The well-known story of Easter Island’s suicide is not true, says a new study

Easter Island fate has long been used as a cautionary example of what happens when humanity wastes its natural resources.

In the light of recent research, it seems that the story of the destruction of Easter Island is not true.

In the middle The island in the Pacific Ocean was inhabited more than 800 years ago by skilled Polynesian seafarers.

According to the long-held belief, the flourishing community that lived on the lonely island collapsed in the 17th century after cutting down the trees on the island and exterminating the animals. Erosion took away farmland and food scarcity led to famine. Culture and population collapsed. The inhabitants began to practice cannibalism.

When the wood ran out, the islanders couldn’t even make canoes. They became completely isolated from the rest of the world.

When Europeans arrived on the almost treeless Easter Island, or Rapa nui, in the 18th century, they found gigantic stone human statues and 3,000 inhabitants. Much later, researchers concluded that a maximum of 15,000 people had lived on Easter Island.

Easter Island the story was made famous by an American geographer, biologist and bestselling author Jared Diamond In his book Collapse (Terra Cognita, 2005). In that, Pääsiäissaari was allowed to act as one example of ecological self-destruction (ecocide).

Recently, the story about Easter Island has come into question. According to new research, the residents did cut down trees, but the deforestation did not result in a population crisis, but the residents were able to adapt to the changing environment.

The island’s ancient cultures were much smaller than thought, and according to them, the island had supported at most about 4,000 people, according to an archaeological study published in July in the journal Science Advances research.

Bridge genetic research published last week on the old dead of Rapa Nui seems to overturn the suicide theory completely. Published in the journal Nature research article says that the island has never had more than 3,000 inhabitants.

The only genetic bottleneck was before the 14th century, probably when the island was settled. After that, the population grew slowly but steadily until the arrival of Europeans.

Europeans brought smallpox with them, and Peruvian slave traders took a third of the island’s population in the 1860s. In the 1870s, there were only 110 people left on the island.

“After the arrival of the Europeans, the history of Rapa Nui is dark,” says the lead author of the study Victor Brown-Mayer from the University of Copenhagen for Science magazine.

in genetic research it also turned out that the DNA of the deceased who lived in the 19th and early 20th centuries was studied, and ten percent of the DNA was inherited from the native population of South America, but not at all European.

Mixing with the American population dates back 600-800 years, before Columbus sailed to America and Europeans to Easter Island.

The research cannot tell whether the inhabitants of Easter Island visited America or whether the Americans came across the sea to Easter Island.

Correction 18.9. 2024 at 11:06 AM: Removed sentence that said the term ecocide came from Jared Diamond’s Collapse. The word was invented earlier.