Challenging Easter Island

Abstract

We show that the available paleoecological literature on Easter Island already contains the hypothesis and the supporting evidence for a gradual, rather than abrupt and catastrophic, landscape transformation by humans since the initial colonization of Easter Island, as recently proposed by Mulrooney (2013) using archaeological evidence. In this way, the eventual eco-societal collapse assumedly occurred by AD 1000-1200 or later is seriously challenged. We use this particular case study to propose a more close collaboration between archaeology and paleoecology, in order to unravel historical trends in which both environmental changes and human activities might have acted, alone or coupled, as drivers of ecological and societal transformations. For the case of Easter Island, we highlight a number of particular points in which archaeologists and paleoecologists, working together, may enhance the scope and the soundness of historical inferences. These are: 1) the timing of the initial island"s colonization and the origin of the settlers, 2) the pace of ecological and societal transformations since that time until the present, and 3) the occurrence of potential climate-human synergies as drivers of eco-societal shifts.