Chicken and Rat
The capitol of Mongolia is Ulanbaatar. Mongolia is HUGE and full of mountains and wildflowers. I know, I know… There is that Gobi desert as well… Lots of horses, lots of grass, lots of flowers. Not a lot of trees, though.
It doesn’t mean that there weren’t any trees there in the first place. Jared Diamond wrote a book about, in essence, trees. Read it, it’s called Collapse. It is the sequel to Guns, Germs and Steel.
On Easter Island, when the first humans arrived, they found a lush subtropical forest with vast trees EVERYWHERE. As humans are wont to do wherever they go, they promptly cut the trees and planted boring, edible crops. They also brought rats and chickens with them. Since Easter Island is in the middle of nowhere, volcanic ash is practically non-existent in the soil; the nutrient content of the soil is replenished extremely slowly. This means trees grow slowly too. A tree which reaches a strapping 20 feet in 10 years in New Guinea might take 50 or a 100 on Easter Island.
Anyway, they cut down trees and built canoes so they could hunt dolphins. They had to hunt dolphins, you see, because Easter Island has no shallows. It was deepwater fishing or nothing at all. They were also isolated on the island and without central authority. To keep themselves company, they began to represent. They showed off the majestic power of their particular slice of island to the others by building a KICKASS statue on shore. Of course, these construction projects took a fuckload of timber.
So: dolphin hunting, show-off statue building, lack of soil nutrients, slow tree growth, rats.
The forests thinned, the huge palm tree that was indigenous only to Easter Island was cut down completely, the rats gnawed on the seeds on the ground so there were no saplings, then the shitty trees were cut down as well once the prime ones disappeared, and finally the LAST TREE WAS CUT DOWN in what I imagine was a frantic competition between rival gangs, a sort of a ‘tragedy of the commons’ scene.
The canoes began to leak and there was no way to repair them without wood. The people were cut off and there was nothing to eat. Without the trees, the soil eroded until parts of the island became near-desert. There were chickens (there are more chicken coops on Easter Island than statues by far) and rats inhabiting a stripped, raped island. And lots and lots of people.
So the people ate chicken and rat, but there were just too many people to feed with chicken and rat. So the people ate people until the population dropped to a level that was sustainable by chicken and rat. A few hundred people, no more.
A hundred years later Captain Cook arrived. He had lots of stuff – but when the natives saw his huge ship, the one thing that fascinated them, a word repeating over and over: (I can’t remember it, but it means:) ‘Timber!’
I am very lonely.
I miss Csilla.
I am going to the cafe to write now. If I stay here I will be sad.
It doesn’t mean that there weren’t any trees there in the first place. Jared Diamond wrote a book about, in essence, trees. Read it, it’s called Collapse. It is the sequel to Guns, Germs and Steel.
On Easter Island, when the first humans arrived, they found a lush subtropical forest with vast trees EVERYWHERE. As humans are wont to do wherever they go, they promptly cut the trees and planted boring, edible crops. They also brought rats and chickens with them. Since Easter Island is in the middle of nowhere, volcanic ash is practically non-existent in the soil; the nutrient content of the soil is replenished extremely slowly. This means trees grow slowly too. A tree which reaches a strapping 20 feet in 10 years in New Guinea might take 50 or a 100 on Easter Island.
Anyway, they cut down trees and built canoes so they could hunt dolphins. They had to hunt dolphins, you see, because Easter Island has no shallows. It was deepwater fishing or nothing at all. They were also isolated on the island and without central authority. To keep themselves company, they began to represent. They showed off the majestic power of their particular slice of island to the others by building a KICKASS statue on shore. Of course, these construction projects took a fuckload of timber.
So: dolphin hunting, show-off statue building, lack of soil nutrients, slow tree growth, rats.
The forests thinned, the huge palm tree that was indigenous only to Easter Island was cut down completely, the rats gnawed on the seeds on the ground so there were no saplings, then the shitty trees were cut down as well once the prime ones disappeared, and finally the LAST TREE WAS CUT DOWN in what I imagine was a frantic competition between rival gangs, a sort of a ‘tragedy of the commons’ scene.
The canoes began to leak and there was no way to repair them without wood. The people were cut off and there was nothing to eat. Without the trees, the soil eroded until parts of the island became near-desert. There were chickens (there are more chicken coops on Easter Island than statues by far) and rats inhabiting a stripped, raped island. And lots and lots of people.
So the people ate chicken and rat, but there were just too many people to feed with chicken and rat. So the people ate people until the population dropped to a level that was sustainable by chicken and rat. A few hundred people, no more.
A hundred years later Captain Cook arrived. He had lots of stuff – but when the natives saw his huge ship, the one thing that fascinated them, a word repeating over and over: (I can’t remember it, but it means:) ‘Timber!’
I am very lonely.
I miss Csilla.
I am going to the cafe to write now. If I stay here I will be sad.
posted by Balázsy András at 2:52 PM
3 Comments:
Who or what is Csilla?
My girlfriend.
Did she dump you?
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