Easter Island people... the narrative may be wrong

[Maxmars]

Apparently the idea that the people of Rapa Nui over stressed their environment, leading to population collapse and the demise of their culture... may have been wrong.

It seems that new evidence doesn't paint the same picture.

Apparently when the idea was launched as a theory, most were quick to accept that a population of some 4,000 couldn't possibly have been able to survive on the island...

Except satellite imagery analysis may show that they may have been better at adapting than we gave them credit for.  After all, they had managed to live on the island for many generations while maintaining a balance with their environment. 

From NewScientist: Easter Island's legendary societal collapse didn't actually happen
 

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Historians have claimed the people of Easter Island overexploited natural resources, causing a population crash, but new evidence suggests they lived sustainably for centuries

The widespread claim that the ancient people of Easter Island experienced a societal collapse due to overexploitation of natural resources has been thrown into fresh doubt. Instead, there was a small and stable population that lived sustainably for centuries before the arrival of Europeans, an analysis of historical farming practices suggests.

Famous for its towering stone statues, Easter Island – also known as Rapa Nui – in the Pacific Ocean is thought to have been inhabited by Polynesians since around AD 1200. At that time, its 164-square kilometres were covered in palm forests, but these were quickly destroyed, probably by a combination of rats and over-harvesting.

According to a narrative popularised by the historian Jared Diamond, the unsustainable use of resources led to runaway population growth and a subsequent collapse before Europeans arrived in 1722.

The islanders mainly supported themselves through rock gardening, a form of agriculture that has been widely practised in places where soils are poor or the climate harsh. Stones are scattered around fields to create microhabitats and wind breaks, preserve moisture and supply important minerals.

Previous studies have suggested that as much as 21 square kilometres of Rapa Nui was covered in rock gardens, supporting a population of up to 16,000 people.

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I wonder at the reason why this narrative was "popularized" in the first place...  What might have happened there?  No speculation... just an honest question....

[FlyingClayDisk]

I wonder at the reason why this narrative was "popularized" in the first place... 

Academics can be a strange breed sometimes.  Many, while seemingly diminutive, have egos the size of Mt. Everest.  They are always in search of something to put their name on, to brand with their name.  I have always attributed at least part of this to the endless pressure they have put on them from the institutions they work for to publish, publish, publish, as a part of their tenure.  My sister, brother in law and nephew are all doctorate college professors (my sister and BIL are now retired), so I've seen first-hand this constant searching for subject matter to publish.  What better way to do that, if one is a historian, than to go to some remote location that few know about and come up with some less than exhaustively researched theory that few if any will ever spend the time effort to refute.  I posted in a different thread about one professor (not related to me) who was hell bent to figure out how the Maori statues were erected.  He never even travelled to Easter Island(!), but dedicated nearly a decade of his life to becoming the 'foremost authority' in the World about the Maori statues.  And candidly, he got a lot of 'thunder' for his efforts too.  At the same time, as I noted in my other post, there was another professor at some other university who was bent on doing the exact same thing, and they were avowed mortal enemies.  LOL!  I don't know if the other guy went there either (but he might have flown over it one time, or saw an article in National Geographic...or thought about it at lunch once.  I'm kidding of course.)  The point is, many narratives get popularized because they have a committed and motivated PR agent (i.e. some professor looking to make a name for himself/herself).  I've seen it more than once in my life, and I'm sure many others have too.
 

What might have happened there?

Well, one 'theory' has it that they ran out of food and turned to cannibalism, and their habit of snacking on their neighbors exceeded the birth rate, so they ate themselves into extinction.  Sounds pretty crazy to me, but when the name of the game is one-upping some other professor, well, all bets are off.  Me personally, I tend to think that many of them died off due to starvation and the remaining indigenous people emigrated off the island to Polynesia.  The Polynesians were known to be great ocean navigators and explorers, and they were out and about during the times Rapa Nui people vanished.  But hey, what do I know?

[Maxmars]

Well, one 'theory' has it that they ran out of food and turned to cannibalism, and their habit of snacking on their neighbors exceeded the birth rate, so they ate themselves into extinction...

I can't help but wonder about the 'given' notions of this society having 'destroyed themselves through their own behavior.'  It seems unlikely after generations of successfully being there, they would have just stopped doing what worked for hundreds of years.  Something either changed in their environment abruptly, or perhaps the Europeans only got half the story.

[Karl12]

Suppose we'd know more if missionaries didn't encourage the natives to burn the Ronogoronogo tablets.

There are more mysteries on Easter Island than just giant heads. Easter Island is one of the few areas of the Pacific that developed an indigenous written language. The rongorongo script is a beautiful artistic creation that was carved in hieroglyphic-like characters on wooden tablets.. Unfortunately, nineteenth-century missionaries to Easter Island encouraged the natives to burn most of the ronogoronogo tablets.

Geologist Robert Schoch is a pretty controversial chap with some pretty eyebrow raising ideas about 'solar induced dark ages' - here he is on Easter Island.



Video

[Nerb]

Something either changed in their environment abruptly, or perhaps the Europeans only got half the story.

"Visitors" perhaps who raped the land for resources and buggered off?

Ships need repairing and shelters built with wood plus as many supplies as possible for an ocean voyage via a trolly-dash could have tipped the scales and pushed things into a new and unsurvivable situation for the natives once the friendly but meglomanic visitors had departed.

[Maxmars]

Another article on this topic...

From ArsTechnica: We now have even more evidence against the “ecocide” theory of Easter Island

While it may be said that this is the same topic, there's a bit more here in the way of information...
 

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... Lipo has long challenged that narrative, arguing as far back as 2007 against the "ecocide" theory. He and Hunt published a paper that year noting the lack of evidence of any warfare on Easter Island compared to other Polynesian islands. There are no known fortifications, and the obsidian tools found were clearly used for agriculture. Nor is there much evidence of violence among skeletal remains. He and Hunt concluded that the people of Rapa Nui continued to thrive well after 1600, which would warrant a rethinking of the popular narrative that the island was destitute when Europeans arrived in 1722. ...



The result: Lipo et al. determined that the prevalence of rock gardening was about one-fifth of even the most conservative previous estimates of population size on Easter Island. They estimate that the island could support about 3,000 people—roughly the same number of inhabitants European explorers encountered when they arrived. "Previous studies had estimated that the island was fairly covered with mulch gardening, which led to estimates of up to 16,000 people," said Lipo. "We're saying that the island could never have supported 16,000 people; it didn't have the productivity to do so. This pre-European collapse narrative simply has no basis in the archaeological record."

"We don't see demographic change decline in populations prior to Europeans' arrival," Lipo said. "All the [cumulative] evidence to date shows a continuous growth until some plateau is reached. It certainly was never an easy place to live, but people were able to figure out a means of doing so and lived within the boundaries of the capacity of the island up until European arrival." So rather than being a cautionary tale, "Easter Island is a great case of how populations adapt to limited resources on a finite place, and do so sustainably."

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[Byrd]

Apparently the idea that the people of Rapa Nui over stressed their environment, leading to population collapse and the demise of their culture... may have been wrong.

It seems that new evidence doesn't paint the same picture.

Apparently when the idea was launched as a theory, most were quick to accept that a population of some 4,000 couldn't possibly have been able to survive on the island...

Except satellite imagery analysis may show that they may have been better at adapting than we gave them credit for.  After all, they had managed to live on the island for many generations while maintaining a balance with their environment. 

I wonder at the reason why this narrative was "popularized" in the first place...  What might have happened there?  No speculation... just an honest question....

The narrative dates back to Thor Heyerdahl, who wrote about Easter Island and fired public imagination.  Everybody loves a good mystery, and there was plenty there to fuel it.

Anthropologists and geologists and botanists and many others leaped to investigate (because academics love a good mystery.)  Books were written (that sold).

With the rise of the Internet, psychics and travelers and alternative history theorists tackled it as well, and thanks to the quirky values of the Internet, many of their ideas gained traction.

Scientists are limited by tools and data (for example, Alchemists didn't have the tools to create an atom bomb in the 1700's).  Theorists aren't so limited.

Religion is the only field where someone expects to make a "find" and that answer, once and for all, is correct.  "It's in the Bible/Koran/Torah/Vedas" is enough.

Science, on the other hand, is a series of steps and missteps based on the available data.  The public finds it frustrating because they want an answer... one answer.  But tools limit what we can know (which is why advances require new discoveries and new tools) and that means science changes as we find better evidence and answers.

And local/native legends can guide but aren't exactly the truthful narratives that people sometimes think they are.  Part of the "resource war" comes from some of the legends and beliefs of the locals.

This isn't entirely new-new data.  There's been suggestions all along that the picture might be incomplete or even wrong (questions about results) -- but the public doesn't see this.  They just see Big Announcements.  So when science changes it looks like something abrupt and there's a sudden round of "can't trust scientists!" "Science is unreliable!"  "Why do we listen to those fools?"  in the public forum instead of "now we see the picture more clearly."

Among academics, it's "Aha!  New stuff!  Better data!"

And thus we're seen as out of touch and even as foolish.

[Maxmars]

Thus, the actual flaw, or disconnect, isn't in the state of knowledge, but instead, it's in the  manner in which it is disseminated.

Books full of theories are all fine and well, but if you present that your knowledge is 'definitive' or your finding, "incontrovertible" you can expect an eventual spanking as the state of the field grows in scope.  Mind you, I find that kind of scientific journalism to be rare - even in the ancient past... but no so it's marketing - especially now.

In fact some of the collateral (and incidental) 'media' surrounding scientific information is practically criminal in the way it is presented (and in the inferences and suggestions that make up the production.)

Perhaps most discouraging of all is the "scientist can't be trusted" crowd.  But, I simply point to a relatively educated information consumer to realize that while some things are reported to reach the aim of expanding common knowledge, other things are meant to 'sell' (directly, or indirectly,) something else.

More people need to learn rhetoric... (and others need to learn not to "sort of" lie.)  The information-world might be better off.