Did Humans Decimate Easter Island On Arrival?

New Scientist ^ | 3-9-2006 | Bob Holmes

[blam]

Did humans decimate Easter Island on arrival?

19:00 09 March 2006
NewScientist.com news service
Bob Holmes

Early settlers to the remote Easter Island stripped the island’s natural resources to erect towering stone statues (Image: Terry L Hunt)

The first humans may have arrived on Easter Island several centuries later than previously supposed, suggests a new study. If so, these Polynesian settlers must have begun destroying the island's forests almost immediately after their arrival.

Easter Island has often been cited as the classic example of a human-induced ecological catastrophe. The island – one of the most remote places on Earth – was once richly forested, but settlers cut the forests, partly to use the wood in construction of the massive stone statues and temples for which the island is famous. When Dutch sailors arrived in 1722, they found a starving population on a barren island.

Archaeologists had thought that humans first arrived at the island around 800 AD, based on radiocarbon dating of kitchen scraps and cooking fires. Since the first signs of severe deforestation do not appear until the 13th century, this suggests the Easter Islanders lived several centuries without serious impact on their environment.

Not so, says Terry Hunt, an archaeologist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Hunt and Carl Lipo of California State University at Long Beach, US, radiocarbon-dated charcoal from the earliest human traces in a new excavation on the island. The site, Anakena, is Easter Island's only sandy beach and has long been regarded as the likeliest spot for first colonists to settle. To their surprise, the wood dated no earlier than 1200 AD – several hundred years more recent than they had expected.

Chop chop

"I got those results back and I was sceptical," says Hunt. "I thought, something's wrong with these." When repeated samples yielded the same date, he and Lipo re-examined the existing evidence. After throwing out any studies that lacked replicate samples or had other methodological problems, the 11 studies that remained all pointed to the same date – roughly 1200 AD.

Such a late arrival date means that the new inhabitants of Easter Island must have begun hacking down trees almost immediately, building the gigantic monuments and stone heads that make the island so distinctive, says Hunt.

And the new civilisation's ecological footprint must have been heavy from the start. "There isn't a period of ecological stability. There was almost immediate impact," says Hunt. "It isn't a two-part story any more. There's really just one chapter."

Broader context

Not everyone is convinced, however. A first arrival on Easter Island around 900 AD would fit well with Polynesians' first arrival on the nearest neighbouring islands of Mangareva, Henderson and Pitcairn, says Patrick Kirch, an archaeologist at the University of California at Berkeley, US.

Kirch thinks Hunt and Lipo may have been too free in discarding studies for minor methodological problems, thus rejecting valid dates in this range. "For me, they don't make a convincing argument that we can eliminate the earlier dates, especially in light of the broader regional context," he says.

And their new excavation may have simply sampled a relatively young settlement while missing nearby, older sites. To resolve the issue, researchers will need to date charcoal from many more excavations to see what pattern emerges. "Then we may be able to say we have the answer," says Kirch.

Journal reference: Science (DOI: 10.1126/science.1121879)

[jrg]

Well that goodness someone settled there, otherwise we would not have any Easter candy

[Kaylee Frye]

But you missed laywers... :)

[RightWhale]

How sure is the idea of intense competition among the tribal groups on the island? Were the starving survivors still trying to compete?

[blam]

"How sure is the idea of intense competition among the tribal groups on the island? Were the starving survivors still trying to compete?"

Indications are that they were...all the way to the point that there weren't enough people left to move the statues.

[RightWhale]

Then the idea that they competed themselves to extinction should be allowed.

Same thing could happen to the whole planet, as those who grew up under the shade of the mushroom cloud already sense as clearly as they sense that something beside speculators is driving the price of oil.

[S0122017]

In the article about all those mummified seals dating out at 1200 AD, it was reported that the supplier slipped in a seal that he'd shot and left out all winter where it mummified. It was also dated at the same 1200 AD. A dating that was obviously erroneous. Then I read this article where things are AGAIN being dated at 1200 AD. And I laugh once again at our "intelligentsia".

.....

[Stag_Man]

Why ship prisoners many thousands of mile across the ocean when you much more cheaply kill them at home?

[SunkenCiv]

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