I was reading the Wikipedia article about Easter Island and it’s kind of amazing to realize that it supported an entirely self-sufficient community of humans for hundreds of years even though it’s only about 65 square miles in area. North Sentinel Island is even smaller (25 square miles) and it supports a self-sufficient population of several hundred at least.
What’s the smallest island (in land area) that’s been self-sufficient over the long run, i.e. over multiple generations? The inhabitants needn’t have been entirely isolated – just capable of taking care of themselves without constant supply shipments from somewhere else.
That was my guess as well. If you thought you had it tough in school, try getting a decent prom date on Pitcairn Island. A population of 50 people produced by over 200 years of inbreeding makes that hillbilly banjo family on Deliverance look positively cosmopolitan and diverse. Still, they press on and survive somehow. Somewhere I read that half of the 50 people can’t stand the other half and vice-versa. It is Gilligan’s Island gone bad with no Mary Anne in sight.
The inhabitants of St.Kilda, off the west coast of Scotland, survived for hundreds of years virtually isolated until 1930, when they asked to be evacuated… wiki Scroll down to ‘way of life’ to see how remote it was!
Almost the only visitor was the annual visit to collect the rent!
Great Blasket, off the coast of Kerry, Ireland, is 1 sq mile and supported a tiny community of subsistence farmers and fishermen (that’s allowed, isn’t it?) until they were resettled in the 1950s.
It’s where Peig Sayers, unfortunate Irish language writer, lived.
I suppose defining self-sufficient is a bit tricky! As I suspect this case demonstrates, things such as healthcare and education are impossible to provide in most cases. The Pitcairners weren’t self-sufficient, financially or materially, when it came to providing for a full criminal trial.
In whatever Micronesia is called these days, there is an island (in the outer islands of Yap) a little bit larger than a football field called Eurapik. It is relatively self sufficient. The main food source is fish, with a taro patch and a couple of breadfruit trees and of course a lot of coconut trees. It also has a couple of planteen trees. It was, when I was in the area, near a source of Green Sea Turtles.
A field trip ship (often a copra boat) comes out ever three or four months or so. It could be down to every two or three months threse days for all I know. Between 30 and 60 people live there as I remember.
Like most of the small islands in Micronesia these are “low islands” (basically mini coral atolls with the highest soldid spot on the island about five feet above sea level) unlike Pitcarin Island which is actually a large hunk of earth sticking out of the ocean. When the ocean rises ala global warming these are going to be under water. Then when you talk about small islands, well, wow.
The government of Micronesia is really worried about what to do with the people inhabiting these islands with the probability of global warming. Who they are is closely tied to their islands and if their islands no longer exist, there are social implications that are shaking the social structure of the Western Pacific.
