Nothing lasts forever.
Eventually we all collapse.
Everything atrophies. This universe atrophies. No matter how strong your faith
Someday your God will die. It might be dead already.
Because we
invented it. Our society gave it value and when we crumble, it crumbles with us.
To some the idea is morose,
depressing even. But to me it's just our world. It's something worth noticing.
Because our gods may be dead, but their bones are beautiful.
Those of you who follow this series know that I'm not really here to explain. At my best I'm no lecturer.
I don't really want to even teach you history. To me,
I just don't really care if you feel bad. The point isn't to bring you new information than whenever you came in,
it's to give you a parable, a new frame around an old story told from a distant land.
Many of our Fairweather viewers expect me to provide answers, but the truth is I have none.
I've never been much more than questions, prompts. But today, I want to tell some history and you can take from it what you will.
Rapa Nui has always stood out to me.
It's a clear example of a total societal collapse. The people who once inhabited this land were picked apart piece by piece
until they had nothing left but a memory.
Unbelievers now living in the shadow of the carcasses of their gods.
There are few easy answers here with no written records,
no truth is true. Almost everything is conjecture and with that in mind
let's walk through the cloud of history. This is how gods died.
Over a thousand years ago,
Polynesians packed themselves into ocean-bound outrigger canoes and set off to find a new world. The finer details are unknown but also irrelevant.
No matter their reasons why they came.
They came in enough numbers to create a society all their own.
The land they found over a thousand kilometres from any other shore
they called Rapa Nui. We call it Easter Island. The land they found had virtually no water yet
it was covered in forests and had some of the most impressive palm trees found anywhere on earth. It was untouched,
unspoiled and unknown. In the eastern half on the top of a mountain so stunning it leaves an emotional mark there's an ancient caldera, the
skeleton of a volcano long dead, In the center of that volcano
there's a small lake, a way to grow food and sustain life. In the land surrounding that lake a society was born. As
the society began to develop
artists by another name began to carve symbols into the rocks surrounding the caldera.
With no more than stone tools they dug deeper and deeper into the mountain to produce some of the most impressive pieces of art ever
produced in the ancient world.
They saw something in that mountain that nobody else could see. They saw gods.
Within a few hundred years the people of Rapa Nui began to carve out those gods.
They soon adjusted their entire society to better remove them. Giant
imposing figures with elongated features and coral eyes walking across the landscape to where the society had now spread.
Soon, no corner of the island would be without their presence. They're the Moai; a physical manifestation of a lost world.
But Rapa Nui was more than just Moai. That may be the headline,
but it isn't the story. The people here came in outriggers across thousands of kilometers of open sea. They were fishermen,
ocean people and to their great excitement the island had something more valuable than rock, more valuable than a caldera full of water. It had
an entirely new type of palm tree. One of the largest varieties on earth.
It was perfect for making outriggers, the boats necessary for fishing in the way their ancestors had taught them.
So long as society had palm, it would thrive and for a time it did.
But it wasn't to last.
All things atrophy. Their successes were what brought about their
destruction. With each new palm cut a new boat could be built and with each new boat, new people could survive.
The more fish they caught the more fish they needed to catch.
The cycle that built up these islands was rooted in unsustainability.
What's more, the original settlers brought more than people they brought rats.
While their role in the destruction of this island is no doubt currently overstated,
they had a profound effect on this society's collapse. With no natural predators they quickly blossomed to over a million strong.
Coconuts. Seeds. Plants. Anything that wasn't watched like a newborn baby was eaten and destroyed. While
They may not have taken down the trees themselves, they all but guaranteed they'd never come back.
Within a few generations the palm was gone never to return
With no boats to fish from society began to crumble the people turned back to the land
Despite the rich volcanic soil things only continued their downward spiral.
They burned the remaining trees for charcoal and to make way for
farms as with the palm before them the rats made short work of anything that tried to grow in its place. At some point an
Islander made the choice to cut down the very last tree
Maybe they saw the writing on the wall.
And maybe they didn't. Either way the spiral continued with no trees to hold it down the dirt turned to dust and flew away.
Farms became worse and worse. Soon there were little more than Gardens covered in rocks to hold down the little topsoil that remained the
population withered. Within a few generations they turned to the rats by the
1700s their diet was 60% rat. It was all that was left
But that's not how the gods fell. This was done in their name.
The collapse was slow so no connection was made to the coral eyes that watched it happen but on April 5th
1722 that all changed a Dutch ship arrived looking for new worlds it found a society crumbled but sustained.
It would not leave it that way
the Dutch brought with them two gifts
smallpox and syphilis
Like the Americas before them, Rapa Nui fell to the scourge. At their arrival the island population was estimated at around
10,000 people. Moai stood watch over a crippled
but stagnant society. True believers. By the second time they arrived only
2,000 remained. The Moai had fallen. They were pushed over by a people who no longer felt their gaze. People who could no longer
believe in their gods. How can you believe in something that can't protect you from such complete destruction?
How can you believe in a God that kills your entire family your entire village your entire tribe?
By the time Western scientists had arrived the entire religion had changed they no longer believed in the Moai
But now the Birdmen. Birds could fly away from here. They were untethered to this land of death.
They hadn't collapsed like everything else had. And for a time
They would make a new god
But this God too would fall. The West was not done with these islands. Over the next hundred years
what had been started with disease was completed with sadism.
Slavers from Peru came to Rapa Nui looking for fresh blood. They took every single educated member of society
Every single one
Despite pressure from abroad to return them virtually none would ever make it home alive. In
stripping this of their last connection to the past those slavers stole more than just people. They stole the culture, the history, and the
society. All of it
They're the reason we have no knowledge of this islands past. The aural records lived in those slaves in killing them
They killed this Island's living memory its ability to read its own writing, to tell its own stories. In
killing them they killed the gods for good and whatever they left behind missionaries put the final nail in. In
1888 Chile took control
They renamed the island, ghettoized its people, and crushed the dreams of autonomy right up to the modern day
Only in the last few years has any progress been made at all to make up for any of it
It's the lip service of a liberal society
No land has truly been returned. I suspect it never will. That's just not how the world works
Rapa Nui was shattered never to be whole again
No one thing destroyed this society. It collapsed at many different times in many different ways.
Each piece was just a new dark cloud on the horizon of the island.
But only one killed the gods.
Total annihilation from foreign disease and invasion.
The Dutch may not have intended to destroy this culture, but they did it anyway
The Peruvians may not have intended to steal their history, but they did it anyway.
The tourists may not be here trying to steal the culture, but they'll do it anyway.
Because the gods may be dead but
their bones are
beautiful.
This is Rare Earth.
How'd you feel about the soccer game I feel like we're winning on the bench yeah
Everyone was offered to play it you were offered to play and you offered vomit in return
fair