Goodbye to a Tiny Nation
According to this BBC story
(link via BoingBoing):
If find the situation described here eerily similar to Easter Island's abandonment:
The tiny Pacific island of Nauru has spent weeks completely cut off from the outside world after its telecommunications network collapsed.
Its isolation is so complete that no one is even sure who the country's president is any more.
Nauru is only 3 miles by 2 miles, according to this map.Its isolation is so complete that no one is even sure who the country's president is any more.
If find the situation described here eerily similar to Easter Island's abandonment:
It is a sad demise for an island which not long ago boasted one of the world's highest per capita incomes through lucrative phosphate mining.
But with the phosphate reserves nearly gone - and most of the island reduced to a barren moonscape as a result - Nauru has gradually slumped into chaos.
Easter Island (Rapa Nui) once had trees and people. Then it had neither. Some attribute that downfall to another power struggle — perhaps they cut down all the trees for use in erecting the famous ten-ton monoliths:
But with the phosphate reserves nearly gone - and most of the island reduced to a barren moonscape as a result - Nauru has gradually slumped into chaos.
[In the final] 122 years [before European contact], Rapa Nui underwent radical change. Core sampling from the island has revealed a slice of Rapa Nui history that speaks of deforestation, soil depletion, and erosion. From this devastating ecological scenario it is not hard to imagine the resulting overpopulation, food shortages, and ultimate collapse of Rapa Nui society. Evidence of cannibalism at that time is present on the island, though very scant. Van Tilburg cautiously asserts, "The archaeological evidence for cannibalism is present on a few sites.
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