Easter Island people... the narrative may be wrong

[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?