Easter Island Timeline by Meghan Kenna

Thesis

25mkenna — 2025-03-04 14:40:45 UTC

Based on my research and what I have read I believe that the most likely reason for the collapse of Easter Island was the deforestation caused by invasive rats, and the diseases carried over.

Dutch explorers reach the abandoned island

25mkenna — 2025-03-04 14:50:47 UTC

Dutch explorers arrived on Easter day in 1722, the land was nearly barren.

(Dangerfield 2007)

Polynesians arrive at Easter Island and leave it behind.

25mkenna — 2025-03-04 14:55:01 UTC

Hundreds of years ago, a small group of Polynesians rowed their wooden outrigger canoes across vast stretches of open sea, navigating by the evening stars and the day's ocean swells. But what is clear is that they made a small, uninhabited island with rolling hills and a lush carpet of palm trees their new home, eventually naming their 63 square miles of paradise Rapa Nui—now popularly known as Easter Island.

(Dangerfield 2007)

Polynesians thrive and create life

25mkenna — 2025-03-04 15:00:11 UTC

The Polynesian settlers landed around 800 A.D. The culture thrived for hundreds of years, breaking up into settlements and living off the fruitful land. The population grew to several thousand, freeing some of the labor force to work on the moai.

(Dangerfield 2007)

In 2005, Jared Diamond publishes his book "Collapse"

25mkenna — 2025-03-04 15:11:11 UTC

Diamond refers to the island's environmental degradation as "ecocide" and points to the civilization's demise as a model of what can happen if human appetites go unchecked. He believes the deforestation led to the tribe being unable to sustain a lifestyle. They had to wood to build canoes to fish, or to make fires, and the soil quality deteriorated causing crops to be unable to grow.

(Dangerfield 2007)

In 2000, Archeologist Terry Hunt proposes a Theory

25mkenna — 2025-03-04 15:18:29 UTC

Hunt and her group found clear evidence of human presence: charcoal, tools—even bones, some of which had come from rats. Hunt suspected that humans alone could not destroy the forests this quickly. Hunt believes the collapse of Easter Island was more rat than human, leading to deforestation.

(Dangerfield 2007)

Scientist John Fenley's findings

25mkenna — 2025-03-04 15:22:44 UTC

John Flenley, a pollen analyst at New Zealand's University of Massey, accepts that the numerous rats would have some impact on the island. Fenley states he has found evidence of charcoal. "Certainly there was burning going on. Sometimes there was a lot of charcoal," he says. "I'm inclined to think that the people burning the vegetation was more destructive [than the rats]." These findings propose new ideas on how deforestation was caused.

(Dangerfield 2007)

John Fenley and Sarah King find new research and produce a new article in 2005.

25mkenna — 2025-03-04 15:38:37 UTC

Based on their research pollen records show that destruction of Easter's forests was well underway by the year 800, just a few centuries after the start of human settlement. Then charcoal from wood fires came to fill the sediment

cores, while pollen of palms and other trees and woody shrubs decreased or disappeared, and pollen of the grass that replaced the forest became more abundant. These are effects caused by humans, not rats, that led to a greater amount of deforestation.

(Diamond 2005)