Comment to Rull et al. (2013)â€”Challenging Easter Island's Collapse: the need for interdisciplinary synergies

Larsen, Annegret; Simpson, Dale F.

doi:10.3389/fevo.2014.00056

Cited by 5 publications

(8 citation statements)

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“…A potential role for climate change has also been suggested (McCall, 1993;Hunter-Anderson, 1998;Nunn, 2000Nunn, , 2007Nunn & Britton, 2001), but this theory has received little attention as direct evidence of in situ environmental shifts on Easter Island has been elusive until the last decade. Recent studies have documented conspicuous climatic shifts that challenge the classical collapse theories and demand reconsideration of the island's history using a holistic approach that combines climatic, ecological and cultural factors and drivers of change (Rull et al, 2013(Rull et al, , 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…One criticism is that this view is based on incomplete sedimentary records due to the occurrence of an extended sedimentary gap encompassing 3-4 millennia, which included the critical phase of replacement of forests by grasslands. Therefore, the apparent abruptness of this ecological shift would have been an artefact caused by the lack of a continuous record (Rull et al, 2013). Moreover, a detailed study of the mata'a revealed that these objects were general-purpose tools for peaceful tasks, such as ritual scarification, rather than warfare weapons (Lipo et al, 2016).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Natural and anthropogenic drivers of cultural change on Easter Island: Review and new insights

Rull

2016

Quaternary Science Reviews

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Easter Island (Rapa Nui) is a remote Pacific island known for its megalithic statues, the moai, built by an ancient culture which disappearance is still debated. Theories claiming for either self-destruction (ecocide) of this ancient culture or an eventual genocide after the European contact have been the most popular. Anthropogenic drivers have been traditionally preferred as causes of this major cultural shift, whereas climatic changes have been dismissed or underrated. However, the latest findings suggest that the topic is more complex than formerly thought and demand a more holistic perspective. This paper reviews the main paleoclimatic, paleoecological, archaeological and historical evidence of the major Rapanui cultural shift leading to the end of the moai-building civilization and uses an integrated approach to analyze its timing and potential causes. The disappearance of the ancient Eastern Island culture that erected the moai was a dramatic cultural shift with significant changes in lifestyle, sociopolitical organization, religious performance, art and also in the geographical settlement of the cultural core of the Rapanui society. The ancient society, represented by the so called Ancient Cult (or moai cult) was centered on the Rano Raraku crater, to the east of the island, whose soft volcanic rocks (tuff) where suitable for moai carving. This society was replaced by the Birdman-Cult society, based on Rano Kao, to the westernmost end of the island. The assumed date for such shift is uncertain ranging between mid-16 th and late-18 th centuries. It is suggested that such geographical change, as well as the associated societal transformations, may have been the result of a combination of climatic, ecological and cultural drivers and events. The latest paleoecological reconstructions show that the Rano Raraku catchment was deforested by AD 1450 and the lake inside dried out by AD 1550 owing to an intense climatic drought. This would have caused a landscape deterioration transforming the Raraku catchment into a wasteland devoid of freshwater and unsuitable for human life and the cultural flourishment that characterized the Ancient-Cult society. The drought lasted for about 3 a century and a half and would have forced the Rapanuis to look for alternative freshwater sources. The only feasible option was the freshwater lake inside the then forested Rano Kao crater, where the ceremonial village of Orongo, the center of the Birdman Cult, was funded by AD 1600. The Kao crater is made of hard volcanic rocks (basalts) unsuitable for moai carving by the Neolithic Rapanui culture, unaware of metals, which would have contributed to the end of the moai-building phase. Deforestation and drought would have led to a general demographic decline. The shift from the rigid socio-political organization of the Ancient Cult to the more flexible system characteristic of the Birdman Cult could be viewed as a cultural adaptation to changing environmental conditions. The occurrence of a further, rather catastrophic, genocide caused by...

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

Natural and anthropogenic drivers of cultural change on Easter Island: Review and new insights

Rull

2016

Quaternary Science Reviews

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“…In line with the recent suggestions of Larsen and Simpson (2014), our ultimate aim here is to help broadening the "range of interpretive techniques" by using quantitative explorations of model scenarios.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 85%

The slow demise of Easter Island: insights from a modeling investigation

Brandt

Merico

2015

Front. Ecol. Evol.

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The history of Easter Island and its supposed social-ecological collapse is often taken as a grim warning for the modern world. However, while the loss of a once lush palm forest is largely uncontested, causes and timing of the collapse remain controversial, because many paleoecological and archaeological data are afflicted with considerable uncertainties. According to a scenario named ecocide, the overharvesting of palm trees triggered a dramatic population decline, whereas a contrasting view termed genocide deems diseases and enslavement introduced by Europeans as the main reasons for the collapse. We propose here a third possibility, a slow demise, in which aspects of both ecocide and genocide concur to produce a long and slow decline of the society. We use a dynamic model to illustrate the consequences of the three alternatives with respect to the fate of the paleoecological system of the island. While none of the three model scenarios can be safely ruled out given the uncertainties of the available data, the slow demise appears to be the most plausible model scenario, in particular when considering the temporal pattern of deforestation as inferred from radiocarbon dates of charcoal remains.

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“…The former idea of an abrupt, island-wide deforestation event occurring between 800-1300 and 1400-1650 CE (Flenley & Bahn, 2003;Mann et al, 2008;Mieth & Bork, 2010) has been considered an artifact due to the occurrence of the previously mentioned millennial-scale sediment gap in the first paleoecological records (Rull et al, 2013). The recently obtained continuous and chronologically coherent pollen records from Aroi, Kao and Raraku provide a different view, as they show that different sites were deforested at different times and at different rates (Cañellas-Boltà et al, 2013;Rull et al, 2015Rull et al, , 2018.…”

Section: Deforestation Patternsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Further multiproxy paleoecological analysis of new cores retrieved from the same sites suggested that climatic changes, notably droughts, could have had a role in island deforestation (Mann et al, 2008;Sáez et al, 2009). However, none of these studies was able to provide a continuous and chronologically coherent record of the l ast millennia due to an extended sedimentary gap encompassing several millennia and the occurrence of frequent radiocarbon age inversions, which prevented the development of reliable age-depth models (Rull et al, 2013).…”

Section: Prehistoric Conditionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate change, deforestation patterns, freshwater availability and cultural shifts on prehistoric Easter Island (SE Pacific)

Rull

2019

Preprint

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The remote and isolated Easter Island (Rapa Nui) has been the arena for classic debates on the potential consequences of human overexploitation of natural resources as a microcosmic model for the whole planet. Human-deterministic hypotheses have traditionally been preferred to proposals involving climate changes as drivers of socioecological shifts, especially in relation to the collapse of the ancient Rapanui civilization inhabiting the island before European contact (1722 CE). However, recent paleoecological studies have provided evidence for past climatic shifts, especially droughts, which have stimulated a paradigm shift from deterministic and exclusive views to a more holistic framework that considers both natural and anthropogenic factors as well as their feedbacks and synergies. This paper reviews the latest climatic, ecological and cultural reconstructions of precontact times and evaluates the potential impact of the different drivers on socioecological shifts. Especially noteworthy is the occurrence of some droughts in the last millennium that, coupled with human deforestation, severely affected the access of the prehistoric Rapanui civilization to freshwater but did not compromise the continuity of this ancient culture. Two main hypotheses have been proposed for how the Rapanui bypassed freshwater scarcity. According to the intraisland migration hypothesis, the latest drought recorded (1570-1720 CE) would have led to the abandonment of the former cultural center of the ancient Rapanui civilization (Lake Raraku) to move to Lake Kao, which became the new cultural core. This would have been linked to a profound cultural shift from the moai cult to the Birdman cult. In contrast, the coastal groundwater hypothesis proposes that coastal seeps were the main freshwater source during climatic droughts. These hypotheses are evaluated using the available archaeological and paleoecological evidence, and it is concluded that neither can be rejected; therefore, they could be complementary, rather than exclusive. The continuity of the Rapanui civilization in spite of landscape degradation is a good example of cultural resilience that challenges earlier deterministic explanations and emphasizes human adaptability to changing environments.

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Comment to Rull et al. (2013)â€”Challenging Easter Island's Collapse: the need for interdisciplinary synergies

Abstract: A commentary onChallenging Easter Island's collapse: the need for interdisciplinary synergies by Rull, V.,

Cited by 5 publications

References 20 publications

Natural and anthropogenic drivers of cultural change on Easter Island: Review and new insights

Natural and anthropogenic drivers of cultural change on Easter Island: Review and new insights

The slow demise of Easter Island: insights from a modeling investigation

Climate change, deforestation patterns, freshwater availability and cultural shifts on prehistoric Easter Island (SE Pacific)

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