The Statues of Rapa Nui and a Collapse That May Have Come from Outside

For decades the island of Rapa Nui, known in English as Easter Island, served as a parable of ecological suicide. Its builders, the story ran, felled the palm forests to move giant stone statues, and famine and warfare followed.

Archaeologists such as Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo have argued that the evidence fits this story poorly. Rats that arrived with the first settlers may have eaten the palm seeds, which would explain the lost forest without any mass felling. They also point to slave raids and introduced diseases in the nineteenth century as the likelier cause of the steepest population decline. Other researchers dispute parts of this reading, and the debate remains open.