'Ecocide' on Easter Island never took place, studies suggest
Two recent studies have cast doubt on a popular theory that the ancient residents of Easter Island suffered a societal collapse because they overexploited their natural resources, an event often labeled one of history's first ...
Easter Island, located in the Pacific Ocean 3,700 kilometers (2,300 miles) from the coast of Chile, is best known for the enigmatic "moai" stone statues of humans carved by the Rapanui people.
A widespread theory popularized by historians including US author Jared Diamond claimed that the Rapanui deforested the small island—which is known to have once been covered in palm trees—to keep supporting the flourishing culture of its more than 15,000 inhabitants.
The sudden lack of resources is said to have triggered a brutal period of famine and warfare that escalated into cannibalism and ended in a demographic and cultural collapse.
This event in the 1600s abruptly brought an end to the creation of new moai statues—or so the story goes.
When Europeans first arrived at the island in 1722, they estimated there were only around 3,000 inhabitants.
This tale of ecological suicide—or "ecocide"—by the Rapanui "has been presented as a warning tale for humanity's overexploitation of resources," according to the authors of a study published in the journal Nature on Wednesday.
The international team of experts in population genetics tried to find signs of the societal collapse using an advanced statistical tool that reconstructs the genomic history of a people.
A widespread theory that the people of Easter Island caused a societal collapse is not true, new research suggests.