives around their circumstances and how they respect them in their cultural myths and stories. The Polynesian legends emphasize the physical environment that they live in. They are quite different than any other region in the world, but the beauty and individuality of the Polynesian culture is prominent as seen in their mythology.
Long ago, the Big Island was the birthplace of King Kamehameha I. Since that time, it has played host to missionaries, sugar plantations and sleek golf courses. Whether you are looking for a rainforest hike or extravagant resorts, Hawaii Island offers every activity that you could want on a vacation. Before you leave,
European ships had made their way onto the shores of the Chatham Islands carrying five hundred Māori warriors armed with axes, clubs and even guns. The Māori took the islands in six stages. The first stage and second stage consisted of classification and symbolization. While the Moriori are descended from the Māori, the Māori refused to claim them or their way of life. The third stage was when events turned from bad to terrible. With their law still in effect, the Moriori were easy prey for the Māori to not only to be slaves, but to also be a source of food. The Moriori were once also cannibals but Nunuku’s Law forbid it. The fourth stage was humiliation, the Māori forced the Moriori to defile their ancient holy sites by defecating and urinating upon them. The final stage was extermination. According to New Zealand’s Virtual Oceania, “the Moriori outnumbered the Māori two to one” (1) but, again, due to Nunuku’s Law they did not retaliate. Before the taking of the Chatham Islands the Moriori were two thousand strong, after the twenty-eight year Māori invasion, they stood at a mere three