reading this cheered me up..!!! i'm not alone..!!!!

on the Easter Islanders thing...apparently their tree-cutting passion was linked to their statue carving passion...the tree tunks where cut in order to use as rollers from quarry to statue site.

only other thing i could contribute right now on the subject of trees and civilizations...heard this long ago...a tree, the English Oak we call it, it's lower limbs are retained at a right angle to the trunk...the only tree we know here that can produce strong enough wood to support such an arrangement... this junction of limb and trunk was used in ship yards to produce ships with sufficient strength to traverse the ocean blue...the same or simular grows in Spain...so it may well be due to Quercus robur that you speak english.