Rapa Nui Hooey?

Ronald Bailey | March 10, 2006

Eco-doomsters have long attributed the ecological "collapse" of Easter Island's civilization to the mad pursuit of status achieved by building gigantic statues. Through the lens of political environmentalism which damns heedless modern consumerism, Easter Island is seen as a harbinger of our future. The most recent popular rendering of this tale of environmental woe is Jared Diamond's very wrong-headed book Collapse.

Now a couple of researchers, Terry Hunt of the University of Hawaii, Manoa, and Carl Lipo of California State University, Long Beach, are questioning the veracity of this cautionary tale. True, Easter Island's once lush forests were gone by the time that Dutch sailors came across it. Why? Instead of the Easter Islanders heedlessly chopping down all of their trees, they argue that the forests could not regenerate because the rats inadvertently brought in by the original Polynesian colonizers ate all of the tree seeds and seedlings. An invasive species, not avaricious humans, got the trees. Naturally, not everyone agrees with the new findings.

However, Hunt and Lipo maintain that even without the forests, Easter Islanders made do and did not suffer a "collapse." In fact, Hunt and Lipo argue that their archaeological data find that there was no population crash until after European sailors introduced diseases and seized inhabitants for slaves. According to LiveScience,

Lipo thinks the story of Easter Island's civilization being responsible for its own demise might better reflect the psychological baggage of our own society than the archeological evidence.

"It fits our 20th century view of us as ecological monsters," Lipo said. "There's no doubt that we do terrible things ecologically, but we're passing that on to the past, which may not have actually been the case. To stick our plight onto them is unfair."

Thus I sadly note that even these researchers apparently believe that while the Easter Islanders are exonerated from being ecological sinners, our modern civilization is still guilty. I think that verdict is wrong too.

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|3.10.06 @ 2:11PM|#

Love the thread title!

I learned how to Rapa Nui dance a few summers ago from two native Easter Islanders. It's a really cute dance, similar to hula.

|3.10.06 @ 2:20PM|#

Whether or not it was the islander's fault, that doesn't change the fact that they ended up screwed, and this might have some relevance to people today.

Garth|3.10.06 @ 2:28PM|#

A couple of thots:

1) I saw the movie and saw them cut down the last tree so that (as they say) is "good enough for me"

2) Is it really true that Rapa Nui means "Belly-button of the World" and if so, are the Moi just some kind of hot jewelry

3) Finally: I happen to have a small Moi on my desk and he is very happy about this post. Now my similarly sized Golem wants more articles on Prague, the Czech Republic and Judaism claiming that they are much more important that Easter Island. Those two bickering keep me up nights.

|3.10.06 @ 2:31PM|#

Funny that you didn't link to your article accusing people who are concerned about invasive species being "eco-doomsters" with political baggage.

Nope, it's not under that cup. You lose again.

|3.10.06 @ 2:45PM|#

if the rats rather than overlogging are responsible for the alteration of the Easter Island ecosystem, then that doesn't absolve the aboriginals, if they are responsible for the rat introduction. if the forests were decimated, whatever the reason, then the aboriginals are undoubtly responsible for a number of extinctions of woodland species that couldn't adapt to whatever ecosystem replaced the forest. perhaps the earlier human population didn't cause its own extinction, but it's still guilty of eco-sinning, as you so eloquently put it.

|3.10.06 @ 3:03PM|#

joe: And I failed to mention that no Giant Head stocks were being flogged either.

However, since you bring up my articles on invasive species which note the fact that no study has yet found that a continental species (as opposed to island endemics) have gone extinct because of invasive species (other than invasive humsans) I link to the first one here and the second one here. Thanks for your help in bringing this oversight to my attention.

BTW, why don't you try reading the articles to which I did link? You might learn something you didn't already know.

"the rats inadvertantly" swapped an 'a' in for an 'e'.

|3.10.06 @ 3:04PM|#

|3.10.06 @ 3:15PM|#

Genetically modified spelling rats? Thanks for the copyediting. It's fixed.

|3.10.06 @ 3:16PM|#

"...no study has yet found that a continental species (as opposed to island endemics) have gone extinct because of invasive species..."

That's nice. It's also not the main argument against invasive species.

"BTW, why don't you try reading the articles to which I did link? You might learn something you didn't already know."

Whenever I "learn" something from an article you link to, I end up having to unlearn shortly thereafter, when it ends up being debunked.

Sorry, busy world, gotta consider the signal/noise ratio.

|3.10.06 @ 3:39PM|#

joe: Your comment about my articles being debunked, simply proves that you've never read them.

However, you are SO right about the signal/noise ratio. I'll definitely have to keep that in mind when I consider responding to some people's posts here on H&R.

|3.10.06 @ 4:19PM|#

Jarad Diamond wrote Guns, Germs, and Steel on the premise that for some magical reason humans stopped evolving about 50,000 years ago. Coincidentally, that premise to was knocked down this week. I guess down goes Frazier.

|3.10.06 @ 4:21PM|#

Jarad Diamond wrote Guns, Germs, and Steel on the premise that for some magical reason humans stopped evolving about 50,000 years ago.

I didn't get that impression from it. What are you basing that on?

|3.10.06 @ 4:29PM|#

Ron:

You might learn something you didn't already know.

There's your mistake. There's nothing Joe doesn't already know. Thanks for the post and link, in any event.

|3.10.06 @ 4:38PM|#

Man, Bailey's so pissed off, he's ready to throw his clear heels at me.

|3.10.06 @ 5:07PM|#

I read something somewhere which said the Easter Islander Aboriginal Constitution allowed men to get a contractual abortion.

See what you get?

|3.10.06 @ 6:26PM|#

I think men and women should have the same abortion rights if they get pregnant.

TC|3.10.06 @ 9:39PM|#

I would like to see Ron do what he did above on the mens rights concerning abortion and what total BS goes on with them due to a lying, caniving little whore destined on getting your seed then your money! Acknoledge that sometimes accidents do happen.

Hijack ended......

Ron thanks for the above. These guys know their eco goofie stuff for sure. Penn and Teller just called it BullShit! :)

But I'm sharing all this stuff with friends.

|3.10.06 @ 9:45PM|#

Now Shelby, there are plenty of things I don't know.

It's not as if I have a rigorous background in the physical sciences, like Mr. Bailey, Reason's Science Correspondant.

Ahem.

Ahem.

|3.10.06 @ 10:02PM|#

that doesn't absolve the aboriginals

Everything in Nature is perfect and good just the way it is, except for this one teensey little problem called Man. If we just got rid of him things would be fine.

People were doing evil things even way back in the pre-modern era. But don't worry, because somebody says "That God so loved the world, he gave his only begotten Son...."

Somehow, the environmentalists just haven't gotten The Word yet.

|3.10.06 @ 10:16PM|#

genetic bean counter: I don't know what your point is, if you have one

|3.11.06 @ 12:23AM|#

"Jarad Diamond wrote Guns, Germs, and Steel on the premise that for some magical reason humans stopped evolving about 50,000 years ago.

I didn't get that impression from it. What are you basing that on?"

I think Jarad Diamond made assumptions about when humans reached their current degree of intellegence which may have been what the original poster meant by "evolved" (although that would be a non-scientific use of the term "evolved", it is the only usage that would need recent studies to "prove it").

I'm not sure that these assumptions were necessary for Diamond's argument in GG&S though. How would refuting these assumptions refute Diamonds arguments in GG&S? Sometimes I think there is a reason (little r) they call this place Hit and Run :).

|3.11.06 @ 1:07AM|#

genetic bean counter: I don't know what your point is

There's a really curious similarity between the general stock environmentalist assumption -- that the problem with Nature is people, and people are to blame for everything that's "wrong" -- and the Christian theory of Original Sin.

That's all.

|3.11.06 @ 10:35AM|#

do you think that might have anything to do with the fact that humans, unlike other species, are supposed to have morals, ethics, and philosophy with which to inform their behavior?

|3.11.06 @ 12:03PM|#

I think it has more to do with the fact that some people have felt the need to apologize for the fact of their very existence, since man first became self aware. You find this "oh I'm sorry" theme in widely disconnected places, like Christianity and Green Peace.

This need to apologize is, in my view, an immoral position to hold in its own right. Until it is corrected, we aren't ready to discuss "ethics" or "morality" in connection with "environment", or anything else for that matter.

|3.11.06 @ 1:41PM|#

It baffles me that ringleader Bailey and so many H&R readers have adopted Jared Diamond as their "goofy environmentalist" or "ecological doomster" hobgoblin. On balance, his books--at least Guns... and Collapse, the two I've read--are diplomatic to a fault. If there is a sneaky ideological agenda underlying his works, I'd like someone to provide a compelling explanation of what that this. A more moderate and--dare I say--reasonable popular science/history writer you're unlikely to find. I guess it's because Diamond suggests (gasp!) that sometimes some freedoms ought to be curtailed in some instances wherein essential resources are being used in an unsustainable manner. What a crackpot!
No...when it comes to deforestation, pollution, degradation of topsoils, lay off the humans. See, it can't be the way they manage their civilizations because, well, this would interfere with ideological purity. I know humans can't be to blame because Ron tells me so. None of Diamond's lessons about societal collapse can have any relevance to our situation today because we're special.
Jesus Christ folks, aim your guns somewhere else. Whether the introduced rats exacerbated a deforestation process begun by humans or the humans did it themselves, the result was the same...dead island. It never ceases to amaze me how much time is wasted on this post attacking Diamond.

|3.11.06 @ 2:14PM|#

"It never ceases to amaze me how much time is wasted on this post attacking Diamond."

Dude, that's some wierd verbal gymnastics. The use of "never ceases" is some kind of pluperfect construction (I think) that implies continuity and repetition over a period of time. The use of "this post" implies a focus on one time only-- so unless you're god and can view all succesive moments as one eternal present, that sentence doesn't really make much sense.

I've never read the man in question, but I want to know how much of my rights are to be sacrificed for your form of ideological purity. Who is going to sacrifice them? In principle, shouldn't I have a say in what I'm forced to do? Also, I think Bailey's move has always been to minimize the rhetoric of environmental destruction before entertaining thoughts of who's going to have to one for the team. I can't say I'm well-read enough on the topic to agree or disagree, but I can say that ad hominems are still ad hominems regardless of the argument. On the whole, however, I am sympathetic to a certain amount of environmental legislation, given that it is justified.

Being that I can only speak on the subject in broad strokes, it seems that many environmental movements shoot themselves in the foot by attaching their primary concerns (ecology), which seem innocent enough, with broader ideological stances that are 1)not necessary logically, and 2) alienate people from their cause. But of course I claim to be no expert.

|3.11.06 @ 2:35PM|#

Beancounter,

There is also a curious similarity between the "wise use" school of anti-environmentalism, and Genesis' doctrine that Man was given dominion over the earth.

A similarity that is probably much more meaningful than the one you point out. The idea that nature is dangerous and it is humanity's duty to tame it for our own ends runs in a continuous line from the early agrarians of the Biblical era to the wolf-poisoners and desert pavers of today. The idea that humanity's alterations of the planet's functions are evil, and the consequence of an inherent flaw in ourselves, dates back little more than a single century, to the Romantiics, and it is exceedingly difficult to find forerunners anywhere in pre-industrial Western culture.

|3.11.06 @ 8:26PM|#

Joe,

The romantics are more like two centuries ago than one century ago.

The idea that nature is good, that humans corrupt it and ruin things, is considerably older than that. Rousseau's first published work, the essay on Inequality (1754) is an extremely strong statement of that viewpoint. Later, he famously began his most famous work, The Social Contract(1762), "Man is born free but everywhere is in chains."

|3.11.06 @ 11:57PM|#

joe,

Leave history to others. Anyway, the concept dates back much further than that and is not something which started with romanticism:

See Richard Grove, Green Imperialism

|3.12.06 @ 12:44AM|#

The idea that humanity's alterations of the planet's functions are evil, and the consequence of an inherent flaw in ourselves, dates back little more than a single century

No, it goes all the way back to the ancient Greeks. At least. They were terrified that the earth could not support cities with populations greater than about 50,000. Some of them thought bigger cities would just be too "un-natural".

But my beef here is simply this: the environment should be seen as a science and technology issue to be solved, not a moral issue for which homo sapiens must do penance.

When the heart of the environmental movement gives up the moral crusade and starts trying to be scientifically objective, I'll probably join in.

Until then I will oppose it. I do not concede the theory of Original Sin, no matter what reincarnation it comes in.

|3.12.06 @ 1:49AM|#

"Now Shelby, there are plenty of things I don't know."

Yeah, like the issue of gun control.

*cough*

|3.12.06 @ 1:57AM|#

I used the "sin" analogy because Ronald Bailey did, but I find your denial of an ethical dimension to human behavior in regards to other species to be shallow and self-centered. Your comments suggest that environmental impacts are only a problem if they affect humans directly and adversely. I disagree.

|3.12.06 @ 5:38AM|#

Jared D did Harvard this week- biggest sell out since Jay Gould intro'd Al Gore, but nothing new- and very little by way of explanation as to why a volcanic rock with a thin veneer of bird-born halophile flora plus pigs, roots rats and us should be the laboratory of choice for future tense pop population ecology. I'll be interviewing him for his next book, but from two brief chats I am underwhelmed by his minimalist grasp of the archaeology of materials. His imagining that for the first three thousand years of chalcolithic history, copper +tin = bronze was the sum of all wisdom does not inspire faith in his grasp of steel making - even long vu types used to read Needham religiously, but not this Big History guy.

So if you want to stay ahead of thecurve, Ron, brush up on your geostrategy, and dust off your Spengler- Jared seems up close to be the biggest recycler of Humboldt's Cosmos since Sagan ran off with the title page. In another decade I expect he'll reinvent hydraulic despotism to explain why we lost Persia,

|3.12.06 @ 5:50AM|#

RONGO RONGO
NO WRITING IN THE CONGO

Diamond's strangest Harvard riff , in the light of _Collapse_ was this elaborating on why tribal societies, being small, are indisposed to waste too much effort on inventing writing independently, , while just plain excluding Easter Islands must peculiar achievement from his big picure- He is still citing the reinvebtion of writing in a handful of cultures and Rapa Nui is included out despite the corpus of elaborate wood engraved glyphs that have survived.

|3.12.06 @ 6:01AM|#

Jarad Diamond wrote Guns, Germs, and Steel on the premise that for some magical reason humans stopped evolving about 50,000 years ago.

Considering he pointed out that over the last few (not 50) thousand years, people in the MidEast and particularly Europe underwent selection pressures for disease-resistance (due to living at higher population densities) that people in other parts of the world did not (and which lead to massive epidemics as Europeans explored the Americas), I'd say that's completely inaccurate.

|3.12.06 @ 11:33AM|#

I find your denial of an ethical dimension to human behavior in regards to other species to be shallow and self-centered. Your comments suggest that environmental impacts are only a problem if they affect humans directly and adversely. I disagree.

I'm part of the People First crowd. I see no reason why people should be more responsible for other species than Nature itself is. Mass extinctions were happening way before Man showed up in his current form.

Nor do I see anything wrong with man genetically modifying plants, or other animals, to his own benefit, which is the ultimate "Self Centered Man" scenerio.

We'll just have to disagree.

|3.12.06 @ 11:51AM|#

biologist,

I used the "sin" analogy because Ronald Bailey did, but I find your denial of an ethical dimension to human behavior in regards to other species to be shallow and self-centered. Your comments suggest that environmental impacts are only a problem if they affect humans directly and adversely. I disagree.

Why? Why are non-humans ethically significant creatures?

Also, from a mere practical standpoint, detriment to humans is the most important aspect of something considered to be evironmentally harmful.

|3.12.06 @ 12:01PM|#

ye merry genetic bean counter,

You're not shallow or self-centered.

|3.12.06 @ 3:53PM|#

The idea that humanity's alterations of the planet's functions are evil, and the consequence of an inherent flaw in ourselves, dates back little more than a single century, to the Romantiics, and it is exceedingly difficult to find forerunners anywhere in pre-industrial Western culture.

Others have already noted older exceptions. But come on, joe. The oldest written story in the history of the world is on the theme of civilization vs. nature. I'll grant that Gilgamesh tamed Enkidu, but you can't imply that the conflict between man and environment is exclusively a modern concern.

If, on the other hand, you are making the much more limited point that it was only after the industrial revolution that people were finally wealthy enough to conceive the conceit that they should worry about things other than -- and possibly at the expense of -- humanity's survival and well-being... okay, I'll give you that.

|3.12.06 @ 4:08PM|#

And count me on the Man is the Measure of the Health of the Environment side.

However, Hunt and Lipo maintain that even without the forests, Easter Islanders made do and did not suffer a "collapse." In fact, Hunt and Lipo argue that their archaeological data find that there was no population crash until after European sailors introduced diseases and seized inhabitants for slaves.

No one here has disputed this point. If Easter Island worked for the people who inhabited Easter Island, then their environment did not collapse -- regardless of how many woodland creatures died.

Note that this is not a call to go destroy all the uninhabited lands of the world. But it does suggest giving humans ownership control of the uninhabited lands so that someone pays the opportunity cost of their destruction.

|3.12.06 @ 9:20PM|#

Roger Sweeney, beancounter,

While the natural/pure vs. artificial/corrupt dichotomy does go back quite a ways, this dichotomy was traditionally applied to humanity's internal organization, not to humanity's influence on the natural environment. Note the examples you pick out - the consequences fall on human populations. Whereas the opposite concept, that it is right for humanity to exercise dominion over the earth, has alway been about the relationship between humanity and the natural environment.

|3.12.06 @ 9:26PM|#

You too, Mike P,

"I'll grant that Gilgamesh tamed Enkidu, but you can't imply that the conflict between man and environment is exclusively a modern concern."

It's not the existence of the concpet of a man/nature struggle that I'm questioning in pre-Romantic times. It's the conception that nature qua nature shouldn't be destroyed - that there could be a moral argument against increasing the scope of man's dominion.

|3.12.06 @ 10:29PM|#

joe,

Whereas the opposite concept, that it is right for humanity to exercise dominion over the earth, has alway been about the relationship between humanity and the natural environment.

That's at the very heart of Enkidu's relationship with nature and the desire of Gilgamesh to tame Enkidu. You have read the Epic of Gilgamesh, right?

But one has to ask, have you never read Henry David Thoreau? Someone alive far more than a century ago.

It's the conception that nature qua nature shouldn't be destroyed - that there could be a moral argument against increasing the scope of man's dominion.

Heh. Your Catholic ideology is suffused with individuals who questioned such.

Try:

Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian shore: nature and culture in Western thought from ancient times to the end of the eighteenth century

Hughes, Pan's Travail: Environmental Problems of the Ancient Greeks and Romans

Worster, Nature's Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas

|3.12.06 @ 10:53PM|#

I'm part of the People First crowd. I see no reason why people should be more responsible for other species than Nature itself is. Mass extinctions were happening way before Man showed up in his current form.

again, humans are supposed to have morals, ethics, and philosophy with which to inform their behavior. As far as we know, Nature has no consciousness nor behavior. As far as we know, neither do other organisms. not much choosing goes on in their behavior.

Nor do I see anything wrong with man genetically modifying plants, or other animals, to his own benefit, which is the ultimate "Self Centered Man" scenerio.

I didn't write anything about genetic modification here

We'll just have to disagree.

Comment by: ye merry genetic bean counter at March 12, 2006 11:33 AM

apparently so

Why? Why are non-humans ethically significant creatures?

why aren't they? there is a high probability that every living thing on the planet shares a common ancestry, albeit quite distant in most cases. other organisms are our distant relatives.

Also, from a mere practical standpoint, detriment to humans is the most important aspect of something considered to be evironmentally harmful.

Comment by: Hakluyt at March 12, 2006 11:51 AM

most important to humans, yes. if one could ask other organisms their points of view, they'd disagree.

ye merry genetic bean counter,

You're not shallow or self-centered.

Posted by Hakluyt at March 12, 2006 12:01 PM

that's your opinion, but I never said the bean counter himself was, I said his denial of ethical treatment of other organisms was shallow and self-centered.

|3.12.06 @ 11:48PM|#

|3.13.06 @ 12:07AM|#

A few dusty villages can be found in the miles around dried out Babylon, too. Anyone care to argue Babylon didn't suffer an environmental collapse?

What if there was an environmental collapse? Do you have one of those theories that if they'd only had a few less kids, it all would have worked out just fine?

Does anybody know what this guy's point is?

|3.13.06 @ 2:07AM|#

why aren't they? there is a high probability that every living thing on the planet shares a common ancestry, albeit quite distant in most cases. other organisms are our distant relatives.

Every germ is sacred...

BTW, because we share a common ancestry with HIV (its in our genome), does that mean that we shouldn't eradicate HIV? For some reason I vote for eradicating HIV.

...I said his denial of ethical treatment of other organisms was shallow and self-centered.

The thing that is shallow and self-centered is to assume that only your view has moral significance.

|3.13.06 @ 2:11AM|#

again, humans are supposed to have morals, ethics, and philosophy with which to inform their behavior.

Why would it be immoral to eradicate HIV, salmon, or fiddler crabs?

|3.13.06 @ 3:02AM|#

Why would it be immoral to eradicate HIV, salmon, or fiddler crabs?

Oh, there's lots of different kinds of crabs. Some of them I'd favor eradicating much sooner than others.

|3.13.06 @ 8:37AM|#

beancounter,

My point with that example was only to point out the sloppiness in the assertion from the subject article, that the presence of some people on Easter Island at the time the Europeans discovered it refutes the notion that there was an environmental collapse. I used the vicinity of Babylon as an example of a place that quite obviously suffered an environmental collapse, but which continued to be populated at some level.

And no, this had nothing to do with population size and the number of children they had, but with a specific environmentally-unsustainable agricultural practice they engaged in.

|3.13.06 @ 9:32AM|#

joe: Sigh. You still don't read the links to anything do you? "Collapse" means "population collapse" and according to the study--and you didn't apparently bother with the the easy-to-read popular articles to which I linked--they found no evidence of such a "collapse" on Easter Island. Sigh. Again.

|3.13.06 @ 10:17AM|#

Sigh. Again.

Yeah....something like that.

|3.13.06 @ 12:01PM|#

The thing that is shallow and self-centered is to assume that only your view has moral significance.

Comment by: Hakluyt at March 13, 2006 02:07 AM

I wonder how arguing for ethical treatment of other living things is self-centered. Your baseline assumption is that other organisms don't deserve to live if they interfere with what humans want. You also assert your position as though it is self-evidently the correct one without rationale for why your position is correct.

|3.13.06 @ 12:03PM|#

Ron Bailey,

You can lead a horse to water...

linux|3.13.06 @ 1:40PM|#

If Balley is quoting Diamond's theories accurately I'd have to assume that the author of the brilliant G, G & S is going senile. Or that the intellectual capacities of even the sharpest inviduals aren't immune to non-stop praise. My dad was his host when he visited Finland a few years back, and it was like everybody wanted a piece of this man, the culture ministry, the university, the media etc.

'...that human evolution magically stopped 50 000 years ago...'

The human evolution 'magically' stops when the whole consept ceases to make sense, when the direct correlation between ones genetical heritage and that of survival and number of mating opportunities gets blurred, i.e. when the human society becomes more complex than that of the apes. An alpha male chimpanzee is simply the strongest and most aggressive of the lot, gets to spread his genes more than other males and will pass a good deal of his physical and temperamental qualities to his offspring. Even if better than averige intelligence is a partial factor contributing to its status, (I don't know how common this is, I have to ask Jane Godall) that is irrelevant. There is no similar kind of constant natural selection for human individuals as regards to intelligence either, once the society starts producing (crops, cattle) rather than hunting and gathering.
The benefits of some innovation are preserved by the cultural environment in which one is born. Any healthy baby adopted into such an environment will reap those benefits, so inheritence doesn't do shit in this case. Most of us survive now only because of various historical innovations on which all human cultures are built on. Only exeptions might be some of those Junglebook-like Mowglis who were raised by chimpanzees.
There is also no prostitute gene, no priest gene, no king gene or pariah gene. Kings with their harems probably were able to spread their genes around more than slaves, but again this state of affairs was a cultural phenomenom, not a case of a king having any specific genetic qualities contributing to his status.
Or let's think about the ancient Spartans for example, the forefathers of socio-darwinist thought. In order to get the status of a full member of the city state, every young individual had to pass a rigorous test demanding physical strenght, cordination skills and practical intelligence. Those who passed were granted the status of the elite warrior class, those who failed took to the more mundane but necessary activities of the second rate citizens, managing farming and such.(The actual manual labor was done by some kinds of serfs, I recall.) Both of these groups needed one another to survive, ofcourse. But again, qualities such as physical strenght, intelligence and bravery undoubtetly gave the elite class more political power and maybe even quality of life, but which group got to spread their genes more? Both had acces to sufficient nutrition and the ones back home probably were reproducing more than the ones on constant war path.
To describe the differences between various cultures from a darwinist angle is even more idiotic, and Diamond's Guns, Germs & Steel pretty much makes the case.

If I'm wrong, can some socio-darwinist here please educate me? For example:

1) A wealthy Westerner adopts an Asian orphan. The orphans brother doesn't get adopted and having no acces to proper health care dies due to an infected wound before reaching pubercy and thus gets no opportunity to spread his genes. The luckier orphan grows strong and healthy with a diet of sushi, caviar & artichoke hearts (foster-daddy's favourite food), has acces to excellent schooling and reaches adulthood with better-than-averige intellectual capacity and ultimately becomes an wealthy businesman and a senator. Most fertile females and thus (unwillingly though) happends to spread his genes all over the place. IS THIS EVOLUTION?

2) A variation. The unlucky brother doesn't starve but lives in utter poverty and dies in his fourties due to poor nutrition, polluted air etc. His distant relatives had married him to another slumdweller, and by the time of his death he is already a father of ten kids. The lucky brother, though popular with fertile young females unlike his miserable brother, always uses contraseptives and prefers to stay a bachelor all his life, thus taking his genes with him when he goes. IS THIS ALSO A LINK IN THE LONG CHAIN OF PRESENT DAY HUMAN EVOLUTION?

linux|3.13.06 @ 3:57PM|#

The end of paragraph 1 was supposed to be: Many fertile females are drawn to him, and thus he gets to spread his genes all over the place.

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