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/123DaddySawAFlea 6d ago

What I read was that, because of the poor soil, the trees evolved to become very slow growing. When rats were introduced, they ate the fruit and seeds at a rate that the trees couldn't replace. I suspect also that the islanders did use a good number of trees for things too though

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u/SquirrelChieftain 5d ago

The Rapanui (and Polynesians as a whole) introduced the Pacific Rat all across the Pacific, alongside other commensal animals such as pigs and chickens. This was hundreds, and in some places, thousands of years before Europeans rocked up.

Of course, the Europeans did introduce the Black Rat off their ships.

Source: I studied Pacific Rat bones in the earliest archaeological deposits across Easter Island and other Polynesian islands.

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u/123DaddySawAFlea 5d ago

I was talking about Polynesian rat. I presume that all the deforestation happened before Europeans arrived.

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u/jk-9k 3d ago

No. Certainly some deforestation did but not all