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    Readingpassage2: Questions 14-20

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    Paragraph A provides background context on Easter Island and the ancient moai statues. It discusses the theories of how the statues were built and moved prior to modern science proving they were constructed by Polynesians. Paragraph B discusses the environmental conditions found by Europeans when they arrived on Easter Island in 1722. It describes how researchers later discovered through pollen evidence that the island was previously covered in forests for thousands of years until the arrival of the Polynesian settlers. Paragraph C presents the theory of scientist Jared Diamond that the Rapanui people destroyed their own environment by clearing the island's forests for resources. This led to soil erosion, lack of wood for boats and tools, and a

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    Readingpassage2: Questions 14-20

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    Paragraph A provides background context on Easter Island and the ancient moai statues. It discusses the theories of how the statues were built and moved prior to modern science proving they were constructed by Polynesians. Paragraph B discusses the environmental conditions found by Europeans when they arrived on Easter Island in 1722. It describes how researchers later discovered through pollen evidence that the island was previously covered in forests for thousands of years until the arrival of the Polynesian settlers. Paragraph C presents the theory of scientist Jared Diamond that the Rapanui people destroyed their own environment by clearing the island's forests for resources. This led to soil erosion, lack of wood for boats and tools, and a

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    IELTS-2.13-JULY-29-READING

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    Paragraph A provides background context on Easter Island and the ancient moai statues. It discusses the theories of how the statues were built and moved prior to modern science proving they were constructed by Polynesians. Paragraph B discusses the environmental conditions found by Europeans when they arrived on Easter Island in 1722. It describes how researchers later discovered through pollen evidence that the island was previously covered in forests for thousands of years until the arrival of the Polynesian settlers. Paragraph C presents the theory of scientist Jared Diamond that the Rapanui people destroyed their own environment by clearing the island's forests for resources. This led to soil erosion, lack of wood for boats and tools, and a

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    407 views4 pages

    Readingpassage2: Questions 14-20

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    Paragraph A provides background context on Easter Island and the ancient moai statues. It discusses the theories of how the statues were built and moved prior to modern science proving they were constructed by Polynesians. Paragraph B discusses the environmental conditions found by Europeans when they arrived on Easter Island in 1722. It describes how researchers later discovered through pollen evidence that the island was previously covered in forests for thousands of years until the arrival of the Polynesian settlers. Paragraph C presents the theory of scientist Jared Diamond that the Rapanui people destroyed their own environment by clearing the island's forests for resources. This led to soil erosion, lack of wood for boats and tools, and a

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    R EA DIN G PAS SAG E 2

    You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1M26, which are based on Reading
    Passage 2 on the following pages.

    Questions 14—20

    Reading Passage 2 has seven paragraphs, A—G.

    Choose the correct heading for each paragraph from the list of headings below.

    Write the correct number, i—ix, in boxes 1 20 on your answer sheet.

    List of Headings
    i Evidence of innovative environment mariagement practices
    ii An undisputed answer to a question about the moai
    iii The future of the moai statues
    iv A theory which supports a local belief
    v The future of Easter Island
    vi Two opposing views about the Rapanui people
    vii Destruction outside the inhabitants' control
    viii How the statues made a situation worse
    ix Diminishing food resources

    14 Paragraph A
    15 Paragraph B
    16 Paragraph C
    17 ” Paragraph D
    18 Paragraph E
    19 Paragraph F
    20 Paragraph G

    45
    What destroyed the civilisation of Easter Island?
    A Easter Island, or Rapu Nui as it is known locally, is home to several hundred
    ancient human statues — the moai. After this remote Pacific island was setlled by
    the Polynesians, it remained isolated for centuries. All the energy and resources
    that went into the moai — some of which are ten metres tall and weigh over
    7,000 kilos — came from the island itself. Yet when Dutch explorers landed in
    1722, they met a Stone Age culture. The moai were carved with stone tools, then
    transported for many kilometres, without the use of animals or wheels, to
    massive stone platforms. The identity of the moai builders was in doubt until well
    into the twentieth century. Thor Heyerdahl, the Norwegian ethnographer and
    adventurer, thought the statues had been created by pre-lnca peoples from Peru.
    Bestselling Swiss author Erich von Däniken believed they were built by stranded
    extraterrestrials. Modern science — linguistic, archaeological and genetic
    evidence — has definitively proved the moai builders were Polynesians, but not
    how they moved their creations.
    Local folklore maintains that the statues walked, while researchers have tended to
    assume the ancestors dragged the statues somehow, using ropes and logs.
    B When the Europeans arrived, Rapa Nui was grassland, with only a few
    scrawny trees. In the 1970s and 1980s, though, researchers found pollen
    preserved in
    lake sediments, which proved the island had been covered in lush palm forests for
    thousands of years. Only after the Polynesians arrived did those forests
    disappear. US scientist Jared Diamond believes that the Rapanui people —
    descendants of Polynesian settlers — wrecked their own environment. They had
    unfortunately settled on an extremely fragile island — dry, cool, and too remote to
    be properly fertilised by windblown volcanic ash. When the islanders cleared the
    forests for firewood and farming, the forests didn’t grow back. As trees became
    scarce and they could no longer construct wooden canoes for fishing, they ate
    birds. Soil erosion decreased their crop yields. Before Europeans arrived, the
    Rapanui had descended into civil war and cannibalism, he maintains. The
    collapse of their isolated civilisation, Diamond writes, is a ’worst-case scenario for
    what may lie ahead of us in our own future’.
    The moai, he thinks, accelerated the self-destruction. Diamond interprets them
    as power displays by rival chieftains who, trapped on a remote little island,
    lacked other ways of asserting their dominance. They competed by building ever
    bigger figures. Diamond thinks they laid the moai on wooden sledges, hauled
    over log rails, but that required both a lot of wood and a lot of people. To feed
    the people,
    even more land had to be cleared. When the wood was gone and civil war began,
    the islanders began toppling the moai. By the nineteenth century none were
    standing.
    46
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