We'll always have rats

[urbpan]

From Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond

(Diamond is describing the effect of deforestation on the food available to Easter Islands, as inferred from archaeological evidence.)

"[After all the trees, which among other things were used to build seagoing canoes, were gone...] Most sources of food were lost. Without seagoing canoes, bones of porpoises, which had been the islanders' principal meat during the first centuries, virtually disappeared from middens by 1500, as did tuna and pelagic fish. Midden numbers of fishhooks and fish bones in general also declined, leaving mainly just fish species that could be caught in shallow water or from the shore. Land birds disappeared completely, and seabirds were reduced to relict populations of one-third of Easter's original species, confined to breeding on a few offshore islets. Palm nuts, Malay apples, and all other wild fruits dropped out of the diet. The shellfish consumed became smaller species and smaller and many fewer individuals. The only wild food source whose availability remained unchanged was rats.

Comments

[belen1974.livejournal.com]

sorta off topic, have you seen the PBS "Guns, germs, and steel" bit with him?

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

We saw some of "How the Incas were conquered" the other night. It's on at weird times, but if it's on, we'll watch it. (I took it out of our queue, since it's on tv so much now.)

[artemii.livejournal.com]

rapa nui (what people in the west usually call 'easter island') is such a tempting parable in so many ways, including of how people can survive almost anything and of what happens to an environment that's been terribly overused/overburdened.