Giant_and_Dwarf-FIN

Continent of Gigantic Problemson the island had been cut down for use by the islanders as material for their boats, whichallowed them to fish far from the shores of the island. The wood from the trees was alsoused for transportation and raising of the moai stones. The construction of the moai haddeep ritual significance for the people of Rapa Nui, but it was also the way in which individualclans on the island competed for prestige and power. At the time, when they recklesslycut down the last tree, Rapa Nui started a long decline as the islanders lost the opportunityto fish offshore or grow enough food on the soils exposed to accelerated erosion due to lossof protection by the trees. Once they plundered the island’s natural resources, inhabitantsof Rapa Nui fell into a state of absolute poverty. They fell into clan wars, accompanied by thedestruction of the moai and eventually reached the margins of extinction. In order to get atleast some animal protein they finally began to practice cannibalism.Another bitter example of a similar development is the story of the Norsemen coloniesin Greenland. Northerners arrived in Greenland from Iceland under the leadership of Erikthe Red in 986. The first settlers in Greenland were later strengthened by additional newimmigrants from Norway. For a long time the two major colonies—Eastern and Westernsettlements—maintained commercial, social and religious ties with their original homelandsin Scandinavia, to which they belonged politically and religiously. Their main exportgoods were walrus tusks, but the demand for them in Europe started to decline after thetrade routes for importing ivory from Africa and Asia opened up. Without valuable exportgoods, fewer and fewer ships started to arrive in Greenland. Eventually the last ship arrived,traded, and left to be followed by no more. At the same time the climate started to changeand the warm period known as the “Medieval thermal optimum” (a period to which Europeowes for food surpluses that enabled Europeans of the High Middle Ages to build cathedralsand other great works) started to be replaced step by step by a cooler climate knownas the “Little Ice Age”.The expression “Little Ice Age” is quite misleading. Unlike the real ice age, this periodwas just a little bit cooler compared to previous centuries, but even a small change in climatewas sufficient to put Europe into repeated crises and famines. For Northerners inGreenland it was the death sentence: circa 1350 the Western settlement ended. The lastwritten document from the Eastern settlement is a record about a marriage in 1408. Thensometime between 1480–1500 a winter arrived during which the very last progeny ofVikings in Greenland die out. From archeological findings we know that before they diedthe last Norsemen killed and ate their last cattle, including the hooves. Over the next fewcenturies the only people living in Greenland were family groups of Inuit hunters perfectlyadapted to surviving in the harsh Arctic conditions. Jared Diamond writes that before theirdemise Northerners encountered Inuit hunters, but their arrogant sense of cultural superiorityprevented them from learning and adopting any of the key Inuit technologies suchas kayaks or strategies for survival, such as the technique of seal hunting, a failure whichultimately predetermined their starvation and death.You may argue that both cases mentioned above were just small isolated island populationsforgotten by the rest of the world and isolated by vast distances. That indeed is true.27