(WQ) Star People (space visitors) came down to help produce the culture we see on so-called "Easter Island" or Rapa Nui as it is actually named.
When Europeans arrived, they assumed the population had to bigger before and must have dwindled down to its size of a few thousand. A new study published in a peer-reviewed journal shows that that is a Western myth, a foolish assumption that never happened.
The Rapa Nui may have ruined their environment and chopped down all their trees. But that did not cause a collapse of its population. It's intensive gardening and farming techniques, which produce low yields in the best of seasons, were as they had always been.
So who built the Moai, the giant statues buried up to the chests? They obviously had help and no time or inclination to make such monoliths without prompting and help from somewhere out there off the isolated island.
Ecocide hypothesis
In his book
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Jared Diamond suggested that cannibalism took place on Easter Island after the construction of the moai (stone head statues that are actually whole bodies) contributed to environmental degradation when extreme deforestation (ecocide) destabilized an already precarious ecosystem [33].
The archeological record shows that at the time of the initial settlement the island was home to many species of trees, including at least three species which grew up to 49 feet (15 meters) or more: Paschalococos (possibly the largest palm trees in the world at the time), Alphitonia zizyphoides, and Elaeocarpus rarotongensis.
At least six species of land birds were known to live on the island. A major factor that contributed to the extinction of multiple plant species was the introduction of the Polynesian rat.
Studies by paleobotanists have shown rats can dramatically affect the reproduction of vegetation in an ecosystem. In the case of Rapa Nui, recovered plant seed shells showed markings of being gnawed on by rats [3]. This version of the history speculates a high former population to the island that had already declined before Europeans arrived.
Barbara A. West wrote, "Sometime before the arrival of Europeans on Easter Island, the Rapanui experienced a tremendous upheaval in their social system brought about by a change in their island's ecology... By the time of European arrival in 1722, the island's population had dropped to 2,000–3,000 from a high of approximately 15,000 just a century earlier" [34].
By that time, 21 species of trees and all species of land birds became extinct through some combination of over-harvesting, over-hunting, rat predation, and climate change. The island was largely deforested, and it did not have any trees taller than 9.8 ft. (3 m).
Loss of large trees meant that residents were no longer able to build seaworthy vessels, significantly diminishing their fishing abilities. According to this version of the history, the trees were used as rollers to move the moai statues to their place of erection from the quarry at Rano Raraku [35].
Deforestation also caused erosion which caused a sharp decline in agricultural production [3]. This was exacerbated by the loss of land birds and the collapse in seabird populations as a source of food.
By the 18th century, islanders were largely sustained by farming, with domestic chickens as the primary source of protein [36].
Birdmen replace warriors
.
As the island became overpopulated and resources diminished, warriors known as
matatoa gained more power and the Ancestor Cult ended, making way for the Bird Man Cult.
Beverly Haun wrote, "The concept of mana (power) invested in hereditary leaders was recast into the person of the birdman, apparently beginning circa 1540, and coinciding with the final vestiges of the moai period" [37].
This cult maintained that, although the ancestors still provided for their descendants, the medium through which the living could contact the dead was no longer statues, but human beings chosen through a competition.
The god responsible for creating humans, Makemake, played an important role in this process. Katherine Routledge, who systematically collected the island's traditions in her 1919 expedition [38], showed that the competitions for Bird Man (Rapa Nui tangata manu) started around 1760, after the arrival of the first Europeans, and ended in 1878, with the construction of the first church by Roman Catholic missionaries who formally arrived in 1864.
Petroglyphs representing Bird Men on Easter Island are the same as some in Hawaii, indicating that this concept was probably brought by the original settlers; only the competition itself was unique to Easter Island.
According to Diamond and Heyerdahl's version of the island's history, the huri mo'ai – "statue-toppling" – continued into the 1830s as a part of fierce internal wars.
By 1838, the only standing moai were on the slopes of Rano Raraku, in Hoa Hakananai'a in Orongo, and Ariki Paro in Ahu Te Pito Kura.
Criticism of the ecocide hypothesis
Diamond and West's version of the history is highly controversial. A study headed by Douglas Owsley published in 1994 asserted that there is little archeological evidence of pre-European societal collapse.
Bone pathology and osteometric data from islanders of that period clearly suggest few fatalities can be attributed directly to violence [39].
Research by Binghamton University anthropologists Robert DiNapoli and Carl Lipo in 2021 suggests that the island experienced steady population growth from its initial settlement until European contact in 1722.
The island never had more than a few thousand people prior to European contact, and their numbers were increasing rather than dwindling [40][41].
Several works that address or counter Diamond's claims in Collapse have been published.
In Ecological Catastrophe and Collapse -The Myth of "Ecocide" on Rapa Nui (Easter Island), Hunt and Lipo set out a claim-by-claim rebuttal to Diamond's claims.
This includes, among other things:
- that deforestation began immediately, but the population grew while the forest declined as the land was converted to more productive farmland;
- that the island's population grew continuously up to the arrival of Europeans, with the only clear decline starting in the period of 1750–1800;
- that studies from other islands show clearly that Polynesian settlement without Polynesian rats is only associated with minimal forest loss while the arrival of rats without human settlement is devastating to forest populations;
- only species favored by the rats for consumption were lost, not for example the native Sophora toromiro;
- that the island's drier, less predictable climate made it inherently more vulnerable to deforestation than other Polynesian islands; and that the population declines on Rapa Nui can be well attributed to the very mechanism described by Diamond in another of his books, Guns, Germs and Steel -- the devastating impact of introduced diseases, raids, slavery, and exploitation on indigenous populations [42].
In another work, Hunt and Lipo discuss more evidence against the ecocide hypothesis. In addition to focusing on the settlement chronology, they note that the island has an abnormally low amount of evidence of warfare compared to other Polynesian islands, only relatively small-scale intergroup conflict.
There are no fortifications, and the attributed obsidian
mata'a "weapons" show rather evidence of having been used in agriculture, and indeed, match up with agricultural tools long recognized among artifacts of other Polynesian peoples [43].
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