What (Really) Happened on Easter Island?
Ecological Catastrophe and Cultural Collapse (P,G,S) Easter Island has become the “poster child” for prehistoric human induced ecological catastrophe and cultural collapse. Today a popular narrative recounts an obsession with monumental statuary-a mania for the megalithic moai-that led to the island’s ecological devastation and the collapse of the ancient civilization. Scholars offer this story as a parable of our own reckless destruction of the global environment. In this lecture Dr. Hunt critically examines the evidence for Rapa Nui. A revised, later chronology for Rapa Nui calls into question aspects of the current model for the island’s ecological history. A closer look also reveals a complex historical ecology for the island; one best explained by a synergy of impacts, rather than simply the reckless over-exploitation by ancient Polynesians. It is essential to disentangle the related notion of prehistoric “ecocide” with the demographic collapse (i.e., post-contact genocide) that o
