easter islanders’ weapons were deliberately not lethal
TRANSCRIPT
8/17/2019 Easter Islanders’ Weapons Were Deliberately Not Lethal
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http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/02/160222-easter-island-rapa-nui-collapse-archaeology-
moai-mataa-warfare-weapons-Jared-Diamond.html
Researchers say the weapons of Rapa Nui were actually lousy battle tools, and the islanders
wanted it that way.
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A new study refutes the theory that civil war, driven by environmental disaster, took place on
Rapa Nui (Easter Island).
PHOTOGRAPH BY JIM RICHARDSON, NATIONAL GEOGRAOHIC CREATIVE
By Kristin Romey
PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 22, 2016
Few stone monuments are as recognizable as the moai of Rapa
Nui (Easter Island), and few cautionary tales are as widely repeated as
the sorry fate of the Polynesian society that crafted the monumental
stone sentinels. The drive to create these enigmatic and enormous
monuments resulted in widespread deforestation, the story goes, which
in turn led to systematic warfare over increasingly scarce resources and,
ultimately, complete societal and economic collapse before the arrival of
the first Europeans in 1722. (Read more: How did islanders move
the moai? )
But now the most common—and most unremarkable—artifacts
on the island are shifting the debate about whether the Rapanui
virtually wiped themselves out in a frenzy of organized violence before
European contact. (Take a photographic tour of Rapa Nui.)
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The moai of Rapa Nui (Easter Island) are among the world's most recognizable
monuments.
PHOTOGRAPH BY STEPHEN ALVAREZ, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CREATIVE
By 1877, only 110 Rapanui were alive on the island, and it was
around this time that European ethnographers began to collect their
oral histories about the earlier wars that ravaged their community.
Since then, researchers have suggested that the thousands of small,
three-sided, stemmed obsidian tools found across the island were the
weapons employed in these battles. (Watch the moai "walk." )
In his 2005 book Collapse, former National Geographic
Explorer-in-Residence Jared Diamond characterizes the tools, known
as mata'a, as leftovers "from an epidemic of civil war." The humble
mata’a are even touted as an example of "stone-age weapons
innovation" in a publication by the U.S. government’s Defense Threat
Reduction Agency.
There’s no organized violence and no mass“
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However, a new study provides evidence
that mata'a could not have been used as lethal weapons for systemic
violence. This adds to a growing argument among Rapa Nui scholars
that the warfare described in later accounts actually never happened,
and that while the islanders certainly suffered from the effects of
deforestation and environmental degradation, the only
"collapse" occurred following contact with outsiders, who brought
disease and slavery to the Rapanui.
Furthermore, the authors of the study argue that making the
mata'a inefficient as killing tools was a deliberate decision by the
isolated island community, which quickly realized that lethal internal
battles would eventually leave everyone dead.
Douglas Owsley | Physical anthropologist
killing.”
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An analysis of obsidian tools known as mata'a shows that they were multipurpose
tools and not systematically manufactured for warfare.
"No more lethal than any other kind of rock"
A research team led by National Geographic grantee Carl Lipo of
Binghamton University analyzed more than 400 Rapa Nui mata'a to see
if there are any consistent patterns in shape and size that can suggest a
particular function for the blades — say, a long, narrow, pointed form
that can effectively penetrate flesh and pierce organs. While the mata'a
ranged from 2.4 to 3.9 inches (six to ten centimeters) in length and
width, the shapes varied so continuously that they were unable to
identify any category of mata'a with a consistent form that would
indicate design for a specific purpose. Rather, the vast variety of shapes
indicate that mata'a most likely served as a multipurpose tool for all
aspects of daily life on the island, including food cultivation and
processing.
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While the sharp edges of mata'a were ideal for cutting and
scraping (a fact supported by earlier use-wear studies), their weight and
asymmetry made them ineffective for inflicting deadly stabbing
wounds, Lipo concludes, calling mata'a "no more lethal than any other
kind of rock."
In a recent study of skeletal material from Rapa Nui, a team led
by Douglas Owsley, Division Head of Physical Anthropology at the
Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, found that only
two of 469 skulls had trauma that could have been inflicted by the slice
of a mata'a. The vast majority of injuries resulted from blunt-force
trauma from thrown rocks, a popular form of attack on Rapa Nui
documented by European visitors who experienced such violence.
Archaeologist Paul Bahn, a proponent of the traditional collapse
theory whose research has been cited extensively by Jared Diamond,
dismisses the idea that mata'a could not have been used as effective
tools of war. " Mata'a could certainly inflict lethal wounds," he says,
"This is essentially a slashing tool. You could do terrible things to
people without leaving a trace on bones."
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Many Rapa Nui (Easter Island) scholars believe it was European disease and not
internal warfare that wiped out the island community.
PHOTOGRAPH BY STEPHEN ALVAREZ, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CREATIVE
Owsely is more circumspect. "In my experience, when you’re
really trying to do someone in, you’re going to hit them in the head," he
observes, "and a slash across the face would be picked up in the skeletal
evidence."
The reliance on ethnographic accounts collected centuries after
events allegedly occurred has also been a continual issue among Rapa
Nui scholars. "This was a small population on a small island. Everyone
knew everyone," Owsley observes. "Even the death of a few people,
shared and repeated across the island over and over again can
eventually make violence sound much more pervasive than it actually
was."
A Tacit Understanding Not to Kill?
This is not to say that life on Rapa Nui was conflict-free. "The
Rapanui certainly engaged in violence—you can see all of the healed
injuries on the skeletal remains—and as sharp objects, mata'a could be
used in many threatening ways," says Lipo. But why did the islanders,
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who had the technological skill to erect almost a thousand 70-ton moai ,
fail to develop efficiently lethal weapons to battle one another?
"It's not as if they never figured it out, that's crazy," Lipo says.
"They chose not to."
According to the 2012 book The Statues That Walked , written
by Lipo and his colleague, University of Oregon anthropologist Terry
Hunt, it simply didn’t pay to escalate conflict to levels that resulted in
lethal violence on tiny, isolated Rapa Nui, a 64-square-mile (166-
square-kilomter) island that’s 1,500 miles (2,414 kilometers) from its
closest neighbor.
"This island was their entire universe," Lipo explains, "and lethal
violence only pays if you can do it anonymously, kill and leave, or kill
everyone else. Otherwise you’ll face the consequences of killing sooner
or later."
The Rapa Nui community quickly figured this out, he theorizes,
and developed ways to compete with one another that would not
escalate into endless tit-for-tat massacres that would ultimately leave
everyone dead.
The inefficiency of mata'a as killing tools was a
deliberate decision by the isolated island
community.
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The current skeletal analysis appears to support this idea. "The
bone fracture data doesn’t conform to periods of intense violence
described in the ethnohistoric accounts," says Owsley. "There’s no
organized violence and no mass killing."
Lipo urges a more critical look at the standard Rapa Nui story of
environmental degradation, conflict and decline. "Science means we
need to understand what really happened," says Lipo, "and I think
there’s a lot of great lessons to learn about what it takes to be successful
on a remote, tiny island where you have to work together."
"Rapa Nui is always treated as a cautionary tale, but I think it’s
the opposite."
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Comment on This Story
Carl Lipo | Anthropologist
Rapa Nui is always treated as a cautionary
tale, but I think it’s the opposite.”
“
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Comment on This Story
Mar 11, 2016
Feb 24, 2016
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Randy Elble
Tristan Zimmerman
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I think the word "refutes" is inappropriate. This is one opinion. "Disputes" would be more accurate.
I'm not convinced by this 'peaceful Easter Island' interpretation. It fails to explain how it is that Easter
Island's population was so small when Europeans first contacted the locals. If it was European diseases
that did them in, where did they, a society without boats and with no evidence of outside trade, contract
those diseases? The claim that tit-for-tat violence will necessarily wipe out a small community also
strikes me as silly. The Icelandic sagas are full of blood feuds and generational violence. If an island
community can't survive tit-for-tat violence, how are there still Icelanders?
That said, the bit about the weapons being deliberately less-dangerous is plausible; I see no reason to
discount it.
Honestly, this looks a lot like whitewashing an indigenous culture. You've got Western anthropologists
studying a violent society. Because Westerners (especially educated ones) tend to view violence as
inherently evil, and because anthropologists inevitably come to befriend their study subjects, the
anthropologists start to develop cognitive dissonance. "These people are my friends. I'm not friends with
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© 1996-Thu Apr 28 20:04:21 EDT 2016 National Geographic Society.
people who are evil. Therefore, my friends are not evil." Next thing you know, they're advocating a
position that, despite all the earlier evidence, the culture they're studying is not violent and never was.
The best part is, by this point, the indigenous culture is partially 'civilized' by missionaries and
government programs, so the incidence of violence has dropped dramatically. This allows the
anthropologists to keep advocating their hypothesis of non-violence without being constantly exposed to
contradictory data.