Research challenges well-liked concept that Easter islanders dedicated ‘ecocide’

Some 1,000 years in the past, a small band of Polynesians sailed hundreds of miles throughout the Pacific to settle one of many world’s most remoted locations — a small, beforehand uninhabited island they named Rapa Nui. Ultimately, their numbers ballooned to unsustainable ranges, they wrecked the surroundings, and their civilization collapsed. At the very least that’s the longtime story, instructed in educational research and well-liked books. A brand new examine challenges this narrative of ‘ecocide’ saying that Rapa Nui’s inhabitants by no means spiraled to unsustainable ranges.