Lessons from Easter Island | Carl Lipo | TEDxBermuda

This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences. Anthropologist Dr. Carl Lipo says everything we thought about Easter Island’s famous collapsed civilisation is wrong. He suggests Bermuda can learn lessons from that catastrophe about long-term survival on our own isolated, water-parched island.

I currently serve as an Associate Professor at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB). I am part of the faculty of that forms the basis of a Program in Archaeology and a founding member of IIRMES, a multi-disciplinary institute for the study of materials, environments and society. At CSULB, I teach classes in Introductory Archaeology, World Prehistory, Eastern North American Prehistory, Artifact Analysis, GIS, Statistics, Method and Theory, Foundations of Anthropology Field Research Design, Geophysical Techniques, and the Scientific Study of Origins. My research focuses on the use of evolutionary theory to generate scientific explanations about human cultural change in the archaeological record. I see this focus as a critical challenge for the social sciences and that our ability to be able to due this task vital to our future. My perspective is fairly idiosyncratic to my background but lodged in the philosophy of science and evolutionary biology. You can view some of my recent work (here) to see a little into how I think about the world. My recent studies include the development of theoretical models and the construction of methods for studying patterns of change caused by cultural transmission and the process of natural selection in cultural systems. In addition, I have interests in remote sensing to efficiently and non-destructively study the record. This work includes the use of magnetometry, resistivity, conductivity, thermal imagery and ground penetrating radar. My field research has taken me from the Mississippi river valley to Easter Island to California and coastal Guatemala.

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[scotty]

Hotu Matua is the older brother to Hotu Roa.
Hotu Roa was the Captain of the Tainui Canoe that left Rapa Nui in search of another land to live in and following the Southern Cross Star Constellation bought them to New Zealand(Aoetearoa)
Now known as Maori.
The descendants of the Tainui Canoe are the Waikato people located on the west side of North Island in New Zealand.

[hehunches]

Lipo demonstrates that only an engineer could come to logical conclusion about how these structures were made and moved. Woah. Amazingh.

[ritchyrich]

Much love to our Rapa nui brothers and sisters.

[thebigriddle]

Based on the graph, the number of Maoi falling over seems to correspond to European contact. Statutes are standing prior to European contact, then they start to fall over. I am sure some fell over on their own, but I am sure a number of them were pushed over by outsiders.

[blancaroca]

Interesting stuff! What about the destruction of the trees which was supposed to a big thing?

[losmuertos]

Great presentation. I would have loved to listen about findings about the moai top hats and also who the team of Japanese were that came post 1950 to stand moai up

[MrBg]

If the community was so small and so isolated...it seems building and keeping that statues was the thing that gave a sense of the community. Doing something toghether, something in what all belived and participated. Despite the basic labor for producing food.
From otherhand in sertan moment of natural changes that cultural norm of making statues could over ehsoste the rescources. Could be both true.

[bertiepimplebum]

If you were a passing alien, where would you land? Easter Island statues depict what they looked like.

[Blue-glhw]

If people got there and started to make the statues, why aren't there similar statues elsewhere?

[russg]

OK, am I the only one who concludes that the Moai, rather than being a waste of human labor, might actually be the BYPRODUCT of those rock gardens? IOW, they were what was left over after they quarried the minerals they needed? Carving the statues might have simply provided some motivation for what would otherwise have been a task of pure drudgery.

[AngloFrancoDane]

Thank you!  I have read these things but this is a great presentation.

[pokemasterx]

Also why is he so trusting of accounts made by people at that time?

[TheGhettoBirds]

Great talk! The Earth is our only land and we should take care of it.

[christiribbons]

They probably got most of their food from the ocean

[pokemasterx]

Maybe he could have talked about the ecological disaster after cutting all the trees, but ye

[MrGigigigia]

It's easy. The statue fall on their own over time.

[chaosmasker]

I think maybe those tools are coconut openers 😕

[teressakarr]

I have a theory on how they moved these statues on Easter island. They used beeswax. After the statues were removed from the quarry they left a long narrow rectangular vein on the backs and inserted that into a tract they constructed and slid them on a cushioned pathway they created using Palm leaves soaked with beeswax, thus a frictionless surface. They easily slid them down the mountain, so to onlookers at the base of the mountain it would appear these statues were walking. Once the statues were on more level ground they inserted compressed beeswax slabs under the front angled space in the base to move them to the platform. Once the statues were in place they carved off the vein and levelled the base.

[stewmsinternational]

It's like there is only one ideolgy that permeates every single tedtalks..

[virginiahelzainka]

whos here after watching leblanc video