AEaster Island, or Rapu Nui as it is known locally, is home to several hundred ancient human statues - the moai. After this remote Pacific island was settled by the Polynesians, it remained isolated for centuries. AII the energy and resources that went into the moai - some of which are ten metres tall and weigh over 7,000 kilos - came from the island itself. Yet when Dutch explorers landed in 1722, they met a Stone Age culture. The moai were carved with stone tools, then transported for many kilometres, without the use of animals or wheels, to massive stone platforms. The identity of the moai builders was in doubt until well into the twentieth century. Thor Heyerdahl, the Norwegian ethnographer and adventurer, thought the statues had been created by pre-Inca peoples from Peru. Bestselling Swiss author Erich von Däniken believed they were built by stranded extraterrestrials. Modern science – linguistic, archaeological and genetic evidence - has definitively proved the moai builders were Polynesians, but not how they moved their creations. Local folklore maintains that the statues walked, while researchers have tended to assume the ancestors dragged the statues somehow, using ropes and logs.
A 复活节岛，在当地被称为拉帕努伊(Rapu Nui)，是几百个远古人类雕像(摩艾像)的故乡。波利尼西亚人(Polynesians)在这个遥远的太平洋岛屿定居之后，在几个世纪里复活节岛都与世隔绝。一些摩艾像高达十米，重量超过7000公斤，它们所需的所有能源和资源都来自岛屿自身。当荷兰探险家在1722年登陆时，他们见到了石器时代文化。摩艾像由石器工具雕刻而成，之后在没有使用动物或车辆的情況下长途运送，到巨大的石台上。摩艾像建造者的身份直到20世纪才确定。 来自挪威的民族志学者以及探险家Thor Heyerdahl认为，雕像由秘鲁的前印加时代的人们建立。瑞士畅销作家Erich von Daniken认为它们由滞留的外星人建立。现代科学(语言学、考古学和遗传学证据)确切地证明了摩艾像的建造者为波利尼西亚人，但并不清楚他们如何移动自己的创作品。当地传说认为雕像可以行走，而研究者往往认为当地祖先使用了某些方式拖拽雕像，如使用绳索或原木。
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BWhen the Europeans arrived, Rapa Nui was grassland, with only a few scrawny trees. In the 1970s and 1980s, though, researchers found pollen preserved in lake sediments, which proved the island had been covered in lush palm forests for thousands of years. Only after the Polynesians arrived did those forests disappear. US scientist Jared Diamond believes that the Rapanui people - descendants of Polynesian settlers - wrecked their own environment. They had unfortunately settled on an extremely fragile island – dry, cool, and too remote to be properly fertilised by windblown volcanic ash. When the islanders cleared the forests for firewood and farming, the forests didn't grow back. As trees became scarce and they could no longer construct wooden canoes for fishing, they ate birds. Soil erosion decreased their crop yields. Before Europeans arrived, the Rapanui had descended into civil war and cannibalism, he maintains. The collapse of their isolated civilisation, Diamond writes, is a `worst-case scenario for what may lie ahead of us in our own future'.
B 当欧洲人抵达时，拉帕努伊是一片草原，只有很少的小树木。但是在20世纪70年代和80年代，研究者们在湖泊沉积物中发现了花粉，证明岛屿曾被郁郁葱葱的棕榈树林覆盖了几千年。只是在波利尼西亚人到来之后这些树林才消失。美国科学家Jared Diamond认为是拉帕努伊人(波利尼西亚定居者的后代)破坏了他们自己的环境。他们不幸地定居在了一座板度脆弱的岛屿——干燥，寒冷，太遥远以至于无法得到风吹来的火山灰而变得丰饶。当岛上居民为了木柴和农耕清除了树林，森林便不再生长。随着树木的减少，他们不再能够建造独木舟来捕鱼，转而以鸟类为食。水土流失降低了他们的作物产量。他说，在欧洲人来到之前，拉帕努伊沦落到了内战和自相残杀的地步。他写到，他们文明的坍塌，是一种“在我们自己的未来，可能出现在我们面前的最坏情況”。
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CThe moai, he thinks, accelerated the self-destruction. Diamond interprets them as power displays by rival chieftains who, trapped on a remote little island, lacked other ways of asserting their dominance. They competed by building ever bigger figures. Diamond thinks they laid the moai on wooden sledges, hauled over log rails, but that required both a lot of wood and a lot of people. To feed the people, even more land had to be cleared. When the wood was gone and civil war began, the islanders began toppling the moai. By the nineteenth century none were standing.
C 他认为摩艾像加速了当地的自我毁灭。Diamond将其解释为一种竞争的首领之间的力量展示，他们被困在遥远的小岛上，没有其他方式来巩固自己的統治。因此他们通过建造越来越大的人像来竞争。Diamond认为他们将摩艾像放在木质雪橇上，在木轨上拉动，但这需要大量的木头和人力。为了供养他们，需要清理掉更多的土地。当木头用光，内战开始，岛上居民开始推翻摩艾像。到19世纪已经没有摩艾像屹立在那里了。
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DArchaeologists Terry Hunt of the University of Hawaii and Carl Lipo of California State University agree that Easter Island lost its lush forests and that it was an 'ecological catastrophe' - but they believe the islanders themselves weren't to blame. And the moai certainly weren't. Archaeological excavations indicate that the Rapanui went to heroic efforts to protect the resources of their wind-lashed, infertile fields. They built thousands of circular stone windbreaks and gardened inside them, and used broken volcanic rocks to keep the soil moist. In short, Hunt and Lipo argue, the prehistoric Rapanui were pioneers of sustainable farming.
D 夏威夷大学的考古学家Terry Hunt和加州州立大学的Carl Lipo认为复活节岛失去了茂盛的树林是一种“生态灾难”——但他们认为岛上的居民本身不应该受到指责。摩艾像当然也不应该受到指责。考古发掘表明拉帕努伊人做出了巨大的努力去保护他们受狂风席卷且并不肥沃的土地。他们建造了上千的环形石头防风林，在其中栽培花木，并使用破碎的火山岩保持土壤湿润。简言之，Hunt和 Lipo认为，史前的拉帕努伊人是可持续农业的先行者。
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EHunt and Lipo contend that moai-building was an activity that helped keep the peace between islanders. They also believe that moving the moai required few people and no wood, because they were walked upright. On that issue, Hunt and Lipo say, archaeological evidence backs up Rapanui folklore. Recent experiments indicate that as few as 18 people could, with three strong ropes and a bit of practice, easily manoeuvre a 1,000 kg moai replica a few hundred metres. The figures' fat bellies tilted them forward, and a D-shaped base allowed handlers to roll and rock them side to side.
E Hunt和Lipo认为摩艾像的建立是一项有助于维持岛上居民间和平的活动。他们同样认为移动摩艾像并不需要多少人力，也不需要木头，因为它们可以直立移动。Hunt和Lipo说，在这个问题上，考古学证据支持拉帕努伊的民间说法。最近的实验表明，三条结实的绳子再加上一些练习，仅仅18个人就能够轻松地控制一座1000公斤的摩艾像复制品移动几百米。人像较大的腹部使它们向前倾斜，D字形的底部使操作人员可以把它们从一侧滚向另一侧。
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FMoreover, Hunt and Lipo are convinced that the settlers were not wholly responsible for the loss of the island's trees. Archaeological finds of nuts from the extinct Easter Island palm show tiny grooves, made by the teeth of Polynesian rats. The rats arrived along with the settlers, and in just a few years, Hunt and Lipo calculate, they would have overrun the island. They would have prevented the reseeding of the slow-growing palm trees and thereby doomed Rapa Nui's forest, even without the settlers' campaign of deforestation. No doubt the rats ate birds' eggs too. Hunt and Lipo also see no evidence that Rapanui civilisation collapsed when the palm forest did. They think its population grew rapidly and then remained more or less stable until the arrival of the Europeans, who introduced deadly diseases to which islanders had no immunity. Then in the nineteenth century slave traders decimated the population, which shrivelled to 111 people by 1877.
F 此外，Hunt和Lipo相信树木破坏并非完全由岛上居民所致。考古学研究发现在已经灭绝的复活节岛的棕榈树上的坚果显示出微小的凹槽，这是波利尼西亚鼠的牙齿造成的。Hunt和Lipo估计鼠类同定居者一同到达这里，在短短几年间，它们就覆盖了整座岛屿。也许是它们阻止了缓慢生长的棕榈树林的再次播种，因而甚至在没有居民进行森林砍伐的情况下，注定了拉帕努伊森林的毁灭。毫无疑问老鼠也会以鸟类的蛋为食。Hunt和Lipo同样发现没有证据表明拉帕努伊文明在棕榈树林消失时坍塌。他们认为在欧洲人到来之前，岛上人口在快速増加之后保持了或多或少的稳定，欧洲人带来了致命的疾病，而岛上居民对这些疾病并不具备免疫能力。之后19世纪贩奴商大量杀害岛民，到1877年人口仅剩111人。
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GHunt and Lipo's vision, therefore, is one of an island populated by peaceful and ingenious moai builders and careful stewards of the land, rather than by reckless destroyers ruining their own environment and society. 'Rather than a case of abject failure, Rapu Nui is an unlikely story of success`, they claim. Whichever is the case, there are surely some valuable lessons which the world at large can learn from the story of Rapa Nui.
G 因此，以Hunt和Lipo的观点来看，这个岛屿上居住着和平的有独创性的摩艾像建造者们以及小心翼翼的土地维护者，而不是不计后果毁掉自己的环境与社会的破坏者。他们认为“拉帕努伊是一个不太可能的成功故事，而非一个不幸的失败事件”。不论事实如何，必然存在一些整个世界可以从拉帕努伊的故事上学到的宝贵经验。