These moai on Easter Island were so imposing that Europeans couldn't believe they'd been created by just a couple thousand people. (credit: Arian Zwegers)
Hundreds of years ago, an advanced, seafaring civilization called Rapa Nui built over 800 monuments that were so massive and ambiguous that they remain a mystery to this day. The Easter Island statues, or moai, are enormous stone figures placed along the coastline as if surveying the island's interior lands. One of archaeology's greatest mysteries is what happened to the Rapa Nui of Easter Island.
Now, new evidence from archaeological investigations has overturned a popular myth about the demise of Rapa Nui civilization on the island. For centuries, observers believed that the Rapa Nui suffered a catastrophic population crash. But there is no scientific evidence to support this idea, say a group of researchers in the latest issue of the journal Antiquity. That story about environmental collapse and warfare you read about in Jared Diamond's bestseller Collapse? Totally wrong.
Origins of the myth
First of all, the Rapa Nui haven't been wiped off the face of the Earth: the Rapa Nui peoples still make up over half the Polynesian population today. Their ancestors likely arrived on Easter Island, now part of Chile, roughly a millennium ago. They came in the sophisticated canoes that allowed Polynesians to bring their cultures to dozens of islands in the Pacific Ocean, from Hawaii to Samoa and New Zealand. And they also brought their moai, many of which were quarried on other islands that the Rapa Nui controlled.
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