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The Easter Island Describe the culture and economic/cultural factors that determined its history. In particular, explain the root causes of its...

About 20 years ago, Jared Diamond presented a theory of what happened in Easter Island that became the predominant theory: A once relatively advanced civilization with the technology needed to construct those famous giant head monuments, as well as to engage in seafaring exploration, collapsed because of ecological mismanagement; they deforested too much, consumed vegetation too quickly, and finally could no longer sustain their population, suffered a catastrophic famine, and regressed into a more primitive society.

More recent research has called that theory into question, however. The new theory is that the islanders were destroyed not by their own actions, but by the rats they accidentally brought with them (humans have brought rats just about everywhere we go; we'll probably bring them to Mars when we colonize there, if only for research purposes).

It's actually still not clear when exactly the islands were colonized, or when exactly they became barren; the carbon-dating of the first artifacts is quite vague, and historical accounts vary considerably on just how fertile the island still was when European explorers arrived. The leading estimate was that the island was colonized between 800 AD and 900 AD, and deforestation began in about 1200 AD and was nearly complete by 1600 AD. But more recent studies suggest that the population may not even have arrived until about 1200 AD, and the deforestation began immediately, not by humans cutting down trees, but by rats consuming all the vegetation and disrupting the ecosystem. In a fertile environment rats can multiply extremely fast, and obviously have no qualms whatsoever about environmental sustainability.

On this account, since the deforestation proceeded rapidly, the islanders were accustomed to it from the start; it did not trigger a societal collapse. The real reason for the collapse of their once-great civilization is much more typical: War. European colonists came to the region and came into conflict with the indigenous population, and the Europeans had much better weapons. Combined with the diseases that Europeans brought (as well as their own new species of rats), the indigenous people could no longer maintain their once-thriving culture.

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