Researchers challenge long-held idea that islanders chopped down palm trees at an unsustainable rate
The theory – promoted by experts including the Pulitzer prize-winning author Jared Diamond – suggests islanders chopped down palm trees at an unsustainable rate to create gardens, harvest fuel and move statues, which brought on disaster. As a result, the population encountered by Europeans in the 18th century was a shadow of what it had once been. However, a new study has added to a growing body of evidence offering a very different view. “Our study confirms that the island couldn’t have supported more than a few thousand people,” said Dr Dylan Davis, a co-author of the work from Columbia University. “As such, contrary to the ecocide narrative, the population present at European arrival wasn’t the remnants of Rapa Nui society, but was likely the society at its peak, living at the levels that were sustainable on the island.” Writing in the journal Science Advances, Davis and colleagues reported how they harnessed high-resolution shortwave infrared and near-infrared satellite imagery and machine learning to identify archaeological sites of rock gardening – a practice employed by the inhabitants of Easter Island to grow crops, including sweet potatoes. The results suggest only 0.76 km2 of land was used in this way – far below previous estimates which, the team said, misidentified features such natural lava flows. As a result, Davis and colleagues have suggested that rock gardening alone could only have supported about 3,900 people at most, a long way off previous estimates of up to 17,000. Indeed, the average figure is just 2,000 people, although this could be increased to up to 4,000 people if other foods, for example from fishing or foraging, are considered. “One of the major arguments for an ‘ecocide’ was that the populations must have been very large in order to build all of the moai statues,” said Davis. “However, archaeological evidence does not support a large population and studies of the moai themselves suggest that a small population could have built and moved them. It just required cooperation.”
21 June 2024
"Easter Island was not a case of self-inflicted ‘ecocide’, as Jared Diamond has contended in Collapse (2005). Instead, the locals of Rapa Nui lived sustainably until the 19th century, when they were devastated by colonialism and disease. By 1877, they numbered just 111." -- Luke Kemp
