Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

by Jared Diamond

A momentous decision taken consciously around A.D. 1600, and recorded in oral traditions but also attested archaeologically, was the killing of every pig on the island, to be replaced as protein sources by an increase in consumption of fish, shellfish, and turtles. According to Tikopians’ accounts, their ancestors had made that decision because pigs raided and rooted up gardens, competed with humans for food, were an inefficient means to feed humans (it takes about 10 pounds of vegetables edible to humans to produce just one pound of pork), and had become a luxury food for the chiefs. With that elimination of pigs, and the transformation of Tikopia’s bay into a brackish lake around the same time, Tikopia’s economy achieved essentially the form in which it existed when Europeans first began to take up residence in the 1800s. Thus, until colonial government and Christian mission influence became important in the 20th century, Tikopians had been virtually self-supporting on their micromanaged remote little speck of land for three millennia.