Ch6-46
Othosmops on Feb. 17, 2025
(russian):
Panel 1:
BRUNO: Oh, they did! At least the upper class of priests and tribal leaders saw the problem. And they solved it how all pre-scientific cultures do: In a magical and religious way.
VILIS: I would not know that magic has helped anywhere in such cases.
Panel 2:
BRUNO: The priests' explanation was that the plight was caused by a lack of worship of the ancestors. The ten tribes of the island began a kind of competition to glorify their ancestors, which they expected would improve the situation. They produced more and more Moais, which also became bigger and bigger.
Panel 3:
MIIKO: that doesn't sound like an uprifted and grounded religiosity like in Japan, more like despair.
BRUNO: The way I see it, the residents of Easter Island were highly stressed. This led to a development which one could say led to a kind of industrialization of the societies. A division of labor emerged in the tribes: farmers, builders, hunters - who exterminated the remaining birds on the island - and, of course, the upper class. This was because intensive agriculture had freed up labor that could be deployed elsewhere.
plymayer at 2:40AM, Feb. 17, 2025
Sad. It's happening here too because of the tourists.
Othosmops at 7:14AM, Feb. 17, 2025
Today, tourists are Easter Island's most important resource. What else would the islanders do for a living?
bravo1102 at 12:17AM, Feb. 17, 2025
And then the Europeans arrived with guns, killed a bunch of people and the ancestors did nothing. Then came the disease and still the Moai did nothing and they started to throw down the moai.
Othosmops at 7:11AM, Feb. 17, 2025
It's not that bad. The ancestors were just very far-sighted and tried to pass on an ingenious business idea to their descendants, namely to present the moais as an attraction to paying tourists.