A Short History of Progress

On Easter, 1722, a Dutch Fleet first spotted a landmass they would come to call Easter Island. Though the island was covered in gigantic stone statues—maoi, or Easter Island heads—it was barren of trees. The boats of the Polynesian people that lived on the island, though traditionally talented sea-farers, were made of wood scraps.

Settled by the Polynesians in the fifth c. AD, the 64-square mile Easter Island was once verdant. Over time, population on the island grew and a social elite developed. “Each clan began to honour its ancestry with impressive stone images […] as time went on, the statue cult became increasingly rivalrous and extravagant […] meaning more timber, rope, and manpower” (59) used for their manufacture. This process, along with rats brought on European boats, devastated the forests of the island. Wood became a precious commodity, as it also allowed opportunities to fish and leave the island in the form of boats. Wars over wood broke out. The population, which swelled during times of richness, now declined as the people starved. The last archaeological deposits are hordes of weapons, used to fight and defend. Though it happened before their eyes, the people of the island never chose to cease their ecological devastation. They “had been seduced by a kind of progress that becomes a mania, an ‘ideological pathology’” (61).

We can read Easter Island’s collapse as a microcosm of “this big island on which we drift through space” (64), and it is not the only example of a society willfully using up all its resources. The people of Sumer, initially living north of present-day Iraq, had drastically eroded their initial landscape due to deforestation by 6,000 BC and migrated south into Mesopotamia. Though a desert today, southern Iraq was then a marsh. Draining this marsh, they established small towns that grew to cities by 3000 BC

A priestly class developed, managing the temples to which people dedicated portions of their crops. This made religious administration a lucrative career. Trade with other lands became important, and early cuneiform writing was developed as a way of accounting for exchange. As Uruk, the principle city of the Sumerians, grew in wealth, it also developed its trademark city walls and a mercenary class to defend against raids. The priestly class also split into religious administration and a royal elite. The kings claimed divine appointment, and officiated over a clear class hierarchy of slaves, serfs, soldiers, and land-owners. The Royal Tomb Complex at Ur (c. 2300 BC) reveals that with the royal burials, dozens of attendants were also sacrificed, a clear sign of the coercive power and violent methods of this early ruling class. Such violence would become a common theme of rulership: “Around the world, from Egypt and Greece to China and Mexico, the idea that the king’s life was worth so much more than other people’s would take root again and again” (72).

The civilizations of the world are subject to famine, especially as their populations grow and they become dependent on agriculture. As holders of divine status, rulers become holders of agricultural surplus, responsible for its distribution to the masses: a sign of their economic control.

Due to the terraforming of their landscape, the Mesopotamians were particularly susceptible to flooding. This catastrophe is likely the origin of the earliest flood narratives of Mesopotamia, which find their way into the Biblical story of Noah. Over time, consistent flooding ruined the agrarian landscape of Mesopotamia and the region became the desert we know today. Even during their period of decline, the Sumerians were not able to scale back their industrial or military aspirations. Like Easter Island, this ideological pathology contributed to their collapse.