One tenth of the island had these scattered rock 'gardens,' and they produced enough food, 'to sustain a population density similar to places like Oklahoma, Colorado, Sweden and New Zealand today.'Īccording to MacKinnon, scientists say that Easter Island skeletons from that time show 'less malnutrition than people in Europe.' When a Dutch explorer, Jacob Roggevin, happened by in 1722, he wrote that islanders didn't ask for food. MacKinnon says, which gave the soil just enough of a nutrient boost to support basic vegetables. When wind blew in off the sea, the bumpy rocks produced more turbulent airflow, 'releasing mineral nutrients in the rock,' J.B. What's more, though the island hadn't much water and its soil wasn't rich, the islanders took stones, broke them into bits, and scattered them onto open fields creating an uneven surface. But instead of fire, Hunt and Lipo blame rats.

Here's their argument: Professors Hunt and Lipo say fossil hunters and paleobotanists have found no hard evidence that the first Polynesian settlers set fire to the forest to clear land - what's called 'large scale prehistoric farming.' The trees did die, no question. Well, I've taken a look at their book, The Statues That Walked, and oddly enough they've got a case, although I'll say in advance what they call 'success' strikes me as just as scary - maybe scarier.

Success? How could anyone call what happened on Easter Island a 'success?' They say, 'Rather than a case of abject failure,' what happened to the people on Easter Island 'is an unlikely story of success.' It comes from two anthropologists, Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo, from the University of Hawaii. OK, that's the story we all know, the Collapse story. When Captain Cook saw them, many of these 'moai' had been toppled and lay face down, in abject defeat. The statues faced not outward, not to the sea, but inward, toward the now empty, denuded landscape. And yet, puzzlingly, these same people had managed to carve enormous statues - almost a thousand of them, with giant, hollow-eyed, gaunt faces, some weighing 75 tons.

Jared diamond theory