Debate Over Puzzling Demise Of Easter Island Population May Finally Be Over

What really

Some researchers have argued that a Rapa Nui, as a islanders were known, died out after regulating adult a healthy resourcesdiseases and pestilence

But new investigate suggests another possibility: that oppressive environmental conditions on a island–from variations in rainfall to disappearing dirt quality–caused a decline, though not a collapse, in a native race before a Europeans arrived

“The formula of a investigate were unequivocally utterly startling to me,” Dr. Thegn Ladefoged, professor of anthropology during a University of Auckland

The researchers analyzed and antiquated 428 obsidian collection and flakes of obsidian stone found during several archaeological sites on a island. By dating a collection and rocks, a researchers were means to establish when and how a ancient Rapa Nui race used land and healthy resources in opposite tools of a island.

What did a researchers find? Land use and resources sundry opposite a island, moreso reflecting environmental constraints than an abuse of a environment.

“While we do not have approach race data, it is transparent that people were reacting to informal environmental movement on a island before they were ravaged by a introduction of European diseases and other ancestral processes,” Ladefoged said.

The researchers note in their paper that their work could be useful in a investigate of other antiquated societies that gifted remarkable collapses.

The paper was published online in a Proceedings of a National Academy of Sciences

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