Easter Islanders’ Weapons Were Deliberately Not Lethal

8/17/2019 Easter Islanders’ Weapons Were Deliberately Not Lethal

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http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/02/160222-easter-island-rapa-nui-collapse-archaeology-

moai-mataa-warfare-weapons-Jared-Diamond.html

Researchers say the weapons of Rapa Nui were actually lousy battle tools, and the islanders

wanted it that way.



A new study refutes the theory that civil war, driven by environmental disaster, took place on

Rapa Nui (Easter Island).

PHOTOGRAPH BY JIM RICHARDSON, NATIONAL GEOGRAOHIC CREATIVE

By Kristin Romey

PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 22, 2016

Few stone monuments are as recognizable as the moai of Rapa

Nui (Easter Island), and few cautionary tales are as widely repeated as

the sorry fate of the Polynesian society that crafted the monumental

stone sentinels. The drive to create these enigmatic and enormous

monuments resulted in widespread deforestation, the story goes, which

in turn led to systematic warfare over increasingly scarce resources and,

ultimately, complete societal and economic collapse before the arrival of

the first Europeans in 1722. (Read more: How did islanders move

the moai? )

But now the most common—and most unremarkable—artifacts

on the island are shifting the debate about whether the Rapanui

virtually wiped themselves out in a frenzy of organized violence before

European contact. (Take a photographic tour of Rapa Nui.)



The moai of Rapa Nui (Easter Island) are among the world's most recognizable

monuments.

PHOTOGRAPH BY STEPHEN ALVAREZ, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CREATIVE

By 1877, only 110 Rapanui were alive on the island, and it was

around this time that European ethnographers began to collect their

oral histories about the earlier wars that ravaged their community.

Since then, researchers have suggested that the thousands of small,

three-sided, stemmed obsidian tools found across the island were the

weapons employed in these battles. (Watch the moai "walk." )

In his 2005 book Collapse, former National Geographic

Explorer-in-Residence Jared Diamond characterizes the tools, known

as mata'a, as leftovers "from an epidemic of civil war." The humble

mata’a are even touted as an example of "stone-age weapons

innovation" in a publication by the U.S. government’s Defense Threat

Reduction Agency.

There’s no organized violence and no mass“



However, a new study provides evidence

that mata'a could not have been used as lethal weapons for systemic

violence. This adds to a growing argument among Rapa Nui scholars

that the warfare described in later accounts actually never happened,

and that while the islanders certainly suffered from the effects of

deforestation and environmental degradation, the only

"collapse" occurred following contact with outsiders, who brought

disease and slavery to the Rapanui.

Furthermore, the authors of the study argue that making the

mata'a inefficient as killing tools was a deliberate decision by the

isolated island community, which quickly realized that lethal internal

battles would eventually leave everyone dead.

Douglas Owsley | Physical anthropologist

killing.”



An analysis of obsidian tools known as mata'a shows that they were multipurpose

tools and not systematically manufactured for warfare.

"No more lethal than any other kind of rock"

A research team led by National Geographic grantee Carl Lipo of

Binghamton University analyzed more than 400 Rapa Nui mata'a to see

if there are any consistent patterns in shape and size that can suggest a

particular function for the blades — say, a long, narrow, pointed form

that can effectively penetrate flesh and pierce organs. While the mata'a

ranged from 2.4 to 3.9 inches (six to ten centimeters) in length and

width, the shapes varied so continuously that they were unable to

identify any category of mata'a with a consistent form that would

indicate design for a specific purpose. Rather, the vast variety of shapes

indicate that mata'a most likely served as a multipurpose tool for all

aspects of daily life on the island, including food cultivation and

processing.

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While the sharp edges of mata'a were ideal for cutting and

scraping (a fact supported by earlier use-wear studies), their weight and

asymmetry made them ineffective for inflicting deadly stabbing

wounds, Lipo concludes, calling mata'a "no more lethal than any other

kind of rock."

In a recent study of skeletal material from Rapa Nui, a team led

by Douglas Owsley, Division Head of Physical Anthropology at the

Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, found that only

two of 469 skulls had trauma that could have been inflicted by the slice

of a mata'a. The vast majority of injuries resulted from blunt-force

trauma from thrown rocks, a popular form of attack on Rapa Nui

documented by European visitors who experienced such violence.

Archaeologist Paul Bahn, a proponent of the traditional collapse

theory whose research has been cited extensively by Jared Diamond,

dismisses the idea that mata'a could not have been used as effective

tools of war. " Mata'a could certainly inflict lethal wounds," he says,

"This is essentially a slashing tool. You could do terrible things to

people without leaving a trace on bones."



Many Rapa Nui (Easter Island) scholars believe it was European disease and not

internal warfare that wiped out the island community.

PHOTOGRAPH BY STEPHEN ALVAREZ, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CREATIVE

Owsely is more circumspect. "In my experience, when you’re

really trying to do someone in, you’re going to hit them in the head," he

observes, "and a slash across the face would be picked up in the skeletal

evidence."

The reliance on ethnographic accounts collected centuries after

events allegedly occurred has also been a continual issue among Rapa

Nui scholars. "This was a small population on a small island. Everyone

knew everyone," Owsley observes. "Even the death of a few people,

shared and repeated across the island over and over again can

eventually make violence sound much more pervasive than it actually

was."

A Tacit Understanding Not to Kill?

This is not to say that life on Rapa Nui was conflict-free. "The

Rapanui certainly engaged in violence—you can see all of the healed

injuries on the skeletal remains—and as sharp objects, mata'a could be

used in many threatening ways," says Lipo. But why did the islanders,



who had the technological skill to erect almost a thousand 70-ton moai ,

fail to develop efficiently lethal weapons to battle one another?

"It's not as if they never figured it out, that's crazy," Lipo says.

"They chose not to."

According to the 2012 book The Statues That Walked , written

by Lipo and his colleague, University of Oregon anthropologist Terry

Hunt, it simply didn’t pay to escalate conflict to levels that resulted in

lethal violence on tiny, isolated Rapa Nui, a 64-square-mile (166-

square-kilomter) island that’s 1,500 miles (2,414 kilometers) from its

closest neighbor.

"This island was their entire universe," Lipo explains, "and lethal

violence only pays if you can do it anonymously, kill and leave, or kill

everyone else. Otherwise you’ll face the consequences of killing sooner

or later."

The Rapa Nui community quickly figured this out, he theorizes,

and developed ways to compete with one another that would not

escalate into endless tit-for-tat massacres that would ultimately leave

everyone dead.

The inefficiency of mata'a as killing tools was a

deliberate decision by the isolated island

community.



The current skeletal analysis appears to support this idea. "The

bone fracture data doesn’t conform to periods of intense violence

described in the ethnohistoric accounts," says Owsley. "There’s no

organized violence and no mass killing."

Lipo urges a more critical look at the standard Rapa Nui story of

environmental degradation, conflict and decline. "Science means we

need to understand what really happened," says Lipo, "and I think

there’s a lot of great lessons to learn about what it takes to be successful

on a remote, tiny island where you have to work together."

"Rapa Nui is always treated as a cautionary tale, but I think it’s

the opposite."

Follow Kristin Romey on Twitter

Comment on This Story

Carl Lipo | Anthropologist

Rapa Nui is always treated as a cautionary

tale, but I think it’s the opposite.”

“



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Comment on This Story

Mar 11, 2016

Feb 24, 2016

Newest | Oldest | Top Comments

Randy Elble

Tristan Zimmerman

Sign in 5 people listening

I think the word "refutes" is inappropriate. This is one opinion. "Disputes" would be more accurate.

I'm not convinced by this 'peaceful Easter Island' interpretation. It fails to explain how it is that Easter

Island's population was so small when Europeans first contacted the locals. If it was European diseases

that did them in, where did they, a society without boats and with no evidence of outside trade, contract

those diseases? The claim that tit-for-tat violence will necessarily wipe out a small community also

strikes me as silly. The Icelandic sagas are full of blood feuds and generational violence. If an island

community can't survive tit-for-tat violence, how are there still Icelanders?

That said, the bit about the weapons being deliberately less-dangerous is plausible; I see no reason to

discount it.

Honestly, this looks a lot like whitewashing an indigenous culture. You've got Western anthropologists

studying a violent society. Because Westerners (especially educated ones) tend to view violence as

inherently evil, and because anthropologists inevitably come to befriend their study subjects, the

anthropologists start to develop cognitive dissonance. "These people are my friends. I'm not friends with

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people who are evil. Therefore, my friends are not evil." Next thing you know, they're advocating a

position that, despite all the earlier evidence, the culture they're studying is not violent and never was.

The best part is, by this point, the indigenous culture is partially 'civilized' by missionaries and

government programs, so the incidence of violence has dropped dramatically. This allows the

anthropologists to keep advocating their hypothesis of non-violence without being constantly exposed to

contradictory data.

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Easter Islanders’ Weapons Were Deliberately Not Lethal

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