Ancient World Review

What Happened On Easter Island?

Anakena - One of the sites used in this study.

"Analysis of remains found on Rapa Nui, Chile (Easter Island) provides evidence contrary to the widely-held belief that the ancient civilization recklessly destroyed its environment [see below], according to new research co-conducted by faculty at Binghamton University, State University of New York." Source: Science Daily (2017).

Next video has some good views of Ahu Tepeu on Easter Island, another site used in this study, but the voice-over is inaudible.

Analyzing "human, faunal and botanical remains from the archaeological sites Anakena and Ahu Tepeu on Rapa Nui, dating from c. 1400 AD to the historic period, and modern reference material," the team determined that the Easter Islanders "had extensive knowledge of how to overcome poor soil fertility, improve environmental conditions, and create a sustainable food supply. These activities demonstrate considerable adaptation and resilience to environmental challenges -- a finding that is inconsistent with an 'ecocide' narrative."

The Easter Island ecocide theory.

Comment: According to the ecocide theory, the population on Easter Island collapsed because deforestation (1) led to the erosion of fertile soil which in turn led to starvation, warfare and cannibalism. If this new research is accurate, however, it would appear that the Easter Islanders had a plentiful marine food supply and a system for sustainable agriculture even after the loss of their trees.

(1) According to Wikipedia, "By that time [the arrival of the Dutch in 1722], 21 species of trees and all species of land birds became extinct through some combination of overharvesting/overhunting, rat predation, and climate change. The island was largely deforested, and it did not have any trees more than 3 metres (10 feet) tall. Loss of large trees meant that residents were no longer able to build seaworthy vessels, significantly diminishing their fishing abilities."

The collapse of the Easter Island population is central to all of these different theories about what happened. According to the traditional story, their population declined from somewhere around 20,000 to the few thousand who were still living there when the Dutch arrived. Some believe that the islanders were decimated by diseases brought by the Europeans, which may have happened but doesn't explain the population loss before the European arrival. Others argue that "[t]he downfall of Easter Island may have had more to do with preexisting environmental conditions than degradation by humans." (Live Science (2015).

Just to complicate matters, it's possible that the population collapse never occurred at all. According to Ars Technica (2016), "new evidence from archaeological investigations has overturned a popular myth about the demise of the Rapa Nui civilization on the island. For centuries, observers believed that the Rapa Nui suffered a catastrophic population crash. But there is no scientific evidence to support this idea, say a group of researchers in the latest issue of the journal Antiquity. That story about environmental collapse and warfare you read about in Jared Diamond's bestseller Collapse? Totally wrong."

At this point, I'm not sure what to believe. According to this new study, the people of Rapa Nui were better at managing their environment than previously believed, but as far as I can tell no one is disputing the fact that they deforested their island. Chopping down all their trees to build canoes and rollers for their giant stone heads doesn't seem to fit with the claim that they "had extensive knowledge of how to overcome poor soil fertility, improve environmental conditions, and create a sustainable food supply." On the other hand, it's probably unrealistic to expect that they had any knowledge of soil erosion and forest management.

I'm no expert on the history of Easter Island, but the "facts" about what happened seem to be all over the place. Did the population actually collapse? Who knows? The estimates I've found for the size of the original population range from 10,000 to 20,000 and I'm not sure what they're based on. If the population didn't collapse, then all these theories about why it collapsed are rendered instantly moot.

Life on Rapa Nui wasn't a peaceful utopia, at least during certain periods. That seems clear enough. The toppled stone heads are cited as evidence that warfare occurred on the island, but the idea that the islanders destroyed themselves by warfare has been called into question and one source I've found even claims that they deliberately made sure their weapons were nonlethal. That seems kind of unlikely, but it doesn't really matter. One way or another, the real history is still obscure.

Easter Island is one of the most isolated islands in the world. It only covers about 64 square miles and even at its height (assuming the estimates are correct) it was home to only around 20,000 people. For all practical purposes, it was a closed system with limited resources. A culture like this would have been extremely vulnerable to climate changes such as low rainfall or anything that would effect fishing or the availability of other food sources. Periods of abundance would lead to population growth which would in turn put increased strain on available resources, leading to inevitable internecine conflict and population decline. Even under the best of circumstances, I would expect a population in this situation to stagnate and decline over time. Perhaps the question isn't why (or if) the culture on Easter Island collapsed, but how it managed to survive at all.

Related: Easter Island statues "walking theory" challenges ecocide story.

How Were Easter Island Statues Carved?

Video from 2014.

"Using basalt stone picks, the Easter Island Moai were carved from the solidified volcanic ash of Rano Raraku volcano. They are all monolithic; the carvings are created in one piece and an average weight of 20 tons and measuring 20 feet tall or more. One unfinished statue is 69 feet tall, estimated to weigh 270 tons. But why was this Moai, representing the pinnacle so far of the statue culture, unfinished? Was it simply too large to move? Had ambition over-taken reality? Or had something else happened? Once completed, the statues were then moved from the quarry to their intended site and erected on an 'ahu'." Source: The Bradshaw Foundation.

Note: I'm not sure about this, but I think the unfinished statue mentioned above is the same one shown in the video.

According to Wikipedia, "It is not known exactly which group in the communities were responsible for carving statues. Oral traditions suggest that the moai were carved either by a distinguished class of professional carvers who were comparable in status to high-ranking members of other Polynesian craft guilds, or, alternatively, by members of each clan. The oral histories show that the Rano Raraku quarry was subdivided into different territories for each clan."

Runaway Truck Destroys Easter Island Statue

"A resident of Rapa Nui (also known as Easter Island, a Polynesian territory of Chile) was arrested last week for damaging one of the island's sacred moai statues with his pickup truck, Chilean news site Cooperativa reported." Source: Live Science.

"Local police said the truck likely rolled down a hill and struck the statue's ceremonial platform, or 'ahu,' after being left unattended. The man left the truck with only a rock wedged under its front tire to compensate for a broken parking brake."

Polynesians Didn't Beat Columbus To South America After All?

Video from 2010. Much of the evidence presented in this video has apparently been disproven by later research.

The theory that the ancient Polynesians reached South America before Columbus is based, in part, on chickens and sweet potatoes.

"Among the intriguing indications that contact might have been made between Polynesians and the native peoples of South America was the supposed pre-Columbian presence of non-native chickens, allegedly introduced to the continent by seafarers from South Pacific islands. More evidence comes from the ubiquity of the sweet potato, a South American native, in the South Pacific — it was already widespread throughout the islands by the time James Cook sailed into the region in 1770." Source: National Geographic 2014.

Since this National Geographic article was written, DNA research has apparently disproved the idea that the chickens studied in South America provided a link with Polynesia:

"Researchers sequenced mitochondrial DNA from 22 chicken bones found at Polynesian archaeological sites and 122 feathers from modern chickens living on islands across the South Pacific. They used an enzyme to remove any contamination by modern DNA that may have clouded the results of earlier studies. When the team compared the 'cleaned-up' DNA of Polynesian chickens with that of ancient and modern South American chickens, they found the two groups were genetically distinct." (National Geographic)

As for the sweet-potato connection, it doesn't hold up, either. According to Science Daily (2018), "New evidence shows that sweet potatoes arose before there were any humans around to eat them. The findings also suggest that the sweet potato crossed the ocean from America to Polynesia without any help from people. The discovery raises doubts about the existence of pre-Columbian contacts between Polynesia and the American continent."

Video from 2014. Whether they got there before Columbus or not, the Polynesians definitely had the capability to reach South America.

Comment: The "chickens and sweet potatoes" evidence may not hold up, but it still seems hard to believe that a seafaring people like the ancient Polynesians didn't have some contact with Pre-Columbian America. There seems to be a lot of plant evidence for early transoceanic contact and some studies have also found genetic links between Native Americans and Polynesia (Christian Science Monitor 2015).

According to a 2014 Science Magazine article, "Polynesians from Easter Island and natives of South America met and mingled long before Europeans voyaged the Pacific, according to a new genetic study of living Easter Islanders."

A later (2017) study, however, found that the people living on Easter Island before Columbus were genetically isolated:

"A study published Thursday in the journal Current Biology found only evidence of Polynesian DNA in human remains on the island that predate European contact in 1722." Source: New York Times (2017). According to the study, "We found no Native American admixture in pre- and post-European-contact individuals."

What's the truth? Who knows? The two DNA studies involving Easter Island directly contradict each other, so it would appear that DNA results aren't as conclusive as we've been led to believe. Whatever the case, though, it still seems highly likely, at least to me, that Polynesians reached the New World a long time ago. Considering their ability to make long sea voyages and spread from island to island across the ocean, I'd be amazed if some of them didn't make it all the way to South America. What kind of impact they had is another question.

Did Humans Live Alongside The Giant Ripper Lizard Of Prehistoric Australia?

Note: "The prehistory of Australia is the period between the first human habitation of the Australian continent and the colonization of Australia in 1788 which marks the start of consistent documentation of Australia. This period is estimated to have lasted between 40,000 and 60,000 years." Source: Wikipedia.

Prehistoric Australia had its share of giant creatures like the "thunder bird" Genyornis and the bizarre Thylacoleo, a carnivorous marsupial the size of a lion, and the first humans who settled in Australia may have encountered Megalania, a huge predatory monitor lizard thought to have disappeared about 50,000 years ago. Also known as the 'giant ripper lizard,' Megalania is the largest terrestrial lizard known to have existed."  (Wikipedia)

According to the BBC (2011), the venomous Megalania "could easily have caught prey of twice its own weight, and could have tackled animals of up to 10 times its own weight," so it wouldn't have had any trouble taking on a human being. Growing up to 23 feet long and weighing over a thousand pounds, "a fully grown giant ripper lizard would be able to tackle even the largest Diprotodon," a hippopotamus-sized marsupial. Aboriginal humans armed with little more than wooden spears would have had little chance against one of these predatory lizards.

It would be interesting to find out if some of the legends of the Australian aborigines could be traced back to prehistoric encounters with the Megalania. It's probably impossible to know, but Aboriginal mythology is full of creatures said to lurk in "swamps, billabongs [seasonal river channels], creeks, riverbeds, and waterholes." The Aborigines have at least two lizard deities: Adnoartina, the lizard guard of Uluru, and Mangar-kunjer-kunja, a lizard god who is thought to have created humans, but they hold protective and generative roles. If it's remembered at all, I'm guessing that Megalania would appear in Aboriginal legends as some kind of mythological monster.

The Lost Continent Of Zealandia

"Recent seafloor drilling has revealed that the 'hidden continent' of Zealandia -- a region of continental crust twice the size of India submerged beneath the southwest Pacific Ocean -- experienced dramatic elevation changes between about 50 million and 35 million years ago." Source: Science Daily.

Note: This new study proposes that Zealandia, aka the "New Zealand continent" or "Tasmantis," sank into the ocean very gradually as the result of a "'subduction rupture event' ... similar to a massive, super-slow earthquake."

Note: "Zealandia is about half the size of Australia, but only 7 percent of it is above sea level. Most of that terrestrial land makes up the two large islands of the country of New Zealand, the North Island and the South Island. Stewart Island, just south of the South Island, and many smaller islets are also a part of Zealandia. New Caledonia, a collection of islands governed by France, makes up the northern tip of Zealandia." Source: National Geographic.

The Meaning Of Easter Island's Statues?

"Based on a 5-year excavation of two Moai found within the Easter Island quarry called Rano Raraku, the Easter Island Statue Project released the first definitive study to reveal the quarry as a complex landscape and link soil fertility, agriculture, quarrying and the sacred nature of the Moai. Chemistry testing suggests the soil in the quarry itself was made more fertile by the act of quarrying, with traces of taro, banana and sweet potato in the area. " Source: Science Daily.

"...Ancient Rapanui carvers worked at the behest of the elite ruling class to carve nearly 1,000 Moai because they, and the community at large, believed the statues capable of producing agricultural fertility and thereby critical food supplies, according to a new study from Jo Anne Van Tilburg, director of the Easter Island Statue Project, recently published in Journal of Archaeological Science."

2014 tourist video showing the Rano Raraku quarry. Good views, but the audio's not the best.

Easter Island Statues Covered With Mysterious Symbols

"New images from the 2012 excavation of Easter Island’s iconic statues reveal the renowned heads are not only connected to giant bodies, but the bodies are covered in mysterious designs and symbols [petroglyphs], which researchers have likened to tattoos." Source: Ancient Origins (2018).

Note: This is fairly old news. The statue's buried bodies were being excavated back in 2010 and the petroglyphs were clearly visible then, according to this 2012 Live Science story. The petroglyphs can be seen in a photo accompanying the story and in the video report above.

Rock art has been discovered all over Easter Island and something like 300 sites were known back in the 1980s, according to the Easter Island Statue Project (EISP). Whatever the case, it wouldn't be surprising if the designs on the enigmatic statues were intended to represent tattoos. "Tattoo (tatau) is an ancient Polynesian and Micronesian practice that is a deeply traditional part of social, economic, and aesthetic life," according to the EISP.

Prehistoric Caves Of Easter Island

Easter Island is famous for its monolithic stone heads, but the island also has a few prehistoric or at least aboriginal caves which are fairly obscure. I think the video above shows the Ana te Pahu Cave, aka the "Banana Cave," named after the banana trees growing around it, but I could be wrong about that. I haven't been able to find much information about the cave beyond some tourist-oriented sites and they usually don't include much archaeological detail. If Vic Stefanu is correct in the video when he says that the cave was occupied around 1000 AD, then it can only be called "prehistoric" in a relative sense. At that time, for example, Europe was in the Middle Ages and Japan was already a couple centuries into the Heian period.

Next video shows the Ana Kai Tangata Cave, aka the "Cannibal Cave."

"Ana Kai Tangata cave is on the shoreline of Easter Island near Hanga Roa," according to The Megalithic Portal. "Its name means Eat Man Cave and according to [Katherine Routledge] was a banqueting hall for the cannibal feasts. On the ceiling are painted many birds resembling the sooty terns that flock to the island and played such a part in the bird man cult at Orongo."

Note: The name of the cave is ambiguous since it could just mean "men eat in this cave."

The Birdman Cult Of Easter Island

"It's possible that the Birdman practices had been going on during the reign of the statue cult; however, it eventually took over as the predominate religion on the island and was still in practice up untill 1866-67 [when it was suppressed, naturally, by Christian missionaries]. High on the rim of the crater known as Rano Kau was the ceremonial village of Orongo. Built to worship the god of fertility, Makemake, it became the site of a grueling competition." Source: Mysterious Places.

"One of the most famous motifs on Easter Island is that of the Birdman, a therianthropic figure, half man and half bird, connected to cult events at the sacred site of Orongo," according to the Bradshaw Foundation.