Easter Island, Collapse- Parellisms and Differences

What I found interesting was the people's surprise and lack of comprehension that the statues was able to be comprised without the machines and technology that we have come to rely on. Since machines are a fairly recent development when we take in the whole of human life on earth. After all the eygptians were able to build the great pyramids with tons of slaves a statue can work the same way.

The people of Easter Island developed agriculture and with it social ranks. Eventually over exploiting the soil and creating their own ruin. The people of Easter Island made large stately statues that weighed a few tons solely from man power. The Europeans who came did not understand how it was possible from their lack of technology. Our society is much like the system of Easter Island's. Except I think its done on a much larger scale. Having a greater amount of people and the technology to speed up the rate of which our soil is exploited as well as the discrepancies between the rich and poor. Most Americans are middle class. That of course is also one of the key differences between our two societies. I imagine that even if our agricultural system collapses we will turn to science to try to get us out of it. When we were talking about a collapse in class I imagined how it'd be. the ozone layer is depleted and we no longer have that layer of protection over us, the rate of cancer increases, we further depend on sunscreen/sunblock and that industry explodes in different markets. The markets get to advertise the benefits of different kinds of sunscreens developing more blocking agents. Afterwards, the soil is depleted as well and the agricultural system collapse like Easter's Island did when it used more trees than could be sustained on the Island. Over-farming and wanting to accumulate wealth was their downfall. Which we are in the process of doing. But there is another difference, that is they didn't really know about soil depletion or the consequences of what they were doing. Surely, they saw it by the end, when food was scarce and the island was bare of trees. But they continued what they were doing without a thought to the consequences because they didn't know what they were. We can argue that this is what the US is doing and that isn't completely true. We know what the consequences are, we just choose to ignore it. Since we are aware of this then we can choose not to repeat past mistakes. By conciously choosing to follow the same path, nothing is changed. If we continue our course we'll eventually have a collapse like the one Easter Island encountered. I find though that even if the collapse of a civilization occurs a new one will take its place, because even without a system people still exist and eventually a new system develops to replace the one that was lost. So if this one collapse like the one on Easter Island did, I reckon that either new one would take its place or a developed variation of it.