Old Easter Island genomes show no sign of a population collapse | Hacker News Reader

Old Easter Island genomes show no sign of a population collapse

arstechnica.com

114 pointsBender70 comments

The Fall of Civilizations podcast, as usual, did an awesome job covering this topic: https://youtu.be/7j08gxUcBgc?si=GGZW_hawmTKTULMg

Found that podcast through hacker news. It really is fantastic.

There was a satellite analysis of rock gardening earlier this summer that also had similar findings. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.ado1459

Isn't it a buried lede here that the Native American DNA implies they reached South America well before Columbus?

Or someone from South America reached them. That finding got its due attention a few years ago https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2487-2

Isn't this fairly well known already?

I can't answer your question, but on a meta level I would suggest to use "well established" instead, since that is less ambiguous about referring to scientists or other domain experts agreeing on something for various reasons.

"Well known" could also be intended to mean that something has become common knowledge among the general public, which I don't think applies here.

It's been pretty suspected for awhile due to the presence of sweet potatoes in Polynesia. This, however, gives a range of years for when that contact occurred, and that's big.

However, the ecocide theory of Rapa Nui has been so popular that, in some ways, finding evidence that that simply did not occur is bigger news.

Hmm, native Americans were in America before Columbus? Crazy

Let's not be flippant about something GP didn't actually say.

The Polynesian people aren't native Americans; as far as we can tell all native Americans came to the continents via the Beringa land bridge in the last glacial maximum[0][1]. However, as others mentioned there have been multiple reasons to believe that Polynesians and native Americans had contact, and this would be more genomic evidence pointing to that.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleo-Indians

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peopling_of_the_Americas

PBS Nova recently had a great episode about the islands and its people [1]

[1] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/easter-island-origins/

I enjoyed Jago Cooper's/The BBC's 'Easter Island - Mysteries of a Lost World'.

However, I'm not sure how current the research is as it first aired a decade ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cv5YHeJ9CZQ

The current theory is that civilizations appeared across the planet due to climate change. This theory is based on the hypothesis that humans pre-1500 didn't have any contact with one another.

I've been suspicious of that claim. If the Polynesians came from Asia and were able to reach the Americas, it's possible that there was latent communication between the two worlds but such communication happens at "generational" speeds.

People have known about earlier contacts for a long time. Norse contact at l'anse aux meadows has been established since the late 90s. Trans-bering contact has been known for centuries.

Humans arrived to rapa nui and other Pacific Islands relatively late, many thousands of years after the Holocene began. Stronger evidence of 13th century contact doesn't change anything about our understanding of the early history of the Americas.

You're pooh-poohing this idea a bit to harshly IMO. I almost wonder if your knowledge here may be out of date. You're aware that there's now evidence of the Americas' being populated over 20,000 years ago, right? Footprints in White Sands and now sloth bone carvings in Brazil. Far earlier than the Norse you mention.

AlotOfReading pointed out that 'This theory is based on the hypothesis that humans pre-1500 didn't have any contact with one another.' is not correct by giving examples of how humans pre-1500 did have contact with one another.

That there were people and civilizations in the Americas before then is far from the point.

The people from over 20,000 years ago came from the northern ice bridge, however. My suggestion is that these people got civilization ideas from the Islanders at around 1500BC. They didn't get a full line of communication with the old world but enough ideas were taken to kick start a civilization.

Rapa nui (and other Eastern Pacific Islands) hadn't been settled yet at that point, while indigenous Americans were already building monumental structures (e.g. Norte Chico) and working metal (old copper complex). The latter predates most metalworking in the old world too.

Their settling is irrelevant as long as they were able to get there. It's possible that they brought the ideas to Norte Chico where a civilization developed before them settling down.

Norte Chico civilization had collapsed 2000 years before Polynesians started their oceanic expansion.

> people from over 20,000 years ago came from the northern ice bridge

Isn't the latest research strongly implying they came by boat?

What "civilization ideas"? How did they get these ideas from an uninhabited island? Easter Island wasn't settled by Polynesians by at least 300 AD.

There is evidence of contact between Polynesian and South America. Like Polynesians having sweet potato. But not enough for visible changes of either one.

Civilization doesn't seem to spread by short contact, only close contact. Civilization is complex so a few ideas aren't enough to spread it. And it is hard for culture to accept that much change.

I'm aware of them (as any archaeologist remotely interested in the early Americas should be), but they're not completely established parts of the chronology, particularly Santa Elina. People tend to be extremely conservative on this subject because there's such a long history of scams, pseudoscience, and unintentionally misleading results that ended up being false. That results in an extremely high standard of evidence sites have to meet.

However, that's a wildly different topic than what the grandparent comment is talking about. I'm interpreting their comment in a charitable light because interpreting it more broadly quickly gets into hyperdiffusionism territory.

> If the Polynesians came from Asia and were able to reach the Americas

We are certain at this point. The genetic testing is pretty conclusive.

Can you link the source?

google.com

Polynesians genetic testing

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2487-2

But we need to remind also that a very fast collapse, would not left a trace on the DNA. A Pompeii like event couldn't be disclosed just with DNA changes.

Are you sure? I thought there were at least two ways to estimate population size from DNA: Y chromosome (since it is only passed father->son), and mitochondrial DNA(since it is only passed mother -> child).

Why wouldn't those show up with a very rapid population collapse?

Very fast collapse typically comes with positive evidence of this as people leave their lives out in the open, expecting to return later. Eg see the Roanoke colony in Virginia.

I remember in school and in old textbooks hearing the question, “What happened to the Mayan people? They totally disappeared!” and at the same time reading that there are dozens of Mayan languages spoken in the Yucatán to this day. I had the impression that the subject experts just would not accept the possibility that a human civilization might exist that doesn’t resemble what they had preconceived, as if failing to see the sky because it isn’t the exact shade of blue they thought it would be.

One of the state parks in Utah (I forget which one), has a sign that says: "Where did the Ancestral Puebloan people go?" With the answer of "We're right here. Come say hi to us at the information desk."

I don't know if it's the one you're thinking of, but I believe I saw a similar sign at Capitol Reef National Park.

> "Where did the Ancestral Puebloan people go?" With the answer of "We're right here. Come say hi to us at the information desk."

"Where did the Ancient Roman civilization go?"

"They're eating gelato and drinking espresso at the cafe."

There's an episode in "The Sopranos" where Tony confronts a jewish man he has cornered:

Ever heard of Massada? For two years, 900 Jews held their own against 15,000 Roman soldiers. They chose death before enslavement. And the Romans, where are they now?

Tony: You're looking at 'em, asshole.

I always liked that scene. It argues that the mafia think of themselves as heirs to the violent Roman empire.

This is where academic writing filters into pop history then into the culture and then back to the academics who are like, "we never said that"

It's all so entertaining for the pop historians.

I remember this same thing. I think it is likely that there was never just one Mayan civilization, but that these different Mayan civilizations may have broadly shared a similar culture.

That's a bit like saying there's no European civilization, just a bunch of different European civilizations sharing a broadly similar culture.

Or maybe ancient Greece, with its city-state structure is the better comparison.

Ancient Greek city states are the favorite analogy of mayanists. There's a lot of similarities with the Maya polities.

I don't quite think that first analogy works. Greek city states or old feudal-like European states with shared culture and language are more like what I was thinking of.

Well it depends how you interpret wiping out a group of people. If you were to base it off DNA, then we are still slowly working towards wiping out the Neanderthals. If you were to base it off “pure” genes (when did the last 100% Neanderthal die) then it gets hairier because we have all been mixed so thoroughly. It also raises philosophical questions about what a “Mayan” person is, like is there a genetic sequence that is Mayan? Or is it anyone who lived in that time/place?

The Mayan fellow I met in Cancun last year did not seem to be troubled by any such philosophical questions. He is Maya, his family is Maya, they have always been Maya; that's his sense of identity. There is no Spanish spoken in his village; he had to learn it after he arrived in Cancun, looking for work.

> I remember in school and in old textbooks hearing the question, “What happened to the Mayan people? They totally disappeared!” and at the same time reading that there are dozens of Mayan languages spoken in the Yucatán to this day.

These aren't technically incompatible; for a better-understood example, you can look at Turkey, which speaks the language of the long since dead Turks that conquered it without leaving any demographic impact. It would be accurate to say that the Turks completely disappeared from Turkey, at the same time that the region continues to speak Turkic languages.

I think an analogous situation holds in Hungary.

Well, Turkish and Magyar spread because of elite diffusion.

Turkic kingdoms ruled much of Anatolia for over a millennia, so Turkic languages spread rapidly due to it's prominence among that elite.

Based on genetics, there were only a couple thousand Turkic people that lead the initial settlement.

Languages can spread (and die out) rapidly. Look at the sinicization of Manchuria in the 19th century.

> Well, Turkish and Magyar spread because of elite diffusion.

I don't really see why that would mean that Mayan didn't spread through elite diffusion?

Mayan Languages are a different story from Turkish and Magyar.

There is a close genetic affinity between ancient and modern Mayans [0] that doesn't exist between Anatolian Turks and Turkmen, or Magyars and Khanty.

The Mayans never died out - they remained in the Yucatán and what is now Guatemala to this day, and weren't fully conquered until the early 1700s.

Furthermore, the language has always been alive and well because Spanish and Mezito settlers never tried settling in much of the Mayan region, because of how late they were conquered. Even today, Mayan groups like EZLN/Zapatistas have strong autonomy (and the guns to back it).

It's also had an impact in the US, as most undocumented immigrants from Guatemala tend to be ethnic Mayans from the highlands, and can barely speak Spanish because Guatemala puts almost no money in rural development. This has drastically clogged the immigration court system as the number of Mayan-English translators is extremely limited (I think UIUC is the only university that still teaches modern Mayan due to it's training contract with the CIA).

[0] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayan_genetics

> I had the impression that the subject experts just would not accept the possibility that a human civilization might exist that doesn’t resemble what they had preconceived

No, the Mayanists are absolutely adamant that the Mayan people are right there, living in the same place their ancestors lived. Scholars today are some of the most vociferous in pointing this fact out.

The problem is the people who write the textbooks, the popular science books, the newspaper articles, who generally decline to forward this answer to the popular sphere. Those are the people who just can't accept the idea that maybe civilization isn't a one-way road to greater and greater heights, to no end of frustration for the subject matter experts who know that to be the case.

" Those are the people who just can't accept the idea that maybe civilization isn't a one-way road to greater and greater heights"

Or maybe they know, but care more for the greater dramatic effect, like we can witness in normal news everyday.

People who write newspaper articles get their facts consistently wrong on almost every subject.

It's true that Maya are still around today. But there is a legitimate big mystery of why their large-scale civilization collapsed, well before the arrival of Europeans. I think what you heard in school was some kind of telephone-game-like corruption of the legitimate question.

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

Moronic destruction of the ecosystems, followed by endless war for the remaining resources. The usual suspects.

People have consistently shoot themselves in the foot with droughts after removing the forest for a few generations. Is happening right now in several parts of the planet.

> there are dozens of Mayan languages spoken in the Yucatán to this day

Both facts can coexist. Mayan people ruled over other several smaller cultures. Former slaves adopt the cultural habits of their rulers, sometimes for a lot of time after the ruler has gone. Afroamericans in USA that descend from slaves still use the English, as their language. Think about it.

One of the worst books on this ever written was the very popular "Collapse" by Jared Diamond, which entirely neglects the role European colonialism played in decimating the island's population in favor of a 'they did it to themselves' narrative (which apologists for colonialism naturally embraced). The more accurate historical narrative looks something like this:

"In December 1862, Peruvian slave traders landed on Easter Island and captured approximately 1,500 Rapa Nui people, including much of the island's leadership and elite. The raids were brutal, and the kidnapped islanders were transported to the guano islands and plantations on the Peruvian coast. Of these 1,500 individuals, only a small fraction would ever return.Of the roughly 1,500 people taken, it is estimated that fewer than 100 survived to return home. By the mid-19th century, the island's population had been reduced to just a few hundred, down from an estimated 3,000–4,000 before the raids."

The invention of ammonia synthesis from atmospheric N2 via the Haber-Bosch process largely put an end to the guano industy and the slave labor that supported it. There's an excellent book, "The Alchemy of Air" by Thomas Hager that covers this history well:

https://blog.rootsofprogress.org/turning-air-into-bread

I am curious if Diamond has ever done an apology for his incorrect Easter Island theory in Collapse.

As I understand it, at the time it was a reasonable conclusion (though even back then it was still highly controversial and lots of scientists disagreed), but in the decades since, it's become obvious this "ecoside" theory is wrong, and this latest study puts the nail in the coffin.

So has Diamond ever said "There is new evidence, and I was wrong"? Or is he doing that weird thing that humans often do where they double down on a now obviously incorrect theory because admitting fault is somehow too painful?

Well doing that would require Jared Diamond to be a serious scholar and not a pop historian who cares mostly about selling books.

I don't think there's an issue with being motivated by a desire to sell books. Selling poorly supported narrative-driven historical fiction as a work of pop history is potentially an issue though.

The problem is one often follows the other. If you're economically incentivized not to rethink your premises despite mounting evidence that they are wrong, it's hard to pivot.

Well, Diamond is still a fervent believer in Clovis-First, despite the entire anthropological community having disavowed that theory about two decades ago.

He's responded to criticism rather poorly: https://cambridgeblog.org/2010/03/puttin-the-objective-in-ob...

Not unlike Graeber.

What does he have to do with the current discussion?

He said some reasonable stuff which seems less likely in the light of new evidence. What is there to apologise for?

Apologize is perhaps the wrong word, thank you.

But has he come out and said "this new evidence means my older theories are wrong?" The other comment about his review of Questioning Collapse makes me think not, but even that was from nearly 15 years ago.

I think it's important that Diamond acknowledge the new reality, as he is probably the person most responsible for spreading an idea (one that has a lot of implications for the present day real world) that turned out to be wrong.

His book was based on theories that were considered shoddy when he wrote it, is extremely selective in its evidence at best, and he reacts quite poorly to people who criticize his ideas on environmental determinism.

Shouldn't it be "turning energy into bread"?

The irony is that the same underlying process of technical and scientific innovation enabled both the Peruvian slaves traders as well as the Haber-Bosch process. But I find it strange that we only call one "European", when in fact both were. The technium giveth and the technium taketh away.

> which entirely neglects the role European colonialism played in decimating the island's population

Have you read the book? IIRC it does nothing of the sort

And then after the slave raiders a Scottish sheep farm was established and they confined all the natives to one small area (Hanga Roa). The population is now highly mixed and only about half the current population are of Polynesian descent. They still have a surprising amount of traditions and knowledge recorded although the language is at risk of dying out. I visited Rapa Nui a few years back and it is an incredible place. The locals have been able to mostly resist commercialization of the island which I really appreciated. There is one "fancy" hotel on the island and the locals have put up a bunch of signs in protest[0] which I presume are still there today.

[0] https://www.google.com/maps/@-27.150356,-109.4396352,3a,75y,...

For context, Diamond argues that the collapse occurred around 1600, much earlier than the 19th century slaving raids you mention. The first European contact occurred around 1720, with a 1770 Spanish estimate of 3000 people living on Easter Island. Honestly, it's not an outlandish thought that 887 gigantic statues were crafted by a larger population.

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