The people of Easter Island have shown that systems of governance aren’t set in stone
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Emerging evidence from research on human societies throughout history illuminates the vast range of social experiments that have taken place, according to David Wengrow at University College London. While it may be tempting to categorize societies into simplistic divisions such as hunter-gatherer versus complex, egalitarian versus hierarchical, and democratic versus authoritarian, the reality is far more complex. Furthermore, societies are not fixed entities and can undergo significant changes if its members so choose.
One compelling example of such a transition can be found on Rapa Nui, commonly known as Easter Island, located in the south-east Pacific. The initial settlers established a system of sub-chiefs, each having authority over a specific region of the island, all of whom were subordinated to an overall chief. “The position of chief was hereditary,” explains Jennifer Kahn at the College of William & Mary in Virginia. “It’s a title that is passed down through birth, similar to a monarchy.” However, this centralized system proved to be unstable, leading the people of Rapa Nui to overturn it around 1600. In its place, they introduced a birdman cult, where warriors competed annually by swimming through shark-infested waters to a small islet, retrieving a bird’s egg, and swimming back. Kahn elaborates, “The first person to arrive with an unbroken egg becomes the chief for the year. It’s an earned position… even someone from a lower rank could become the chief.”
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