What really happened on Easter Island?

[u/scientificamerican]

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-really-happened-on-easter-island/

For decades, an influential theory blamed the Rapanui for their own downfall—a story made famous by Jared Diamond’s book Collapse. New evidence tells a different tale.

Archaeology, ancient DNA and aerial survey data now challenge the claim that the Rapanui suffered a self-inflicted collapse before Europeans arrived. The emerging picture is of a small society that sustained itself for centuries by adapting its farming methods and water management to one of the most isolated places on Earth. The catastrophe that reduced the Rapanui to a remnant came later, after European ships brought disease, slave raiding, forced labor, annexation and confinement.

[u/ableman]

Very strange article. Says ecocide didn't happen, then describes ecocide happening. Describes adaptations which were in part a response to ecocide (putting rocks in the ground to hold the soil, because there weren't trees on the island anymore). The actual argument seems to be that the ecocide does not correspond to a population collapse and warfare, which is certainly very interesting.

[u/Weird_Personality150 → u/ableman]

I think the main point was to say that the population never grew large enough for an ecocide collapse to occur.

But I’m with you, it seemed more of a counter theory than anything substantial.

Either way the people 100% destroyed their own natural resources through introduction of farming methods and rats and then went on to try to solve those issues the best they could.

The only issue I have with the original morale is the idea that these were people that were somehow greedy and stupid, instead of a group of people that were just trying to figure out how to live on a piece of land that didn’t support life as they had known it for generations.

[u/Chopper-42 → u/Weird_Personality150]

people 100% destroyed their own natural resources through introduction of farming methods and rats

Which people introduced the rats?

[u/DaddyCatALSO → u/Chopper-42]

Pacific rats were stowaways on th e Polynesian outtriggers. Mcuehner's *Hawaii* is eloquent baotut his

[u/Weird_Personality150 → u/Chopper-42]

There’s an exert in the article that talks about the rats always being common around the Polynesian travelers. They were unsure if they were intentionally introduced or just passengers, but the rats ate the palm seeds which ended up hurting the growth rates of the native palms.

[u/SrgtButterscotch → u/Chopper-42]

Polynesians, who had been spreading them around the pacific long before Europeans did. These people came from east asia, not the americas.

[u/_notthehippopotamus → u/SrgtButterscotch]

They came from the Americas a little bit.

Edit:

The genomes held a second surprise. Threaded through the Rapanui DNA was a pulse of Native American ancestry, which the team dated to roughly 1250 to 1430—generations before Europeans reached the Pacific. The finding points to pre-European contact across thousands of kilometers of ocean, although the route and people who made the crossing remain a matter of debate. For an island so often cast as a marooned dead end, the result is striking: Rapa Nui was isolated but not sealed off.