ArsTechnica has a story that suggests that Easter Island is not an allegory for a failed lifeboat-earth scenario that so many claim.
While trying to explain the "Hats" on some Easter Island statues, the article reveals that the scientific thinking has been slowly changing over the years, and the Islanders are probably not guilty of all the tragically foolish things we assumed, and the ssland was never as populated as some had surmised.
Along the way several key theories have changed:
And if that's the case, then the Rapanui wouldn't actually have needed a workforce of thousands, under the direction of a powerful central ruling class, to install the hats. A few smaller communities could have done the job, which supports the argument that Easter Island's population was always small and didn't drive itself to collapse by building giant statues. Lipo and Hunt had previously come to the same conclusion about moving the actual statues.
That finding goes a long way to exonerate the ancient Rapanui in the case of their own population crash. The statues would have been a big project, but they clearly weren't ecocidally resource-intensive monuments to irrational cultural hubris, either.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Wednesday June 06 2018, @05:48PM
s/ssland/island
also
"Significant variation in Statutes and Hats suggests they were village size projects, rather than kingdom sized. Work crews were much smaller than imagined."
s/Statutes/statues
Also for anyone that hasn't seen it but might enjoy it, there's a related and fairly recent video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6aEaMiDeUw (How Gods Die) which I thought was interesting and thought provoking.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?