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Easter Island society did not collapse prior to European contact, new research shows:
Easter Island society did not collapse prior to European contact and its people continued to build its iconic moai statues for much longer than previously believed, according to a team of researchers including faculty at Binghamton University, State University of New York.
The island of Rapa Nui is well-known for its elaborate ritual architecture, particularly its numerous statues (moai) and the monumental platforms that supported them (ahu). A widely-held narrative posits that construction of these monuments ceased sometime around 1600, following a major societal collapse.
"Our research flies in the face of this narrative," said Carl Lipo, an anthropologist at Binghamton University. "We know, of course, that if we are right, we really need to challenge ourselves (and the archaeological record) to validate our arguments. In this case, we thought to look carefully at the tempo of construction events associated with large platforms."
The researchers, led by the University of Oregon's Robert J. DiNapoli, examined radiocarbon dates, relative architectural stratigraphy and ethnohistoric accounts to quantify the onset, rate and end of monument construction as a means of testing the collapse
[...] "What we found is that once people started to build monuments shortly after arrival to the island, they continued this construction well into the period after Europeans arrived," said Lipo. "This would not have been the case had there been some pre-contact "collapse"— indeed, we should have seen all construction stop well before 1722. The lack of such a pattern supports our claims and directly falsifies those who continue to support the 'collapse' account.
"Once Europeans arrive on the island, there are many documented tragic events due to disease, murder, slave raiding and other conflicts," he added. "These events are entirely extrinsic to the islanders and have, undoubtedly, devastating effects. Yet, the Rapa Nui people — following practices that provided them great stability and success over hundreds of years — continued their traditions in the face of tremendous odds. The degree to which their cultural heritage was passed on – and is still present today through language, arts and cultural practices — is quite notable and impressive. I think this degree of resilience has been overlooked due to the "collapse" narrative, and deserves recognition."
Journal Reference:
Robert J. DiNapoli, Timothy M. Rieth, Carl P. Lipo, Terry L. Hunt. A model-based approach to the tempo of "collapse": The case of Rapa Nui (Easter Island), Journal of Archaeological Science (DOI: 10.1016/j.jas.2020.105094)
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 11 2020, @01:03AM
There was never any good reason to believe this, except that people like to try to make Easter Island into some sort of morality play that means what they want it to mean.
Contemporary accounts by European explorers in the late 18th century - well after the so-called collapse was supposed to have happened - found the society to be quite healthy. Although they did clear-cut all the forests and wipe out most of the biodiversity. But they didn't collapse, they just did less fishing and more farming.
All that said, radiocarbon studies of the moai (and the ahu, the platforms) have already been done [google.com] and found no evidence of any construction after the 17th century. This study needs to explain why they're better than the existing data, and "ethnohistoric accounts" (race memory from 400 years later, apparently) aren't going to cut it.