Everyone’s always blaming the rats
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fubo@lemmy.world 1 year ago
That’s very likely a myth. Other things that were going on at the same time include European slave-taking, new diseases, and the introduction of rats that ate the tree seeds.
MyNameIsIgglePiggle@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
PeleSpirit@lemmy.world 1 year ago
That doesn’t make it any better though, colonization is the same as kings being shitheads.
sfgifz@lemmy.world 1 year ago
It may not make it better, but its an argument against the validity of your shower thought.
PeleSpirit@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I think it’s still valid though. Audubon made birds go extinct because it was fun to shoot them. Humans are weird and selfish when they’re in power. Colonization is the same thing as a king cutting down the last tree, they wanted the resources.
fubo@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Except it isn’t “the same thing”.
The point of the myth of Rapa Nui ecocide wasn’t “watch out for ecological damage”, it was “primitive barbarians are too stupid to manage their own resources, even when it kills them; we civilized people have to protect them by taking their island away from them and turning it into a park.”
It was a pro-colonialism meme.
When, y’know, in reality those resources, and the people, were being stolen by slavers.
So the lesson really should be “slavers are bad” … which we already knew.