1. Easter Island The challenge:
"Easter Island's prehistoric Polynesian population had owned no cranes, no wheels, no machines, no metal tools, no draft animals, and no means other than human muscle power to transport and raise the statues." (p. 80)

2. Questions to answer
How did they transport and raise statues which ranged in length from 15 to 70 feet, and which weighed from 10 to270 tons?”
Who carved the statues, why did they carve them at such effort, how did the carvers transport and raise such huge stone statues, and why did they eventually throw them all down? (p. 80)
What kind of population was required to sustain the complex enterprise of statue production, transportation, and raising into position?

3. Why Were Easter Islanders Unique
"...the reason for Easter's unusually severe degree of deforestation isn't that those seemingly nice people rally were unusually bad or improvident..." (p. 118)

"Instead, they had the misfortune to be living in one of the most fragile environments, at the highest risk of deforestation, of any Pacific people." (p. 118)

"Easter's isolation makes it the clearest example of a society that destroyed itself by over exploiting its own resources." (p. 118)

4. Diamond’s explanation
1. Human environmental impacts especially deforestation and destruction of bird populations; and 2. The political, social and religious factors behind the impacts. Among the political, social, and religious factors were: 1. The impossibility of emigration as an escape valve because of Easter's isolation; 2. A focus on statue construction; and 3. Competition between clans and chiefs driving the erection of bigger statues requiring more wood, rope, and food. (pp )

5. Why is Easter Island so important?
"The parallels between Easter Island and the whole modern world are chillingly obvious." (p. 119)

"Thanks to globalization, international trade, jet planes, and the Internet, all counties on earth today share resources and affect each other, just as did Easter's dozen clans." (p. 119)

"When Easter Islanders got into difficulties, there was nowhere to which they could flee, nor to which they could turn for help; nor shall we modern Earthlings have recourse elsewhere if our troubles increase." (p. 119)

"Those are the reasons why people see the collapse of Easter Island as a metaphor, a worst-case scenario, for what may lie ahead of us in our own future.' (p. 119)

Why does Diamond say the metaphor is imperfect?  What are the differences in our favor?