Enormous stone statues, called moai, on Easter Island
What’s the News: Easter Island is often held up as an example of what can happen when human profligacy and population outpace ecology: Wanton deforestation led to soil erosion and famine, the story goes, and the islanders’ society declined into chaos and cannibalism. But through their research on Easter Island, paleoecologists Terry Hunt
and Carl Lipo
have unearthed evidence that contradicts this version of events. The Polynesian settlers of Easter Island prospered through careful use of the scant available resources, they argue in their new book The Statues That Walked
; the island’s forests were done in not by greedy humans, but by hungry rats. What’s the Context:
The usual tale of Easter Island's demise, originated by scientists in the 1990s and popularized in Jared Diamond's book Collapse, suggests that the island's residents cut down trees to clear farmland and to use ...
