They know that it should be the opposite to save their island but the king and his court won’t listen to them. The king’s whole lineage cut down as much as they wanted, so he’s having a tantrum that it’s not working out the same for him. He’s doing it anyway. Entitlement can do that to a fellow.
That’s very likely a myth. Other things that were going on at the same time include European slave-taking, new diseases, and the introduction of rats that ate the tree seeds.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_Island#Criticism_of_the_Ecocide_Theory
Everyone’s always blaming the rats
That doesn’t make it any better though, colonization is the same as kings being shitheads.
It may not make it better, but its an argument against the validity of your shower thought.
I think it’s still valid though. Audubon made *certain kinds of birds go extinct because it was fun to shoot them. Humans are weird and selfish when they’re in power. Colonization is the same thing as a king cutting down the last tree, they wanted the resources.
Except it isn’t “the same thing”.
The point of the myth of Rapa Nui ecocide wasn’t “watch out for ecological damage”, it was “primitive barbarians are too stupid to manage their own resources, even when it kills them; we civilized people have to protect them by taking their island away from them and turning it into a park.”
It was a pro-colonialism meme.
When, y’know, in reality those resources, and the people, were being stolen by slavers.
So the lesson really should be “slavers are bad” … which we already knew.
I legitimately never thought of it in those terms. To me what happened, I was told, is what would happen to any group.