Easter Island Not Victim of 'Ecocide', Analysis of Remains Shows

Similar isotope analyses of archaeological and modern botanical and marine samples were used to characterize the local environment. Results of carbon and nitrogen analyses independently show that around half the protein in diets from the humans measured came from marine sources; markedly higher than previous estimates. 

These findings point to concerted efforts to manipulate agricultural soils, and suggest the prehistoric Rapa Nui population had extensive knowledge of how to overcome poor soil fertility, improve environmental conditions, and create a sustainable food supply. These activities demonstrate considerable adaptation and resilience to environmental challenges — a finding that is inconsistent with an ‘ecocide’ narrative.

“We found that there’s a fairly significant marine diet, over time, throughout history and that people were eating marine resources, and it wasn’t as though they only had food from terrestrial resources,” said Lipo. “We also learned that what they did get from terrestrial resources came from very modified soils, that they were enriching the soils in order to grow the crops. That supports the argument we’ve made in our previous work, that these people came up with am ingenious strategy in enriching the soils by adding bedrock to the surface and inside the soil to crate, essentially, fertilizer to support their populations, and that forest loss really isn’t a catastrophe as previously described.”

Lipo said that these new findings continue to support the idea that the story of Easter Island is more interesting and complex than assumed.

“The Rapa Nui people were, not surprisingly, smart about how they used their resources,” he said. “And all the misunderstanding comes from our preconceptions about what subsistence should look like, basically European farmers thinking, ‘Well, what should a farm look like?’ And it didn’t look like what they thought, so they assumed something bad had happened, when in fact it was a perfectly smart thing to do. It continues to support the new narrative that we’ve been finding for the past ten years.”

 

Contacts and sources:
Ryan Yarosh

Binghamton University

The paper, “Diet of the prehistoric population of Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile) shows environmental adaptation and resilience,” was published in “American Journal of Physical Anthropology.”