Hacker News Reader

Comment by karaterobot | Hacker News Reader

> He and Hunt concluded that the people of Rapa Nui continued to thrive well after 1600, which would warrant a rethinking of the popular narrative that the island was destitute when Europeans arrived in 1722.

Wait, so the thesis here is that they never actually collapsed, that the 3,000 person population noted by Europeans was always the stable population of the island?

It also suggests that they did cut down all their trees, but they did so not to build Moai statues, but to sort of kickstart their lithic agriculture.

I don't know enough to know whether cutting all your trees down and not being able to grow them back counts as an ecological collapse, or whether that was the only way they could sustain even three thousand people.

I'd love to hear the other side of this argument. I'm no expert, but this sounds weird to me.

View on HN

It counts as ecological collapse, but that's not being discussed here, but whether the island became destitute, triggering population collapse.

Imagine paving over the entire Amazon and replacing it with monocrop greenhouses. It would be massive ecological collapse, but in terms of producing food calories for humans it might become more productive.

There were also other kinds of collapse - they forgot writing, they forgot how they’ve made/transported the statues, perhaps other technology as well.

They have also toppled the statues and gave up on their gods so there must have been some major societal shift.

How did they topple them? they were buried up to the head?

People just knocked them over. If you grew up on a farm, you've probably heard of cow tipping. If you grew up on Rapa Nui, you've probably heard of moai tipping.

Cow tipping is, according to all reputable sources, largely an urban myth about what takes place in the rural regions.

As someone who grew up in cow country, I would always hear about cow tipping from people who didn't know anything about cows. The story would almost always go like this:

Some Dude: We went cow tipping last night, it was hilarious

Me: So, you actually tipped a 1300 lbs cow over?

Some Dude: Well...I didn't, but Jake did.

Me: So you saw Jake tip a cow over?

Some Dude: Well...no, but Jake told me that he did it and I believed him.

In actuality Jake was making a pun and had simply fed a cow a $5 bill.

The moai are full torso statues with just the head showing above ground.

Actually no, that's not how they were designed.

The Moai statues were made in a quarry inland and transported to the coastline, where they were set on stone platforms (called ahu) fully above ground.

When the Europeans first visited there were hundreds of them standing all around the coastline, always looking outward at the sea. It is believed that they were meant to protect the island.

The Rapa Nui people later toppled _all_ of the statues and destroyed them.

The only ones that were spared are the ones that were lost in transport from the quarry -> and these are the ones that are often partially buried and are so well known today.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moai

https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2017/07/26/famous-ea...

Have you read my comment at all?

The buried ones are the Moai that were abandoned during transport and they were buried by shifting soils, etc.

The islanders have not buried them. The statues the islanders managed to transport were placed on stone pedestals. Then, later, they've toppled them all, but only after Europeans visited.

See my comment in the subthread.

The statues that were successfully placed were not buried and they were all toppled by 1868. The buried ones you know were never transported to their destination.

they forgot writing, they forgot how they’ve made/transported the statues, perhaps other technology as well.

Boats come to mind.

> I don't know enough to know whether cutting all your trees down and not being able to grow them back counts as an ecological collapse, or whether that was the only way they could sustain even three thousand people.

Knowing the genus of those palms is essential to answer this question

It wasn't palms, it was toromiro.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophora_toromiro

But.. that guy said “genus”!

Nope, not the legume. Sophora are the "new order" that toke the scorched place. The survivors that nobody wanted because they are legumes.

The real deal were in the Paschalococos palms.

As I suspected those were included in the tribu Cocoseae so they were the most important plant in the island for humans.

When the palms went extinct in 1650 the society entered in a whirlwind extinction situation. Rapa nui inhabitants commit ecological suicide to themselves and the rats and foreigners carrying diseases give them the final blow. If you replace Paschalococos with Sophora there is a hidden big collateral effect. Even if the island is still covered in luscious green is not the same family of green.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com