Researcher uncovers surprising cause of the demise of Easter Island indigenous population

Easter Island Credit: Yale

A new paper by a team of researchers including a Virginia Commonwealth University anthropology professor sheds new light on what led to the downfall of the indigenous population of Easter Island — also known as Rapa Nui — prior to European contact in 1722.

The study, "Variation in Rapa Nui (Easter Island) Land Use Indicates Production and Population Peaks Prior to European Contact," published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that the population's demise likely had more to do with pre-existing environmental conditions than with environmental degradation by the indigenous people.

Christopher Stevenson, Ph.D., an assistant professor of anthropology in the School of World Studies in the College of Humanities and Sciences, recently discussed his team's findings with VCU News.

Your paper explores what led to the collapse of the prehistoric population of Rapa Nui. What did you conclude?

Our paper evaluates a longstanding debate and examines whether the prehistoric population of Rapa Nui experienced a significant islandwide demographic collapse prior to European contact in A.D. 1722. We have used dates from hydrated obsidian artifacts recovered from habitation sites as a proxy for land use over time. The analysis suggests region-specific dynamics that include abandonment of western coast and interior locations. These temporal land-use patterns correlate with rainfall variation and soil quality. The environmental stresses are regionally specific rather than islandwide. Significant erosion around the entire island generated by deforestation has been hypothesized by other researchers as a cause for economic failure. This does not hold up to scrutiny.

How would you characterize the significance of your findings?

This analysis demonstrates that the concept of a sudden "collapse" is a misleading characterization of prehistoric human population dynamics. As a result, we see our approach as useful in the study of other prehistoric societies for which a very rapid demographic collapse has been proposed in prehistory.

Although small, islands can be complex ecosystems that are structured by climatic variation and underlying geology. Human activities are constrained by these parameters and can even cause the ecosystem conditions to change appreciably through their manipulation of the landscape.

Were you surprised by what you found? In what ways?

The results of our research were really quite surprising to our team. Indeed, in the past we’ve published articles about how there was little evidence for pre-European contact societal collapse. When we proposed the [National Science Foundation-funded] project we were expecting that we would gather data supporting the notion that change did not occur until after European contact. In contrast our research suggests that significant changes in land use occurred prior to European contact. The connection between those changes in land use and notions of environmental degradation and subsequent societal collapse are limited.

There is no evidence that massive physical erosion took place on Rapa Nui before European contact and it is unlikely that physical erosion caused productivity decline and societal collapse. While we do not have direct population data, it is clear that people were reacting to regional environmental variation on the island before they were devastated by the introduction of European diseases and other historic processes. In short, our research does not support the suggestion that societal collapse occurred prior to European contact due to physical erosion and productivity decline, but it does indicate that use of less optimal environmental regions changed prior to European contact.

What did your research methodology entail?

We used a method called obsidian hydration dating to date the human creation of volcanic glass tools found at habitation sites. These dates were a proxy for the relative number of people on the island throughout prehistory. We also used an analysis of soil nutrients to look at the fertility of various landforms (e.g., coastal vs. upland) at different elevations up to 500 meters above sea level.

You've written several books on Rapa Nui. What led to your interest in this topic?

This is a continuation of my interest in looking at the development of agricultural systems in small island societies and how that impacts social and economic decisions made in prehistory.

What will you be working on next?

We will be applying some of the same concepts to the Canary Island agricultural systems which have a much higher diversity of geological ages and climatic conditions.

Source: Vcu

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Peru’s indigenous people call for protections against environmental threats

As delegates from around the world gather in Lima, Peru, to work on a framework on climate change, thousands of Peruvians flocked to the capital to demand better protection for their lands and cultures. As part of our Culture at Risk series, Jeffrey Brown reports from Lima on the struggle to balance the protection of remote indigenous communities with industry and growth.
Credit: Jeffrey Brown

GWEN IFILL: International delegates have gathered for climate change talks in Lima, Peru, this week, hoping to build the framework for a plan to cut the world’s heat-trapping gas emissions.

Secretary of State John Kerry arrived there today to help with that new accord. But, for many Peruvians, the focus is local, as mining and timber operations encroach into once pristine areas inhabited by indigenous tribes.

Jeffrey Brown is in Lima, and has this report, part of his series Culture at Risk.

JEFFREY BROWN: There were dancers and drummers, banners and chants, traditional clothing of all kinds, a march of thousands, many of them tribal people, that shut down part of downtown Lima for several hours, demanding better protection of their lands and their cultures. They came from near and far, some very far.

This group from the Ucayali region in Eastern Peru had traveled for several days, by boat, plane, and bus, to get here from their remote homes.

Grimaldo Villacorta heads the group.

GRIMALDO VILLACORTA (through interpreter): For us, as an indigenous population, it’s important to be here, because we want to stop climate change. We used to have regular seasons, summer and winter, during which we planted our seeds. But now, with the climate changing, we can work the land, but sometimes we cannot plant seeds. There is no production.

JEFFREY BROWN: This demonstration was set up as a kind of counterpoint to the official climate talks going on across town. The idea is to raise awareness about the increasing and increasingly violent encroachment on tribal lands in Peru and elsewhere around the globe.

Throughout the crowd, portraits of one of the martyrs of this movement, Edwin Chota, a Peruvian environmental activist from the Ashaninka Indian tribe who’d spent years fighting illegal logging on his community’s lands.

In September, Chota and three others from the village of Saweto were shot and killed near the Brazilian border, in the vast Amazon Basin that’s home to about half of Peru’s more than 1,500 indigenous communities, with some 300,000 people. Chota had spoken of threats he received as he fought to gain official title to his lands and keep loggers at bay.

EDWIN CHOTA, Environmental Activist (through interpreter): They are loggers. They have arms. They have everything. And they are never going to pay attention to us. So we need the support of government institutions to protect the region at the border.

JEFFREY BROWN: Chota’s remains were found by a river near his home. Two loggers have been charged with his murder.

That and other incidents led the advocacy group Global Witness to declare Peru one of the world’s most dangerous countries for environmental activists. And by all accounts, illegal logging, mining, and drug trafficking have been on the rise in this area. The World Bank estimates, for example, that some 80 percent of Peru’s timber exports were cut without a permit.

In Lima this week, Patricia Balbuena, the vice culture minister who overseas indigenous relations, said the government is working to resolve land ownership disputes, but that administrations past and present have struggled to ensure legal rights and safety in these distant communities.

PATRICIA BALBUENA, Vice Minister of Intercultural Affairs, Peru (through interpreter): These are remote areas with very little government presence because of geographical barriers. For example, from the capital of Pucallpa region to the community of Saweto, it takes six to eight days by boat.

That is why the most important issue is to assure the government’s presence, not only in terms of a military or police presence, but also in what a government should provide to its indigenous populations: health, education, social services, and security.

JEFFREY BROWN: Encroachment deep into Amazon forests may also be behind scenes like this, as previously isolated or uncontacted tribes come into the open.

Last year, more than 100 members of the Mashco-Piro tribe appeared at a river in Southeast Peru.

Anthropologist Beatriz Huertas studies groups like this who’ve chosen to live apart from civilization. She thinks she knows why more are now making contact.

BEATRIZ HUERTAS, Anthropologist (through interpreter): I think that, first of all, it’s owed to the great pressures on their lands and natural resources, and that those are forcing these isolated peoples to alter their ways and are leading to their displacement.

JEFFREY BROWN: There are more such tribes than you might think. The advocacy group Survival International estimates there are 15 in Peru alone, and at least 100 around the globe.

The highest concentration is here in the Amazon. Citing the threat of contagious disease and other problems that have decimated previously uncontacted tribes, Beatriz Huertas says the government needs to take immediate action.

BEATRIZ HUERTAS (through interpreter): To protect them, it’s necessary to officially recognize their lands and to establish a series of protection mechanisms to guarantee their lives, their health and the right of these populations to decide for themselves what lives they want to live.

JEFFREY BROWN: I asked Vice Minister Balbuena the overarching question, how Peru can foster investment and growth, while also protecting vulnerable people and cultures.

PATRICIA BALBUENA (through interpreter): I think we always feel we need to do more. I think the demands of the indigenous peoples require us to act faster. And we can’t advance a peaceful society if we don’t find a balancing point between growth on the one hand and respect and protection of rights on the other.

JEFFREY BROWN: Achieving a balance has also, of course, been on the minds of attendees at the climate change summit this week in Lima. After years of setbacks and sidesteps, the goal here is for nations to commit, or at least commit to committing, to specific domestic emissions cuts.

The grand hope, a new global treaty to be signed at next year’s meeting in Paris. The effort got a boost last month with an agreement between China and the U.S., the world’s largest economies and polluters, to limit their greenhouse gas emissions over the next two decades.

In pavilions open to the public, Peruvians of all ages took in exhibitions that explained the tangible effects of climate change. There, conference attendee Chris Field told me he felt encouraged by what he’d heard so far at the meetings, but that huge challenges remained.

CHRIS FIELD, Carnegie Institution: The big challenge is ambition of mitigation, how much we decrease the emissions of heat-trapping gases, ambition of adaption, how much we invest in helping people cope with the climate changes that can’t be avoided, and how tightly those two things should be connected.

JEFFREY BROWN: And getting — and getting individual countries to actually make commitments.

CHRIS FIELD: Well, what you find is that, kind of constitutionally, there’s a difference between the perspective that the developed countries take, which is really focused on mitigation aspects, and the developing countries, who want to see much more of a interlinkage between investments in decreasing amounts of heat-trapping gases and increasing investments in helping people cope.

JEFFREY BROWN: Case in point, of course, is the host country itself, which faces many long-term environmental threats and, as tribal demonstrators shouted in the streets, immediate, urgent ones that demand answers and actions.

I’m Jeffrey Brown reporting from Lima for the “PBS NewsHour.”

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How culture influences violence among the Amazon's ‘fierce people'

In this mid-1960s photo, men from two Yanomamo villages in the Amazon engage in nonhostile combat to determine the strength and fighting prowess of potential alliance partners. A new study from the University of Utah and University of Missouri indicates the Yanomamo -- who engaged in killing to gain status in past decades -- often formed alliances with men in different villages when they attacked and killed people in other communities, then married their allies' sisters or daughters. The idea is they fought like a 'band of brothers-in-law' more than a closely related 'band of brothers,' fathers and sons from a single community. [show less] Credit: Napoleon Chagnon

When Yanomamö men in the Amazon raided villages and killed decades ago, they formed alliances with men in other villages rather than just with close kin like chimpanzees do. And the spoils of war came from marrying their allies' sisters and daughters, rather than taking their victims' land and women.

Those findings -- which suggest how violence and cooperation can go hand-in-hand and how culture may modify any innate tendencies toward violence -- come from a new study of the so-called "fierce people" led by provocative anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon and written by his protégé, University of Utah anthropologist Shane Macfarlan.

Macfarlan says the researchers had expected to find the Yanomamö fought like "bands of brothers" and other close male kin like fathers, sons and cousins who live in the same community and fight nearby communities. That is how fights are conducted by chimpanzees -- the only other apes besides humans that form coalitions to fight and kill.

Instead, "a more apt description might be a 'band of brothers-in-law,'" in which Yanomamö men ally with similar-age men from nearby villages to attack another village, then marry their allies' female kin, Macfarlan, Chagnon and colleagues write in the study, published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The study provides a mechanism to explain why Yanomamö warriors in a 1988 Chagnon study had more wives and children than those who did not kill.

"We are showing these guys individually get benefits from engaging in killing," Macfarlan says. "They're getting long-term alliance partners -- other guys they can trust to get things done. And they are getting marriage opportunities."

Since his 1968 book "Yanomamö: The Fierce People," Chagnon has been harshly criticized by some cultural anthropologists who claim he places undue emphasis on genes and biology as underpinnings of human violence, based on his 1964-1993 visits to the Yanomamö. Defenders such as Macfarlan say Chagnon takes a much more balanced view, and that "it's never a genes-versus-culture argument. They operate in tandem."

Chagnon got what was seen as vindication in 2012 when he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. The new study, with Macfarlan as first author and Chagnon as senior author -- is Chagnon's inaugural PNAS article as a member.

Macfarlan joined the University of Utah faculty this year an assistant professor of anthropology. He worked as Chagnon's postdoctoral fellow at the University of Missouri from January 2013 to June 2014. Chagnon and Macfarlan conducted the study with two Missouri colleagues: anthropologists Robert S. Walker and Mark V. Flinn.

Models of Warfare

The Yanomamö -- hunters and farmers who live in southern Venezuela and northern Brazil -- once gained social status as "unokai" for killing.

Up to 20 Yanomamö (pronounced yah-NO-mama, but also spelled Yanomami or Yanomama) would sneak up on another village at dawn, "shoot the first person they saw and then hightail back home," Macfarlan says. Some Yanomamö men did this once, some up to 11 times and some never killed. (Data for the study, collected in the 1980s, covered somewhat earlier times when spears, bows and arrows were the primary weapons.)

Macfarlan says the classic debate has been, "does warfare in small-scale societies like the Yanomamö resemble chimpanzee warfare?" -- a theory known as the "fraternal interest group" model, in which bands of brothers, fathers, sons and paternal uncles all living in the same community fight other similar communities.

The new study asked whether Yanomamö killing follows that model or the "strategic alliance model," which the researchers dub the "band of brothers-in-law" model. This model -- supported by the study's findings -- indicates that Yanomamö men form alliances not with close kin from the same community, but with men from other communities. After killing together, a bond is formed and they often marry each other's daughters or sisters and move into one or the other's village or form a new village.

"When we started off this project, we all assumed it would be the chimpanzee-like model. But in human groups we have cultural rules that allow us to communicate with other communities. You certainly don't see chimpanzees doing this."

Is the study a retreat from what Chagnon's critics see as too much focus on genetic and biological underpinnings of violence? Macfarlan says no, that Chagnon "has never been as all-biology as people have painted him. Most of his published research shows how unique cultural rules make the Yanomamö an interesting group of people."

Earlier research suggested that for chimps, warfare is adaptive in an evolutionary sense, and that it also benefits small-scale human societies. The new study asked, "If warfare is adaptive, in what way do the adaptive benefits flow?" Macfarlan says.

"Some people, myself included, said, to the victor goes the spoils, because if you conquer another territory, you might take their land, food or potentially their females."

But the new study indicates "the adaptive benefits are the alliances you build by perpetrating acts of warfare," he adds. "It's not that you are taking land or females from the vanquished group, but for the Yanomamö, what you acquire is that you can exchange resources with allies, such as labor and, most importantly, female marriage partners."

The study's findings that the Yanomamö form strategic alliances to kill suggest that "our ultracoooperative tendencies tend to go hand-in-hand with our ultralethal tendencies," Macfarlan says. "We show a relationship between cooperation and violence at a level unseen in other organisms." That may seem obvious for allied nations in modern wars, but "we're saying that even in small-scale societies this is the case."

How the Study was Conducted

The new study analyzed data collected by Chagnon in the 1980s, when about 25,000 Yanomamö lived in about 250 villages ranging from 25 to 400 people.
The study examined 118 Yanomamö warriors or unokai who had killed a total of 47 people by forming raiding parties of two to 15 men. The researchers analyzed the relationships between every possible pair of men in those raiding parties. Among the 118 unokai men, there were 509 possible pairs. Macfarlan says the findings revealed surprises about the relationship between co-unokai -- pairs of men who kill together:

-- Only 22 percent of men who kill together were from the same lineage.

-- Only 34 percent of co-unokai pairs were from the same place of birth. "Guys who come from different places of birth are more likely to kill together."

-- Among co-killers known to be related, a majority were related on their mother's side rather than their father's side -- more evidence of forming alliances beyond the immediate paternal kinship group. In Yanomamö culture, true kin are viewed as being on the paternal side, while maternal relatives are seen as belonging to another social group.

-- The Yanomamö preferred forming coalitions with men within a median of age difference of 8 years. "The more similar in age, the more likely they will kill multiple times," Macfarlan says.

-- Of the 118 unokai, 102 got married in a total of 223 marriages to 206 women. Of married killers, 70 percent married at least one woman from the same paternal line as an ally in killing. And "the more times they kill together, the more likely they are going to get marriage partners from each other's family line," Macfarlan says.

-- As a result, "The more times the guys kill together, the more likely they are to move into the same village later in life, despite having come from different village."

The study found allies-in-killing often are somewhere between maternal first and second cousins, Macfarlan says. Under Yanomamö rules, a man's ideal marriage partner is a maternal first cousin, who would be the offspring of your mother's brother. He says Yanomamö rules allow marriage to a maternal first cousin, but not a paternal first cousin.

Despite debate over the biological roots of deadly coalitions in chimps and humans, the new study shows how culture can make it "uniquely human" because if Yanomamö men "kill together, they are plugged into this social scene, this marriage market," Macfarlan says. "They are playing the game of their culture."

Source: University of Utah

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Home on the range: Cattle ranching in the Amazon

Rubber tapper children ride their steer home from school in the Brazilian state of Acre.
Credit: Image courtesy of University of California - Santa Barbara

In a paper published in the current issue of the journal Human Organization, UC Santa Barbara anthropologist Jeffrey Hoelle takes a look at the rise of cattle ranching in the Brazilian state of Acre and the processes that brought it to one of the greenest corners of western Amazonia.

According to Hoelle, an assistant professor of anthropology, the Amazonian research on cattle usually falls into one of two camps: documentation of the environmental consequences of cattle raising -- the leading driver of Amazonian deforestation -- or analysis of the ways that policies and markets interact to make cattle and pasture more profitable than the standing forest. His article aims to expand the study of Amazonian cattle raising to include "cattle culture," the positive cultural constructions associated with a cattle-raising lifestyle that contribute to its appeal over other ways of using the land.

In Acre, Hoelle writes, "the rubber tapper movement protested the arrival of cattle ranching in the 1980s, capturing worldwide attention with a message of sustainable forest-based development. Across Amazonia, groups who once opposed or were displaced by cattle are now adopting it, including Acrean rubber tappers and colonists."

Using primary data he collected among rural and urban groups in Acre, Hoelle demonstrates, through a discussion of two processes that result in very different types of cultural expression, how cattle culture emerged in this unlikely place.

On the one hand, he notes, the subsistence uses of cattle led to cultural beliefs that were based on interdependence and resembled cattle complexes from other parts of the world. Yet local economic relationships with cattle could not explain the explosion of a "cauboi" (cowboy) model in which human control of cattle and nature was celebrated by men and women with shiny belt buckles, tight jeans, boots and a love of rodeos and "sertananeja" or "contri" (country) music.

Rubber tapper Jatobá Rocha was hesitant about cattle when Hoelle first met him in 2007. A year later, however, he bought a young bull named Tchoa, who quickly became a member of the family, pulling his own weight -- literally, with an oxcart -- and serving as a means of transportation for the Rochas.

Hoelle explained that people raise cattle all over the world in different ways, from subsistence pastoralism in East Africa to large-scale capitalist ranching in the Americas, with smallholders who fall somewhere in between these economic and ecological systems. In traditional nomadic pastoralism, humans regarded their cattle as individuals -- as the Rochas do Tchoa -- and develop an emotional connection with them. With large-scale ranching, cattle are a nameless commodity.

"For the cowboys and ranchers, the objective is to raise cattle as if they were a crop to be harvested at the right time," Hoelle said. "You don't want to hurt the herd to the extent that you'll jeopardize your investment, but you do need to dominate it." This economic relationship is recreated symbolically in rituals such as rodeos, he noted.
"If, however, you're relying on a cow for its milk, or if you're going to ride it to the store, you have to establish a relationship with the animal," he continued. Deep cultural connections form from that relationship, such as India's "sacred cow" or the cattle complex in East Africa. Hoelle argued the same thing happens deep in the heart of capitalist ranching in the Amazon.

He emphasized that it isn't necessarily ranching/pastoralism or capitalism/subsistence that explains the type of cattle culture that emerges, but rather the type of relationship that humans have with animals to secure products or services from them. "This really became apparent when I stopped looking at the ways that cowboys roughed up the cattle and focused instead on the affection they showed their horses," Hoelle continued. "They'd name their horses, hug them around the neck and nudge them playfully, and probably punch you if you asked about eating their beloved equine."

For the cowboys, horses were essential economic tools for securing the production of cattle; whereas for smallholders, the cattle served a similar function in terms of daily reliance. In both cases, cultural beliefs develop to protect vital resources.

Since the arrival of cattle in Acre, Hoelle said, these animals have been surrounded by violence, deforestation and displacement. "It is surprising that cattle raising and cattle culture have expanded across Amazonia, and especially in Acre," he commented. "It is also troubling for those of us concerned with sustainable alternatives to cattle raising. My point is that you have to put that aside for the moment and attempt to understand why it makes sense for those adopting it."

Understanding the appeal of the cowboy in the Amazon rainforest is critical to understanding the appeal of cattle raising, he noted. "The cowboy persona is something people strive for. It's very strong there, and really important in terms of the way people interact with nature," Hoelle said. "Being the strong manly type who can face the forest and transform it into this nice uniform pasture full of big domesticated animals is very powerful in the way it communicates ideals of masculinity, modernity and development."

From a distance of thousands of miles, it's easy for us here in the U.S. to decry the Acreans' decimation of the rainforest to expand cattle-grazing land. Our instinct is to preserve the rainforest because of its vital contribution to the world. "But those who are living it see themselves in the same way pioneers and settlers have throughout history. There is a drive to tame the frontier -- to control or cultivate nature," Hoelle explained. While this tendency has declined in the U.S., it remains front and center for those attempting to make a living in a place where people really do feel that they are under constant assault from the forest, he noted. In this context, the cowboy is an appealing figure, while here it might be more common to romanticize the Indians.

Hoelle, the author of the forthcoming book, "Rainforest Cowboys: The Rise of Ranching and Cattle Culture in Western Amazonia," emphasized that crafting appropriate policy solutions requires an understanding of the interlinked political, economic and cultural features of Amazonian cattle raising.

Source: University of California - Santa Barbara

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