Dec 12, 2017 03:48 AM
https://theconversation.com/the-truth-ab...mise-85563
EXCERPT: . . . Easter Island, also known as Rapa Nui . . . Recently, Rapa Nui has become the ultimate parable for humankind’s selfishness; a moral tale of the dangers of environmental destruction. In the “ecocide” hypothesis popularised by the geographer Jared Diamond, Rapa Nui is used as a demonstration of how society is doomed to collapse if we do not sit up and take note. But more than 60 years of archaeological research actually paints a very different picture – and now new genetic data sheds further light on the island’s fate. It is time to demystify Rapa Nui.
[...] 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 colonisation around 1200 AD. Although micro-botanical evidence, such as pollen analysis, suggests the palm forest disappeared quickly, the human population may only have been partially to blame.
The earliest Polynesian colonisers 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.
MORE: https://theconversation.com/the-truth-ab...mise-85563
EXCERPT: . . . Easter Island, also known as Rapa Nui . . . Recently, Rapa Nui has become the ultimate parable for humankind’s selfishness; a moral tale of the dangers of environmental destruction. In the “ecocide” hypothesis popularised by the geographer Jared Diamond, Rapa Nui is used as a demonstration of how society is doomed to collapse if we do not sit up and take note. But more than 60 years of archaeological research actually paints a very different picture – and now new genetic data sheds further light on the island’s fate. It is time to demystify Rapa Nui.
[...] 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 colonisation around 1200 AD. Although micro-botanical evidence, such as pollen analysis, suggests the palm forest disappeared quickly, the human population may only have been partially to blame.
The earliest Polynesian colonisers 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.
MORE: https://theconversation.com/the-truth-ab...mise-85563