Easter Island Mystery: What Really Happened To Rapa Nui Society?
Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - 17:30
in Paleontology & Archaeology
In 1722, when Europeans arrived on Easter Island, nearly 2,300 miles off the west coast of Chile, the native Polynesian culture known as Rapa Nui were already in a demographic tailspin from which they would not recover. Pick a fad belief of the moment, and someone has correlated it to Easter Island. Environmental damage? Easter Island. Climate change? Easter Island. Add in political partisanship and lifestyle diseases and you can also find a correlation-causation arrow being abused. Will there ever be an answer? Hard to say, but a new paper attempts at least some clarification. read more