The need for the Humanities

The need for the Humanities

Wednesday 27 Feb 2019

Easter Island (Hanga Rui) is one of the most remote places in the world. It is also one of the most compelling and mysterious and I suspect features on many people’s ‘bucket lists’ – mine included – so it was with real excitement that I found it was a possible stopping off place between Auckland and Santiago and I was able to spend three days here. The brooding, mysterious Moai, around 900 of them in all and far more complex than I appreciated until seeing them close up, are all around the Island. They are testament to a civilisation that was significantly technically and socially advanced, but one about which we know very little – we don’t know what those Moai represent (other than a vague idea of ancestor worship); we don’t know how they were transported and we don’t know why the civilisation that created them came to such an abrupt end. 

What we do have is clear archaeological evidence and a rich oral history – legend, song and festivals – something similar to attempts to understand the history of most of the Pacific Islands and the story of the Maori settlement of New Zealand. All these cultures had clearly advanced skills in seafaring, engineering and so on, and belief systems to give them a sense of their place and purpose in the world, but there is no surviving written historical record. Since I got to New Zealand I have been reading Michael King’s excellent Penguin History of the country. The second half of the book reads like most histories but the first half explores the years before the arrival of the European settlers and King is faced with something of a dilemma – the absence of written Maori accounts from those early times forces him to resort to hypothesis in the absence of written evidence. King makes the useful point that he has plenty evidence without words (archaeology /geology /science) and plenty words without evidence (legend, song, memory) and when the two say the same thing you start to think you may be closer to the truth. But it challenges historical practice.

The continuity of Maori history allows for a good number of gaps to be filled in (though we still don’t know where the Maori settlers of New Zealand actually came from) but we don’t even have that backstop regarding Hanga Rui. There are plenty of theories and my guide whilst I was there, Lalo, explained things from the perspective of a local who still followed many of the traditional practices but was able to fit the stories and songs of his culture to offer potential explanations. When the science and the stories fit together then it makes for a better chance of having found the truth. A good example is how the enormous statues, 5-10m tall, were moved from the quarry across the Island. Convention assumed they were put on rollers made from tree trunks, but it didn’t explain why many of the discarded statues were face down, nor did it fit with the oral tradition that talks of these stone images, containing the ‘mana’ (prestige/power), walking to their resting places. Experiments since have shown that they could well have been moved in an upright position using ropes, an idea that would concur with both legend and archaeology. 

Understanding what the Moai were for and how they were produced and moved is one thing, understanding how the society came to collapse is a genuine puzzle. We know that some kind of conflict occurred, and that the Moai were pushed over by a victor of sorts (not, as I had assumed, tumbled over time.) We also know that by the end a tropical and lush island had lost all its trees and had been seriously denuded of birds and fish. Some commentators talk of a dramatic ‘ecocide’ where a society simply destroyed the environment on which it depended, certainly a moral tale for our times. It seems hard to imagine the person chopping down that last tree, but interestingly in Michael King’s work he finds a similar tension in New Zealand history where the European settlers had been so keen to recreate the agricultural conditions of Britain that by the middle of the 20^thCentury grasslands that had replaced indigenous species were no longer holding the soil together and New Zealand was literally falling into the sea. The point was made eloquently by New Zealand writer Helen Wilson in 1955 when she reflected on this agricultural challenge but noted that her country had then been ‘too desperately poor to deny the present for the benefit of the future.’ 

On balance, I felt that the more likely, but less dramatic, explanation of non-indigenous rats destroying both flora and fauna over time was the more convincing, coupled with serious piracy in the 19^thCentury that created an unbridgeable gap in the oral history by taking away all those who had the memories to pass down. But it seems unlikely, even with modern techniques, that we will ever know for certain. 

That doesn’t mean there are not lessons to be learnt and reflected upon. I certainly came to think again about the process of history, how we come to agreed positions on events we cannot know about for certain. And I reflected too on the power of faith and a values system and what motivates us. And how critical literacy is to the kind of national story we end up with. It was interesting to see how many of the stories involved groups of 12 or 7, as in so much western myth, how one king stealing another’s bride is a story to explain the settlement of Easter Island just as the legend at Troy, etc. One also becomes quickly aware of how fragile our ecosystems are, and can quickly collapse, whether for natural or man-reasons. I think most of all I felt my time here re-made the case for the study of humanities. Contemporary focus in the UK on STEM and numeracy has pushed humanities to the side in recent years; my time on Easter Island reminded me of the importance of history, geography and theology to making sense of the past, and so understanding the present. They were my last thoughts as I gazed on one lonely Moai (Hana Kio’e) as the sun went down, and, forgive the indulgence, even prompted a poem on the theme.

Hana Kio’e

That proud face

Cold, enduring, cruel

Speaks of a time when you did rule

But how, o’er whom and with what care?

Of written record all is bare

Your sphinx-like face May-be a clue

Or strong, Like Blair, ’til war and coup?

Were you a Thatcher, loved and loathed?

Or Cameron, so cruelly Gove’d?

Or was it fate

            passed you the crown

                        too late?

                                    like Brown

Or Major, Callaghan and Home

Unhappy, delayed, tainted, throne.

If known still now you’d wished to be

And not long lost to History

Rue not Maths, STEM or numeracy

You should have widened literacy