Fun Facts with Bess

Hello dear readers. Yesterday, at the creation of this blog, I introduced myself. Now I will introduce the blog. As you could probably tell from the title (and the color scheme) this is to be an environmentalist blog. As a result, I have decided to do several things

1) Have a post every Sunday that talks about an environmental event, historic or current.

2) End every post with a trivia question (Those who answer in my comments will get a shout out and a pony through the mail in about six to eight weeks)

3) Have a greening tip on Mondays (start your week with a little environmental reform! Stay tuned for Energy Star Light bulbs this Monday!)

So, without further delay, here is my first environmental event.

Easter Island

A very long time ago, a whole bunch of Polynesian sea travelers decided to get in a bunch of tiny canoes and row to the middle of the ocean. This went pretty well for a while, and at about the point when land was starting to look like a pretty cool idea, they spotted an island and decided that they were going to live there even if it happened to be populated by cannibalistic giants. This island happened to be Easter Island. Well, they landed on Easter Island some many thousand years ago, bringing with them a few plants from their homeland. It turned out, however, that Easter Island happened to be semi arid, hot, and possessed of very poor soils. I guess, however, that a near desert looked better than more time at sea, so there on Easter Island they built their humble shelters and attempted to cultivate their humble plants. This first attempt bore fruit, but the latter, in every sense of the word, did not. In fact the only thing they managed to grow were yams, which, although delicious, grow tedious after time. They ate this nutritionally adequate but intensely repetitive food, not for a week, or a month, or a year, but about a thousand.

And somehow they managed to flourish. In fact they were so proud of their prominent success in flourishing that they decided to erect a couple of statues made of stone. To do so they chopped down a great many trees and then quarried a whole lot of rock and when they were finished they had a very handsome fellow who stood quite tall and would make Easter Island famous long after more unfortunate events occurred. Well, it looked so darn cool that they figured they'd build another one. And after that, well, you needed three to complete the set. In short, they began to run out of trees.

From then on out Easter Island began to literally wash away into the sea. It turned out that the trees had been performing a thankless task for thousands of years. They had been keeping the soil from eroding so that the people of Easter Island could grow yams. When they disappeared the soil went with them and the yams could not longer be grown. You might think this would be a relief, I’m sure after a thousand years no one on that island ever wanted to see a yam again, much less eat one. However, after the passing of the yam, there was nothing let to eat but chickens. These chickens suddenly became very important, and, consequently, very scarce. People began to build chicken houses to protect their chickens, and in a final desperate attempt to placate their gods, built still more statues with the remaining trees.

Many years went by and white traders appeared on the island.

They found nothing there but the huge statues and a handful of natives who were living in caves and resorting to cannibalism to keep alive. When questioned as to how the giant statues were erected it was discovered that the natives no longer recalled the methods their ancestors used. They replied simply that the statues had walked there. As there were no trees left on Easter Island the scientists scratched their heads, decided it was a miracle and took pictures of the statues and put them on postcards. Then they all sat down together, invented archeology, and figured out what actually happened and published a book, which I read.

Well, that's the environmental story of the day. Now here's the question (that has nothing to do with the post, but, whatever)

Environmental Question: What is the difference between extinction and extirpation?

post answers!!!!!!
And have an awesome week!