There has never been a collapse on Easter Island

The myth had taken hold: in their destructive blindness, humans had exhausted Easter Island, to the point of causing the collapse of their population… But no. Researchers are now discovering that this isolated people never had a large population.

Hervé Poirier, editor-in-chief of the scientific magazine Epsiloon today evokes the famous myth of the collapse of the population of Easter Island.

franceinfo: A new study which has just been published tells a completely different story story, that of incredible resilience?

Hervé Poirier: The story is known. A group of Polynesians landed, around the beginning of the 13th century, on a small island lost in the middle of the Pacific. They cut down all the trees, overexploited the soil, reproduced at high speed, formed clans, and mobilized resources to erect nearly a thousand gigantic statues.

And the inevitable happens: it becomes impossible to feed everyone, there is war, famine, depopulation. Society collapses, and the environment is forever devastated. This relentless story sounds like a warning for our civilization in the midst of an environmental crisis. But for the past twenty years, it has been called into question.

A recently published study drives the point home. In fact, the Rapa Nui people remained very stable for five centuries, until the arrival of Europeans.

How do we know?

American researchers have trained an AI to map ancient Rapa Nui gardens using satellite data. Result: these crops, dominated by sweet potatoes, the main food source for the population, covered barely 0.76 km2 of the 164 km2 of the island. That is 5 to 25 times less than what was imagined. Consequence: impossible for the population to have reached 20,000 individuals at its peak, as the myth tells it.

Even assuming that the sea provided part of the food needs, the number of inhabitants could not have exceeded 4,000, which is roughly the size of the population when the Europeans arrived.

So the myth of collapse is collapsing?

Better still, studies show how the Rapa Nui were able to collect fresh water that rose from the water table at coast level. Geochemical analysis of volcanic stones, used for statues or tools, shows that they come from the same quarries, and that they were therefore shared between all the clans. Archaeologists have not found any evidence of wars, fortifications or mass graves.

In short, a kind of cordial understanding reigned on the island for centuries. So yes, the myth collapses. But another story emerges. That of formidable resilience in the face of environmental challenges. The Rapa Nui have left us a lesson, but it is full of hope.