Easter Island is
a Chilean island located in the
southeastern Pacific Ocean. If you know only one
thing about Easter Island, it's that it has those giant
stone heads all over the place. But you might not know that
building those stone heads may have inadvertently destroyed
the culture of the people who created them-- maybe. Today, we're going
to take a look at how the civilization on
Easter Island collapsed. But before we get started, be
sure to subscribe to the Weird History channel, and let
us know in the comments below what other lost cultures
you would like to hear about. OK, prepare to get heady
about Easter Island. When the Polynesians first
discovered Easter Island, the land was nothing short
of a tropical paradise. Covered by a vast palm
forest, the tiny island was inhabited by roughly 30
different species of birds. While most of the soil
was too low in nutrients to be useful for agriculture,
the island's coastal plains made it possible to grow
crops such as yams, taros, and sweet potatoes. Over time, these people,
known as the Rapa Nui, would grow into a
complex society. And for reasons that remain
unknown to this very day, that complex
society would embark on one of the most
unique building projects in the history of the world-- the construction of the large
stone sculptures known as moai. The first Europeans
visited the island under the direction of a Dutch
explorer named Jacob Roggeveen. It was then that the name Easter
Island was adopted, as he first happened upon the mysterious
island on Easter Sunday, April 5, 1722. Roggeveen reported seeing about
2,000 to 3,000 inhabitants at the time of his visit. But by the mid-19th century,
the population of the Island had nearly gone extinct. It was sometime around
1200 CE that a small group of Polynesian
farmers first settled on a tiny 63 square mile island
in the southeastern Pacific Ocean. At that point, the
island is believed to have been covered with
roughly 16 million trees. According to one
theory, these farmers practiced slash-and-burn
agriculture. And as their
population grew, they had to burn down more and
more trees in the palm forest to make room for crops. Before too long, there were too
many inhabitants and too few trees. This theory suggests a
man-made ecological disaster that some believe is one of
the clearest known examples of a society unintentionally
destroying itself by over-exploiting
its natural resources. Standing at an average
height of 13 feet tall and weighing an
average of 14 tons apiece, moving the moai around
the island was no easy feat. To accomplish the task,
the islanders reportedly used wood from the palm
forest to clear the paths that they needed. One theory states that after
clearing the land for crops, they used the leftover logs
to both move the huge stone sculptures and build their
deep sea fishing canoes. Whether this excessive
use of resources really led to their starvation
is still an open question. However, when Captain James
Cook visited the island in 1774, he and his crew noted
that the Rapa Nui were living in very poor conditions. According to Cook, the canoes
were worn ragged and pieced together haphazardly. This would suggest
they could no longer build new canoes, which supports
the deforestation theory. While the slash-and-burn
agriculture theory has many supporters,
not everyone agrees that it holds
up to scrutiny. In fact, two anthropologists,
Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo from the University of Hawaii,
have a completely different theory about the collapse of
the Easter Island civilization. In their book, The
Statues That Walked, they argue that despite the
popularity of the agriculture theory, fossil hunters
and paleobotanist haven't found any
concrete evidence of slash-and-burn
farming actually being used on Easter Island. While the anthropologists
do acknowledge that the trees across
the island seem to have died in
large numbers, they believe the cause was actually
an infestation of rats. The rodents likely
arrived on the island by stowing away with
the Polynesians. Once there, they
multiplied voraciously and decimated the environment,
including the trees. Regardless of what the
cause may have been, the effect of the rapid loss of
trees on the island was clear, and it wasn't good. The topsoil began to slowly
wash away each time it rained. And as the land
eroded, the Rapa Nui found themselves
struggling to find the space they needed to grow
enough crops to feed everyone. Compounding the problem was
that they were also quickly running out of
the wood that they needed to build their canoes. This prevented them from
taking drastic action, like relocating to another
island when things got worse. While it's unclear if they blame
the moai for their problems, the islanders are known
to have vandalized them by poking out their eyes,
toppling them over, and even decapitating them. For a long time, it was believed
that Easter Island had once been inhabited by a
large civilization. According to this theory,
the combined effects of extreme
deforestation, a rapidly expanding population,
warfare, and famine eventually caused that civilization
to collapse. By the time the
Europeans arrived, the population of the
island had already dwindled significantly
to the few thousand reported by Roggeveen. As a result of
this assumption, it was also believed that the
inhabitants of Easter Island fought with one another
over scarce resources, and eventually even resorted
to cannibalism to survive. However, according
to research published by the proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences, this did not actually contribute
to the civilization's downfall. In February 2020, the Journal
of Archaeological Science published a study that proposed
the Rapa Nui people were still actively building
new moai figures and maintaining existing
ones up until at least 1750. If true, this would
have the Rapa Nui long outliving any
previously held beliefs about when their
civilization was eradicated. In fact, the whole
thing might be a case of circular reasoning. The statues weren't found
in ruins until 1770. And because of the
pre-existing mystery surrounding their
supposed collapse, the degree to which the Rapa
Nui people's cultural heritage was passed on may have been
overlooked, or even ignored. When foreigners first began
visiting the Rapa Nui, the islanders were excited
to learn about the strangers. They thought the
travelers were strange, but they also appreciated
the new source of clothing and goods
from across the ocean. Unfortunately, many
of those visitors didn't come with the
best of intentions. Some even traveled to the
island with the intent of making the Rapa
Nui their slaves. These Peruvian raids first
started in the 1960s, with Easter Island being a prime
target due to its location. An estimated 2,000 Rapa Nui were
captured during this period. And those who managed to
survive the trip to Peru faced incredible hardships. They battled disease and
were dangerously overworked. As a result, nearly 90%
died within a few years. When the Europeans first
arrived on Easter Island, they brought more than
clothing and goods with them. They also brought
various diseases, including syphilis and smallpox. In fact, some scientists
believe that the islanders were actually able to survive
when the trees disappeared, but that the population
suffered most dramatically when the Dutch and
English came to Rapa Nui. According to the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention, on average, 3 out of every 10
people who got smallpox died. Syphilis, while it's
treatable today, people frequently died from
it in the 18th century. When British Explorer
Captain James Cook arrived on Easter
Island in 1774, he quickly spotted the Rapa
Nui carrying lancets and spears with sharp pointed pieces of
black glassy lava attached to the ends. At the time, it was
assumed that the triangular tips, made from obsidian
and known as mata'a, were used for warfare. However, when researchers
analyzed the artifacts thought to be spear points, they
determined that they were actually used as tools. Carl Lipo, a professor of
anthropology at Binghamton University, believes
that when you look at the shape of the
so-called spear tips, they don't actually look
like weapons at all, and probably wouldn't be
very reliable for killing in combat situations. He also notes that the mata'a
are found all across the island since they were used
for all sorts of tasks, such as tattooing
or plant processing. When food starts running
out, people get desperate, and they'll try
just about anything. Often, this desperation can
lead to war and conflict. But sometimes, people
can surprise you. When the Rapa Nui started
running out of food, different factions started
to form on the island. One group became known
as the Birdman cult, and they turned to
a new god for help-- Make-make. Through their efforts,
the cult helped to rebuild the culture
and population of Rapa Nui with crops such
as sweet potatoes, again, beginning to flourish. Not only do scientists
not agree on what caused the collapse of
the Rapa Nui civilization, not everyone even agrees
that there was really a collapse in the first place. According to research conducted
by Christopher M. Stevenson of Virginia
Commonwealth University, saying that the Rapa Nui
civilization collapsed may be both overstated and
more than a little misleading. According to Stevenson,
after examining whether the prehistoric
population of Rapa Nui experienced a significant
demographic collapse prior to European contact,
he determined that while food
production declined, it wasn't disastrous for people. In fact, Stevenson believes that
the population of the island didn't decline due
to starvation at all. Rather, he believes the
disruption was ultimately the result of changing
weather patterns. Another thing that
modern researchers have been questioning is how big
the Rapa Nui population really was to begin with. Archaeologist Carl
Lipo and his colleagues who studied Easter
Island for years don't believe that the 3,000
people that Captain Roggeveen met in 1722 were actually
the remaining members of a once great civilization. According to Lipo,
when Easter Island was discovered by Europeans,
it was inconceivable that such a small
group of people could create and move the
enormous moai statues. But today, Lipo and
other researchers believe it was entirely within
the capabilities of a smaller sized population. Research shows that ancient
people did, in fact, possess the special engineering
knowledge and techniques that were necessary to
construct and relocate the moai without large
numbers of people. So what do you think? What caused the island's demise? Let us know in the
comments below. And while you're at it, check
out some of these other videos from our Weird History. [MUSIC PLAYING]
