Jun 2, 2020 04:00 AM
https://www.sapiens.org/archaeology/east...-collapse/
EXCERPTS: . . . Rapa Nui (Easter Island) is often seen as a cautionary example of societal collapse. In this story, made popular by geographer Jared Diamond’s bestselling book Collapse, the Indigenous people of the island, the Rapanui, so destroyed their environment that, by around 1600, their society fell into a downward spiral of warfare, cannibalism, and population decline. These catastrophes, the collapse narrative explains, resulted in the destruction of the social and political structures that were in place during precolonial times, though the people of Rapa Nui survive and persist on the island to the present day.
In recent years, researchers working on the island have questioned this long-accepted story. For example, anthropologist Terry Hunt and archaeologist Carl Lipo, who have studied the island’s archaeology and cultural history for many years, have suggested an alternative hypothesis that the Rapanui did not succumb to a downward spiral of self-destruction but instead practiced resiliency, cooperation, and perhaps even a degree of environmental stewardship.
Now new evidence from Hunt, Lipo, and their colleagues, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, lends credence to their ideas. This evidence suggests that the people of the island continued to thrive, as indicated by the continued construction of the stone platforms, called ahu, on which the iconic statues stand, even after the 1600s.
[...] if Robert DiNapoli and his team are correct, the popular story of Rapa Nui’s decline, as described by Diamond, needs to be rethought and its heroes and villains reconfigured. Instead of the Rapanui hastening their own destruction prior to European contact, it is possible that the people of the island may have been the victims of European exploration and exploitation.
[...] Not all Rapa Nui specialists agree with DiNapoli and his colleagues’ methods or conclusions. Jo Anne Van Tilburg, an archaeologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, is skeptical that all the radiocarbon dates used by the team reflect specifically ahu-related building events.
Van Tilburg also argues that [...] “The collapse narrative as these authors describe it is a straw man they have set up that does not accurately reflect the actual hypothesis,” she says. ... In short, Van Tilburg believes the new work is missing some of the nuances of Diamond’s original theory. Diamond never described the collapse as a one-time event, Van Tilburg explains, but rather as a series of events that ultimately resulted in destructive societal changes that were hastened by European contact.
Diamond’s hypothesis is based on a mix of oral tradition, evidence of island deforestation, and the work of previous ... Early 20th-century oral historians [...who...] theorized that an internecine clash had occurred between islanders. ... this warfare, combined with deforestation, resulted in the collapse of the island’s social hierarchies and many traditions...
The fate of Rapa Nui has been heatedly debated over the last several years with the development of new theories and innovative techniques, such as Bayesian methods. For many archaeologists, the pre-contact collapse theory is ripe for questioning.... (MORE - details)
EXCERPTS: . . . Rapa Nui (Easter Island) is often seen as a cautionary example of societal collapse. In this story, made popular by geographer Jared Diamond’s bestselling book Collapse, the Indigenous people of the island, the Rapanui, so destroyed their environment that, by around 1600, their society fell into a downward spiral of warfare, cannibalism, and population decline. These catastrophes, the collapse narrative explains, resulted in the destruction of the social and political structures that were in place during precolonial times, though the people of Rapa Nui survive and persist on the island to the present day.
In recent years, researchers working on the island have questioned this long-accepted story. For example, anthropologist Terry Hunt and archaeologist Carl Lipo, who have studied the island’s archaeology and cultural history for many years, have suggested an alternative hypothesis that the Rapanui did not succumb to a downward spiral of self-destruction but instead practiced resiliency, cooperation, and perhaps even a degree of environmental stewardship.
Now new evidence from Hunt, Lipo, and their colleagues, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, lends credence to their ideas. This evidence suggests that the people of the island continued to thrive, as indicated by the continued construction of the stone platforms, called ahu, on which the iconic statues stand, even after the 1600s.
[...] if Robert DiNapoli and his team are correct, the popular story of Rapa Nui’s decline, as described by Diamond, needs to be rethought and its heroes and villains reconfigured. Instead of the Rapanui hastening their own destruction prior to European contact, it is possible that the people of the island may have been the victims of European exploration and exploitation.
[...] Not all Rapa Nui specialists agree with DiNapoli and his colleagues’ methods or conclusions. Jo Anne Van Tilburg, an archaeologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, is skeptical that all the radiocarbon dates used by the team reflect specifically ahu-related building events.
Van Tilburg also argues that [...] “The collapse narrative as these authors describe it is a straw man they have set up that does not accurately reflect the actual hypothesis,” she says. ... In short, Van Tilburg believes the new work is missing some of the nuances of Diamond’s original theory. Diamond never described the collapse as a one-time event, Van Tilburg explains, but rather as a series of events that ultimately resulted in destructive societal changes that were hastened by European contact.
Diamond’s hypothesis is based on a mix of oral tradition, evidence of island deforestation, and the work of previous ... Early 20th-century oral historians [...who...] theorized that an internecine clash had occurred between islanders. ... this warfare, combined with deforestation, resulted in the collapse of the island’s social hierarchies and many traditions...
The fate of Rapa Nui has been heatedly debated over the last several years with the development of new theories and innovative techniques, such as Bayesian methods. For many archaeologists, the pre-contact collapse theory is ripe for questioning.... (MORE - details)