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What Happened on Easter Island? @ the London `Catastrophes` conference

August 17, 2002

Easter Island is exceptionally isolated in the South Pacific. When Europeans first visited the island in 1722 AD, they found a population of about 4000 Polynesians scratching a living among what appeared to be the ruins of a collapsed civilization. Stone figures weighing up to 80 tonnes littered the landscape and there were also numerous bas-relief rock carvings.

Ethnology and archaeology have combined to reconstruct this lost civilization, which appears to have developed progressively fromc.700 AD to1400 AD. At its height around 1500 AD there were perhaps 10, 000 people or more who constructed over 700 giant statues, transported them over distances of 10 km or more, and erected them on special platforms. They may even have developed a form of writing.

Around 1680 AD the civilization appears to have collapsed. Palynology and charcoal analysis suggest that the island was initially well forested, but that almost all forest was destroyed by 1680 AD, and a certain palm tree species, previously dominant, became extinct.. Bird fossils in caves show that avian biodiversity was sharply reduced by the same date. Also the size of shellfish (whose remains have been found in middens) diminished. Legends speak of famine and warfare. Obsidian spearheads became abundant.

Explanations proposed for the collapse have included both human over-exploitation and climatic change. There is, however, no direct evidence for climatic change on the island, and its position on the fulcrum between East and West Pacific makes strong El Nino events unlikely also.

Professor Flenley concludes that human over-exploitation is the most likely cause of the Easter Island catastrophe.

Geological Society of London, The

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