Photo by Horacio_Fernandez
It was always the Posterchild Catastrophe of Doomsters, but two new studies suggest Easter Island might be (mostly) a story of remarkable human achievement instead.
In environmentalist legends, Easter Island was The Ecocide: they built nearly 1,000 giant stone statues but stupidly chopped down all its trees, and died in horrible wars. It was the sorry tale of ecological collapse and deforestation that we could tell small children at bedtime. After the last trees were sliced and diced, a catastrophe of horrors surely followed as the population of 15,000 people ran out of food and no one could make a boat to escape. Obsidian flakes across the island were interpreted as weapons of war and one anthropologist claimed there was a huge civil war that ended in the battle of 1680. Environmental hell on Earth was here…
But new research on the genomes of some islanders suggests that the population was probably small all along. When the Europeans arrived there were only about 3,000 people, and a genetic analysis suggests there are no signs of a recent collapse in the population. Another study of the fields suggests they made some very sophisticated gardens, improving the soil with rocks, can you believe, but they only ever had fields big enough to sustain about 4,000 people, which fits with the gene analysis. And the obsidian fragments were probably domestic tools.
Adding to this tale of remarkable survival, apparently the inhabitants somehow managed to get to South America and collect some native Indian genes which they brought back. These survived on for another 15 to 20 generations.
So it may be that an isolated island of only 3,000 people was capable of feeding itself sustainably, somehow making huge statues, and also sailing 3,700 kilometres to South America and then finding their way back again. We can imagine a wayward sailor somehow finding South America, but not perhaps on return, an island barely 24 kilometers wide in the vast Pacific. (And maybe, wonders Jo, whether some South Americans just managed a one way trip? How would we know? — On that score, the authors of the Nature paper say they can’t tell genetically, but there is archaeological evidence and oral history of trans-Pacific contact from Polynesia right across to South America and back).
Famed Polynesian island did not succumb to ‘ecological suicide,’ new evidence reveals
Most recently Carl Lipo, an archaeologist at Binghamton University, and his team used satellite imagery and machine learning to map the island’s rock gardens, a method of spreading rocks to improve soil productivity. In a paper in Science Advances in July, they concluded Rapa Nui’s agriculture was far less extensive, and its population smaller, than the “ecocide” theory had proposed. Although the ancient Rapanui did cut down most of the island’s trees, the deforestation did not trigger a cultural or population crisis, they say. “Their ability to adapt was successful,” Atallah Leiva says.
The farmers of Rapa Nui (Easter Island) used rocks to improve the soil:
While it is true that the small island — which is just 63 square miles (164 square kilometers), or slightly smaller than Washington, D.C. — has poor soil quality and limited freshwater resources, researchers have discovered that the story of the Rapanui is one of survival in challenging ecological conditions.
One method the Rapanui used to enhance the island’s volcanic soil was “lithic mulching,” or rock gardening, in which pieces of rock were added to cultivation areas to boost productivity. The rock gardens generated better airflow in the soil, helping mediate temperature swings and maintaining nutrients — including nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium — in the soil.
Yet another paper suggests that the banal truth of the deforestation was not because humans chopped them all down, but because the first settlers bought some rats which chewed through every last nut and seedling. Imagine being able to build and move 80 ton stone statues, but not being able to make a rat-proof enclosure to save your last tree?
What really happened to the trees
More recently, a picture has emerged of a prehistoric population that was both successful and lived sustainably on the island up until European contact. It is generally agreed that Rapa Nui, once covered in large palm trees, was rapidly deforested soon after its initial colonization around A.D. 1200. Although microbotanical evidence, such as pollen analysis, suggests the palm forest disappeared quickly, the human population may only have been partially to blame.
The earliest Polynesian colonizers brought with them another culprit, namely the Polynesian rat. It seems likely that rats ate both palm nuts and sapling trees, preventing the forests from growing back. But despite this deforestation, my own research on the diet of the prehistoric Rapanui found they consumed more seafood and were more sophisticated and adaptable farmers than previously thought.
The bottom line is that the genetic analysis only has about 15 samples from remains of Islanders of the 1800s and while the rock garden analysis used field trips they also relied on some satellites and AI, so no one really knows for sure. The catastrophist environmentalist story almost certainly ran away with itself, but there is an element of indigenous sainthood working the other way too:
“Working with Indigenous groups, we face so many tropes and outdated narratives that people keep perpetuating—even scientists,” says Kathrin Nägele of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, who wrote an accompanying commentary for Nature. “I hope this … ancient DNA [study] puts the last nail in the coffin of this [collapse] narrative.”
Most likely the Rapanui were remarkable survivors who were just as capable of screwing things up as any of us. Hopefully scientists will figure out what really happened, instead of beating us over the head with their favorite ideology.
Lord give us a dispassionate scientist…
UPDATE: I was not aware Benny Peiser (of GWPF fame) published a research paper on Rapa Nui in 2005.
In it, he details how the real disaster came, not by the hand of the Easter Islanders, but from the slave traders, whalers and colonists:
This tiny patch of land was discovered by European explorers more than three hundred years ago amidst the vast space that is the South Pacific Ocean. Its civilisation attained a level of social complexity that gave rise to one of the most advanced cultures and technological feats of Neolithic societies anywhere in the world. Easter Island’s stone-working skills and proficiency were far superior to any other Polynesian culture, as was its unique writing system. This most extraordinary society developed, flourished and persisted for perhaps more than one thousand years – before it collapsed and became all but extinct.
While the theory of ecocide has become almost paradigmatic in environmental circles, a dark and gory secret hangs over the premise of Easter Island’s self destruction: an actual genocide terminated Rapa Nui’s indigenous populace and its culture. Diamond ignores, or neglects to address the true reasons behind Rapa Nui’s collapse. Other researchers have no doubt that its people, their culture and its environment were destroyed to all intents and purposes by European slave-traders, whalers and colonists – and not by themselves! After all, the cruelty and systematic kidnapping by European slave-merchants, the near-extermination of the Island’s indigenous population and the deliberate destruction of the island’s environment has been regarded as “one of the most hideous atrocities committed by white men in the South Seas” (Métraux, 1957:38), “perhaps the most dreadful piece of genocide in Polynesian history” (Bellwood, 1978:363).
REFERENCES
Davis et a (2024) Island-wide characterization of agricultural production challenges the demographic collapse hypothesis for Rapa Nui (Easter Island), Science Advances, 21 Jun 2024 Vol 10, Issue 25 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.ado1459
Moreno-Mayar, J.V., Sousa da Mota, B., Higham, T. et al. Ancient Rapanui genomes reveal resilience and pre-European contact with the Americas. Nature 633, 389–397 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07881-4
Wait a minute, I hope you’re not going tell me now that the statues weren’t devoted to the divine coming of Malcolm Fraser…!
190
They are better looking than Memphis Peabody Malcolm Fraser
110
You are referencing that night in Memphis?
42
The Dutch discovered Easter island in 1722 and first some people came out to the ships and within a few days the Dutch rowed ashore.
https://www.encyclopedia.com/science/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/voyage-mystery-european-discovery-easter-island
100
So. If the Dutch discovered it, who were these people?
16
Obviously they were Dutch.
90
No one would have known about it had the Dutch not found it (by accident) and publicised it so even though the original inhabitants discovered it, they had no means to alert the technologically advanced world of their presence, as was the case with Australia and all other places not on European maps. So in a sense, it was indeed discovered and brought to the attention of the world.
120
No one? Not even the people they visited and traded with in South America?
Don’t bother answering, we all know what you mean.
05
Gosh Gee Aye, I accurately stated that the Dutch discovered Easter island in 1722. Obviously the original residents who were there in 1722 first discovered it perhaps a few hundred years earlier.
120
And never “intermingled” with the newly arrived Dutch.
Such virtue is to be commended.
00
I wonder if they’ll ever be able to decipher the Rongorongo script found on a few artefacts on the island?
90
It’s a lost language with hidden meaning and of unknown value to the world, so….. Ask Albo, he’s good with uttering gibberish and clouding up a previously clear room. He could be right at home, who knows?
100
The more contemporary explicit pictograms nearby, presumably made by the local youth were not difficult at all to decipher.
10
Their language was part of the Austronesian language group which probably originated in present day Taiwan and spread to Madagascar and Easter Island, and many places in between. A remarkable achievement. Languages, like genetics, can be used to understand the prehistory.
40
Aliens, definitely aliens. There was a TV show in the 1970’s called “Chariot of the Gods” based on a book from 1968. The Easter Island conundrum featured in that program along with the Pyramids and many other archeological mysteries. Their theory- man had help from Aliens to build the big structures like the Giza Pyramids. That Easter Island was populated by Aliens because of its remoteness. All those spooky stone structures were some kind of space aerials, like the pyramids. Although the other day I did see a post on X regarding the movement of those big stone heads. Seems that you can ” rock” them sideways and forwards using three ropes and 3 teams of Polynesian front rowers. Bit like when you try moving a large bit of furniture yourself. Seems logical. We don’t know what happened to Malaysian Airlines MH 370 and that was only in 2014. We’ve got very little chance of ever solving the Easter Island mystery.
120
The aliens used levitation, the same as in the Great Pyramid and elsewhere.
31
When I watched them, they had these well trained squirrels, you should have seen them, they were in the thousands, everyone of them world slide in underneath and then form into a ball. Together it was like a mass of ball bearings.
And to make sure that they only rolled uphill and not down, they would induce a strong magnetic field into them, and of course, using the right hand rule the magnetic force resulting from the field and their minor current flow would pull the stone clearly up the hill.
OR…. I could be wrong and no one really knows how they got there. Besides, I always doubted the above method, how the hell would they have formed a magnetic field?
70
More than likely 40 healthy men did the heavy lifting using ropes and wooden rollers to transport them from the quarry to destination.
https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/eais/hd_eais.htm#:~:text=The%20most%20recognizable%20art%20forms,which%20are%20still%20in%20situ.
It took over 200 people to make the rope and feed the workers. Its plausible, folklore says the chiefs were supernatural.
10
The Left don’t like it when you discuss early human migrations or population dynamics that don’t conform to the Official Narrative. In Australia, it is completely out of the question. In NZ, there were an earlier red-headed people that even Maori folklore admits to, so there is a lot more research required into early Polynesian migration patterns. See https://youtu.be/BRjyDGOVcXE
A lot of these investigations can’t be published in conventional literature because as we see with the covid vaccine disaster and supposed catastrophic anthropogenic global warming, the woke publications and government-funding-dependent “scientists” won’t go there.
I’m surprised fully-woke Nature published the Easter Island paper.
200
DM, They have been published- and shown to be BS
The left like facts too.
21
Thor Heyerdahl’s epic voyage and exploration in the mid fifties led to a few great reads about Easter Island.
Lots of useful background.
Imagine building a copy of an ancient sea going vessel to show your commitment; and then sailing in it.
110
Science is not set in stone as our comrades of the Left think but even though Thor Heyerdahl’s achievement was remarkable, DNA suggests that the migration was from the west (SE Asia), not the east (South America).
70
Did he actually stipulate that population derived from the east or west, or did he show that it was possible?
Whatever, he did great work.
50
The new study calculates that about 10% of the DNA comes from South America. By default I guess that means most of the rest was from Polynesia.
60
KK:
Thor Heyerdahl’s theory was that a superior white race migrated from near Lake Titicata (after some extreme pressure by the other local inhabitants) and sailed west to Easter Island and the Marsquesus islands for refuge.
From that he followed up that the early ancestors sailed from Africa (in reed boats hence RA1 and RA2 voyages).
I would state my views on that but I was brought up to be polite to ladies.
40
Politeness?
No science involved in that.
10
Titicaca ?
20
His raft was named “La Balsa”.
00
Another name comes to mind. David Lewis. I can’t confidently remember much about him, but I think he put in a fair bit of time scuba diving around Australia. He wrote of having travelled with a native Pacific navigator, a senior citizen who stood in the one place in the boat for the whole trip guided by his knowledge of the waves.
00
The most remarkable aspect of Polynesian colonies across the Pacific in my view is the absolutely extraordinary seamanship that delivered tiny sail boats with small populations to incredibly small volcanic dots in the vastness of the Pacific Ocean.
This without any modernised navigation, with all the risks of storms, cyclones, running short of water and food – all with no real idea of where they were actually going.
And it seems that once some habitable volcanic island was found, some “messengers” found their way back to describe how to get there. Colonies grew.
Incredible.
180
I’ll put this up to grasp the situation.
https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2014/10/polynesian-migration-mystery-solved/
As the Little Ice Age gained strength in the Northern Hemisphere sea level fell, causing a catastrophe in the central Pacific around 1300 AD.
51
First I’ve heard of any significant seal level change associated with the LIA which doesn’t feature largely in IPCC articles.
Do you have a link please?
70
It was more about wind patterns 🙂
50
‘Sea-level data for the Pacific islands suggest that sea level in the region fell, possibly in two stages, between 1270 and 1475. That was associated with a 1.5 °C fall in temperature, as determined from oxygen-isotope analysis, and an observed increase in the frequency of El Niño.’ (wiki)
31
What is not known is how many messengers failed to make it back to tell others before there was a successful return.
90
Patrick Nunn is the authority on this topic.
https://rune.une.edu.au/web/handle/1959.11/8039
Its clear to see that climate change was a disaster for Easter Islanders.
22
NOAA’s tidesandcurrents site is very interesting. It has tidal records globally.
How widespread and how sudden were these changes?
While globally the “sea level” is mostly stable or rising, in Pacific Alaska the level is falling at a high rate.
This suggests to me that one day a “correction” will come in a massive earthquake and tsunami.
When? And how big?
00
Wait, what? Polynesians were colonists sailing to new lands to colonise the resources? How dare they – that’s an English or European attitude – tut tut tut.
Archeologist Barry Brailsford’s book, Song Of Waitaha, recounts old stories of the early people(s)’ migrations around the Pacific, including one of a ‘giant wall of water’ which engulfed Rapanui, causing the survivors to sail or paddle to (yet another) new home.
If the tsunami came from the east (Chile) no wonder they headed west (NZ). And that, children, is the story of Kumara Changing Climates. Eat your greens.
80
Some of them did know where they were, and could navigate by the swell of the ocean. But I think that they might have depended a lot on the movement of the birds. If you see a land bird over the water, follow him home and you will find land.
10
“Lord give us a dispassionate scientist…”
An important quest in an age when “science ” is driven to expound on the fine detail of things before doing that preparatory “dispassionate” ground work.
120
“Hopefully scientists will figure out what really happened, instead of beating us over the head with their favorite ideology.”
Come on Jo, unfair.
I spit my beer.
Don’t know if you remember that ‘Pandemic’ thing?
What … 31 million dead?
And ‘Science’ shows little interest in ‘figuring out what really happened’.
As a matter of fact, I seem to recall some actual scientists losing the careers for asking.
The beatings will continue.
160
It’s all about getting the next research grant. Ethics be damned.
20
Polynesians in double-hulled canoes,
With tall sails and paddling crews,
Were at navigation terrific,
O’er the central Pacific,
Island hopping, like a modern day cruise.
160
I thought the Ecocide hypothesis was debunked back in the 90’s when researchers examined 18th and 19th century ships logbooks that reported the Rapa Nui living comfortable lives only having to farm and fish for a few hours a day to provide all the calories they required. The population decline was a result of blackbirding and western diseases in the 1800’s not a lack of resources.
130
The hypothesis of cAGW by CO2 was debunked long ago too, and yet it lives! Like Medusa and the Gorgons, another snake is always ready to raise its ugly head.
140
Exactly. The real tragedy of Easter Island was the kidnapping of half its population by Peruvian slave traders, epidemic tuberculosis, and the leasing of the island and its remaining inhabitants to a pastoral company until 1953.
100
Perplexity AI is up to date on this:
I wonder how low before the scientific consensus on CO2 induced climate change collapses.
I had an interesting discussion with Perplexity on this. What I learnt is that there is huge amount of funding for CO2 induced climate change and virtually none for natural causes. But there is ample fiunding for improving data collection and ultimately the data will support entirely natural change.
I could not get it to agree that the CMIP3 models were wrong despite the projections to 2020 being wrong and the new models offering revised projections.
70
If this recent work is correct, then the misinterpretation of the limited data on Easter Island and the subsequent false assumptions of doom and disaster makes one question whether other historical conclusions are accurate . .
70
UPDATE: I was not aware Benny Peiser (of GWPF fame) published a paper on Rapa Nui in 2005.
In it, he details how the real disaster came, not by the hand of the Easter Islanders, but from the slave traders, whalers and colonists:
This tiny patch of land was discovered by European explorers more than three hundred years ago amidst the vast space that is the South Pacific Ocean. Its civilisation attained a level of social complexity that gave rise to one of the most advanced cultures and technological feats of Neolithic societies anywhere in the world. Easter Island’s stone-working skills and proficiency were far superior to any other Polynesian culture, as was its unique writing system. This most extraordinary society developed, flourished and persisted for perhaps more than one thousand years – before it collapsed and became all but extinct.
While the theory of ecocide has become almost paradigmatic in environmental circles, a dark and gory secret hangs over the premise of Easter Island’s self destruction: an actual genocide terminated Rapa Nui’s indigenous populace and its culture. Diamond ignores, or neglects to address the true reasons behind Rapa Nui’s collapse. Other researchers have no doubt that its people, their culture and its environment were destroyed to all intents and purposes by European slave-traders, whalers and colonists – and not by themselves! After all, the cruelty and systematic kidnapping by European slave-merchants, the near-extermination of the Island’s indigenous population and the deliberate destruction of the island’s environment has been regarded as “one of the most hideous atrocities committed by white men in the South Seas” (Métraux, 1957:38), “perhaps the most dreadful piece of genocide in Polynesian history” (Bellwood, 1978:363).
160
I visited the place in the 1970s. The local priest, a German born American who had lived in Hanga Roa for donkeys years and had a library of histories of families he had been collecting. He was, back then, rather dismissive of the eco collapse idea.
I also learned that Heyerdahl mucked it up by reassembling some Moai terrasses using scattered statues laying around as he thought they could have been, but had the statues looking inland instead of out over the ocean. Amateurs, hey!
60
incidentally, the ‘slave trading’ mentioned is a red herring, there never was. What did a lot of damage though were the diseases the Europeans brought with them, just like what happened before in central America where smallpox and other diseases ran rampant in an immunodeficient population.
60
Same in Australia.
The “original inhabitants” had developed immunity to the prevailing diseases but were unprepared for the new ones carried by the newly arriving Europeans.
No ugly intent, just nature at work.
60
[…] From JoNova […]
10