A Brief Summary Of Easter Island

Tragedy of the commons consist of overusing the resources you have and not replacing them with more of the same. In the case of the Easter Island, Polynesians migrated to the island which was a subtropical forest island with many resources including 25 species of nesting birds, 6 species of land birds, and a wealth of seal colonies and shellfish. As the Polynesians settled, they started living big, running through their resources quickly and not replacing them.At the peak of their civilization, there was approximately 20,000 settlers. Their success was not unnoticed, for they began building large stone heads made from the lava stone that haderected years before settling there. There was approximately 900 stone heads made, with some weighing up to 80 tons. Moving the stone heads required many logs, which meant cutting down trees to replace the logs that break in the process of moving the stone head. As the civilization grew, the resources became very limited as the forest started to diminish as well as all the land birds, more than half of nesting birds, and most of the shellfish. With the resources gone, thesettlers turned to cannibalism. Three-hundred years ago, European explorers rediscovered the Easter Island and at that time the population had …show more content…
The Polynesians’ were not unlucky, they were living rich with thelimited supplies they had instead of conserving their raw materials. Therefore, the Tragedy of the Commons was shown during their stay in the Easter Island. In conclusion, The Polynesians ran through their resources, not thinking about theirfuture in the island, and caused the island’s forestation to die as well as most of the wildlifeliving there. The tragedy of the commons is shown with their mistakes by making their life sorich at first, then so miserable that they had to turn to cannibalism. The only way to prevent this to happening to us is to raise prices and create laws to protect our valuable raw