Easter Island heads have bodies • Hacker News Board

Re: Easter Island heads have bodies

#51

Post by Daniel_Newby » Sun, Oct 30, 2011, 11:50 AM UTC

GeneTraylor wrote: post #26

Whenever I see an easter island head, I can't help but draw parallels between our global civilization and theirs. The eastern islanders consisted of around a dozen tribes, each competing for resources with others. It's thought that all of these statues were put up in a race by chieftains, competing with one another to put up the biggest, most refined and the best statue. I wouldn't be surprised if they competed in th…

> However what they failed to realize was the inescapable fact that they were living on a small piece of land in the middle of a vast ocean.

Their first problem was that they and their palm trees were too big for the island. A big body size means a low population count, and that means that range of random fluctuations overlaps with zero: extinction. This is why island species evolve towards dwarfism: the Flores "hobbits", dwarf elephants, etc. Like many species that are seeded onto an island, they died out before they could evolve to meet the challenges.

The second problem is that humans are not built for a stable, hospitable situation. Our ability to adapt to change atrophies, so that an emergency becomes a catastrophe. (Look up "water empire".) We are built for constant warfare, plagues, droughts, floods, and so forth.

> I shudder to think what it must have been like to live in this world.

About like the sad story of Rhodesia, renamed Zimbabwe and destroyed as an exercise in social justice.

> Like the eastern islanders we have nowhere to go...

If we build big enough, soon enough, we get the inner solar system, whose resources make our current civilization look like a molecule of water in an ocean. Then we can take the gas giants as an afterthought, whose resources make the inner solar system look like a molecule of water in an ocean. Then we get the galaxy.

Re: Easter Island heads have bodies

#52

Post by Turing_Machine » Sun, Oct 30, 2011, 11:52 AM UTC

GeneTraylor wrote: post #33

gbog wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, nice prose of your, but the tiny blue ball thing is bullshit. Any plane on window seat will show you that the Earth is enormous and empty for most it's parts, even in China. Don't think I advocate more cars and buildings. It's just that the tiny crowded ball argument is wrong, and dangerous, as it can be used to build a nasty antihumanism.

>>> nice prose of your Thank you, but my prose is far from being nice. You should see my boss with a red pen around my prose. :-) >>>but the tiny blue ball thing is bullshit Carl Sagan has another take on the matter. :-) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p86BPM1GV8M >>>Any plane on window seat will show you that the Earth is enormous and empty for most it's parts, even in China. Don't think I advocate more cars and buil…

The earth is where we have to make our stand

Why? We have a whole solar system right on on our front porch.

but the total possible water supply we can access (and this includes the glaciers)

Water doesn't just get used once and then disappear forever. Now, one could certainly make an argument against (say) sucking water out of the Oglalla Aquifer faster than it gets replenished, but that's a localized problem. We aren't going to "run out of water". Really.

Re: Easter Island heads have bodies

#53

Post by Daniel_Newby » Sun, Oct 30, 2011, 11:57 AM UTC

Anti-Ratfish wrote: post #8

alexwolfe wrote: post #7

This is one of the most amazing discoveries I have seen recently. The sheer weight of that stone is absolutely insane. I'm still a little stunned this was just discovered. I would love to know what the people who made this were thinking. To create a work of art that detailed and massive just to bury 75% of it seems very odd. I'm sure there was a good reason to do it (in their minds at least), I'd love to know what th…

Making stuff and burying it is very common in archeology according to my (limited) knowledge. Chucking stuff as offerings into springs, holes etc as offerings. Burin it with dead people (anyone under that stone is now 2 dimensional). But I do agree that this seems odd - half burying...

> Making stuff and burying it is very common in archeology ...

Göbekli Tepe in Turkey is an interesting example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe

Re: Easter Island heads have bodies

#54

Post by trolleycar » Sun, Oct 30, 2011, 12:16 PM UTC

tripzilch wrote: post #41

Of course they have bodies! How is this news to anyone? A good part of these statues are well above ground including their bodies, and we've known the sunken ones have bodies below the ground for several decades already. They've been excavating these statues for quite a while already. Here, go read the Wikipedia article on Moai, it's way more interesting than this article (which is just a copy of the first few paragr…

OK Mr. Know-It-All Troll.

Who cares if you already know this?

Re: Easter Island heads have bodies

#55

Post by dalke » Sun, Oct 30, 2011, 12:16 PM UTC

ibisum wrote: post #43

lukifer wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Setting aside the outlandish CONJECTURE which is the CONTENT of your post, the arbitrary SHOUTING does not aid your CREDIBILITY.

I would have thought quoting SZUKALSKI alone would have set that off, but okay .. not that I'm a huge fan of Zermatism (a subject I would have thought at least a few hackernews visitors might be familiar with) but the ideas of SZUKALSKI are intriguing from the perspective of being able to look outside the box. There is scientific analytical thought, and then there is artistic motive desire, and if you apply both to t…

"if you apply both to the same subject"

Where's the scientific thought?

If the world was covered with an ocean any time soon (call it the last million years so we can include every human culture) then there would be obvious physical traces, and salt-intolerant species, including plants, would have died.

Re: Easter Island heads have bodies

#56

Post by copper » Sun, Oct 30, 2011, 12:35 PM UTC

tripzilch wrote: post #41

Of course they have bodies! How is this news to anyone? A good part of these statues are well above ground including their bodies, and we've known the sunken ones have bodies below the ground for several decades already. They've been excavating these statues for quite a while already. Here, go read the Wikipedia article on Moai, it's way more interesting than this article (which is just a copy of the first few paragr…

I think the fact that they're referred to as Easter Island heads, rather than statues might have had something to do with it :)

More seriously, the iconic pictures of the heads are from Rano Raraku (IIRC), and that is just heads and a bit of neck sticking out of the ground, isn't it?

Re: Easter Island heads have bodies

#57

Post by ibisum » Sun, Oct 30, 2011, 12:49 PM UTC

dalke wrote: post #55

ibisum wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would have thought quoting SZUKALSKI alone would have set that off, but okay .. not that I'm a huge fan of Zermatism (a subject I would have thought at least a few hackernews visitors might be familiar with) but the ideas of SZUKALSKI are intriguing from the perspective of being able to look outside the box. There is scientific analytical thought, and then there is artistic motive desire, and if you apply both to t…

"if you apply both to the same subject" Where's the scientific thought? If the world was covered with an ocean any time soon (call it the last million years so we can include every human culture) then there would be obvious physical traces, and salt-intolerant species, including plants, would have died.

The oceans move, was his point. I would investigate the science, but the science-fiction of a language called Protong is far more intriguing and worthwhile a pursuit. While I will always respect the mainstream desire to discern the truth, a fiction about Easter Island may be just as valid.

Re: Easter Island heads have bodies

#58

Post by gbog » Sun, Oct 30, 2011, 1:09 PM UTC

GeneTraylor wrote: post #33

gbog wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, nice prose of your, but the tiny blue ball thing is bullshit. Any plane on window seat will show you that the Earth is enormous and empty for most it's parts, even in China. Don't think I advocate more cars and buildings. It's just that the tiny crowded ball argument is wrong, and dangerous, as it can be used to build a nasty antihumanism.

>>> nice prose of your Thank you, but my prose is far from being nice. You should see my boss with a red pen around my prose. :-) >>>but the tiny blue ball thing is bullshit Carl Sagan has another take on the matter. :-) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p86BPM1GV8M >>>Any plane on window seat will show you that the Earth is enormous and empty for most it's parts, even in China. Don't think I advocate more cars and buil…

I see a demographic problem if and only if Americans continue spreading their unhealthy way of life.

Re: Easter Island heads have bodies

#59

Post by mooism2 » Sun, Oct 30, 2011, 1:18 PM UTC

gbog wrote: post #58

GeneTraylor wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>> nice prose of your Thank you, but my prose is far from being nice. You should see my boss with a red pen around my prose. :-) >>>but the tiny blue ball thing is bullshit Carl Sagan has another take on the matter. :-) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p86BPM1GV8M >>>Any plane on window seat will show you that the Earth is enormous and empty for most it's parts, even in China. Don't think I advocate more cars and buil…

I see a demographic problem if and only if Americans continue spreading their unhealthy way of life.

It's not about Americans spreading their unhealthy way of life. It's about non-Americans claiming that life (more or less) as their own.

Re: Easter Island heads have bodies

#60

Post by dapyx » Sun, Oct 30, 2011, 1:46 PM UTC

netcan wrote: post #48

gbog wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, nice prose of your, but the tiny blue ball thing is bullshit. Any plane on window seat will show you that the Earth is enormous and empty for most it's parts, even in China. Don't think I advocate more cars and buildings. It's just that the tiny crowded ball argument is wrong, and dangerous, as it can be used to build a nasty antihumanism.

Population growth has some worrying trends if you start thinking in historical time frames. If we continue to grow as is, until we reach some sort of natural barrier we double the population ever 50-60 years. What will the world look like with 25bn (100yrs) or 100bn (200yrs)? What will it look like @ 1 trillion (say 300- 400 yrs)? Somehwere between 50 & 500 years from now we may know the limit. That's not that long i…

The population growth rate is decreasing (the average number of children per woman is down from 5 in the 1950s to 2.5 today) and in much of the industrialized world, it's already going down.

The population is still increasing, but much of it is no longer due to a high birthrate but due to an increase in lifespan.