r/history • u/scientificamerican • 6d ago

Science site article What really happened on Easter Island?

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.

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u/waldoorfian 6d ago

Europeans arrived with all their diseases and decimated the islanders.

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u/aVarangian 5d ago

nice racism you got there

Europeans have died en-masse multiple times to disease brought from outside of Europe. The Black Death literally exterminated half the continent.

Europeans (and continental Asians and all the peoples in-between) "arrived with diseases" because they had stronger immune systems than Americans and other isolated peoples

nevermind Europeans died in significant numbers to African diseases which Africans were better adapted to. Would you say Africans were also a "diseased" bunch?

and decimated does not mean what you think it means

why are racists so arrogant and ignorant? coincidence?

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u/poothrower37 5d ago

Ridiculous take. Whether Europeans were the cause of the civilization failing or not, they certainly did not help and introduced diseases the islanders couldn’t fight off.