Gregory's Server
#RapaNui #JaredDiamond #debunked
"'In just a few centuries, the people of Easter Island wiped out their forest, drove their plants and animals to extinction, and saw their complex society spiral into chaos and cannibalism.'
So writes Jared Diamond in his best-selling book Collapse, which was published in 2005.
Nearly two decades later, an international team of geneticists has found evidence that this famous cautionary tale never actually happened.
The true story of Rapa Nui (named Easter Island by colonial Europeans) is not one of self-inflicted population collapse, the new findings suggest, but of cultural resilience.
In the 1600s, it seems that the ancient people of Rapa Nui were not utterly isolated on their island, and it is clear that they did not overexploit their resources to the point of 'ecocide'.
Instead . . ."
#RapaNui #JaredDiamond #debunked
See also:
"We highlight that our results (and the genomic data they are based on) shed light on the Rapanui demographic history exclusively. Thus, they cannot be used to directly evaluate the ecological impact of human activity on the island. Whereas anthropogenic impact is widespread in Polynesia, we specifically reject the hypothesis that such changes in Rapa Nui resulted in population collapse in the 1600s, before European contact. Instead, our results support that the Rapanui population was resilient despite a changing environment."
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07881-4
#RapaNui #JaredDiamond #debunked
See also:
"We highlight that our results (and the genomic data they are based on) shed light on the Rapanui demographic history exclusively. Thus, they cannot be used to directly evaluate the ecological impact of human activity on the island. Whereas anthropogenic impact is widespread in Polynesia, we specifically reject the hypothesis that such changes in Rapa Nui resulted in population collapse in the 1600s, before European contact. Instead, our results support...