When Was Easter Island First Settled?

As mentioned in my previous post, there is a whole host of controversy, debate and uncertainty as to when Easter Island was first settled. Up until 2006, the common belief amongst archaeological and geographical societies was that Easter was inhabited around AD400-700, for example considerable work has been undertaken by Bahn and Flenley (1992), who use pollen and fossil records to date the first settlement in the early third century.


However, in March 2006, Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo (2006) published this paper (http://www.sciencemag.org/content/311/5767/1603.full.pdf), which used radiocarbon dating on porpoise bones and charcoal in the oldest archaeological layers to confirm their belief that Easter Island was not inhabited until AD1200. They also suggest that the construction of the moai occurred within the 13th Century straight after the first settlement. This has huge concequences on the original hypothesis that population expanded to its peak from around AD400 to 1400, and in fact suggests that population expansion occurred extremely rapidly from AD1200 to 1400.


Because of this controversy, a widely recognised date of the first Polynesian settlement has still not been agreed, where a range of dates from AD400-1200 suggests that much mort work and research is required before we can cement a date as to the first settlement of Easter Island.

The Story of Easter Island

Easter Island (Rapu Nui) is considered to be the world’s msot isolated habitable land (Wolcott and Conrad 2011). The island is 64 miles², and lies in the Pacific ocean.  It’s nearst neighbour, the Pitcairn Islands, lie 1400 miles away, and South America lies 2000miles away. The island has a mild climate, and due to the fact it is a volcanic island, the soils are exceptionally fertile. The first settlers of the island (called Rapanuis) were thought to have been from Polynesian descent (derived from Asia), where around 25 – 100 of them sailed in canoes from the Marquesas Islands, around 2090 miles to the west of Easter.

When Jacob Roggeveen first discovered the island in 1722 he found 47 species of higher plants native to Easter and no animals bigger than insects. In summary, Easter was a ‘wasteland’. However, pollen and fossil records suggest that the geography of Easter was the polar opposite when the first Rapanuis settled (Bahn and Flenley 1992) – it had a subtropical forest of trees, woody bushes and a ground layer of shrubs, herbs, ferns and grasses. However, the most abundant type of tree was a palm which is now extinct to Easter, where field research has shown that around several million of these giant palm trees once dominated the island (Hunt and Lipo 2009). The palms not only provided edible fruits and seeds, but the trunk provided wood for fires, constructing canoes and a transportation method for the famous stone statues, and the palm leaves provided uses such as rope and thatching for houses. Although no animals bigger than insects were found by Roggeveen, when the Rapanuis arrived, Easter once had the richest seabird breeding site in Polynesia, and was home to porpoises, turtles, fish, shellfish, rats, seals and large lizards (Diamond 2005).

From looking at archaeological and paleontological evidence, in addition to pollen records, it was estimated that the Rapanuis first settled in AD400-700. However there is major uncertainty over about the date of settlement where radiocarbon dates on charcoal and porpoise bones suggest the first settlement at around AD900 (Hunt and Lipo 2006).The first Rapanuis initially settled on the Northwest coast, and then slowly spread to the Eastern side first, and then the rest of the island. It is thought that by AD1100, population expansion was in full swing on the whole island, with an estimated population of 2000-7000 people. The stone statue or moai construction was around AD1100 to 1400 and because building them was such huge task, a large population was required, thus signifying a population peak estimated at 6000-20,000 people (Wolcott and Conrad 2011) by AD1400. The erection of the moai and population expansion suggests that Easter’s society was that of a complex, organised one. Easter’s resources were scattered around the island; the best stones were quarried in the Northeast, stone carving tools came from the Northwest, the best farmland was in the south and east and the best fishing grounds were off the north and west coasts.

With all of these factors added together, Diamond (2005) points out that:

‘In theory, this combination of blessings should have made Easter a miniature paradise, remote from problems that beset the rest of the world’

So why was Easter not a blessing?

By the time Roggeveen arrived on the Island in 1722, he reported that the island was a treeless landscape inhabited by around 2000 people. When James Cook discovered the island in 1774 he noticed that many of the stone statues observed by Roggeveen had been toppled, and only one tenth of the island was now being used. So what happened between AD1400 and 1722?

From looking at this story so far it’s clear to see some problems already arising that would contribute to the collapse of Easter Island; population expansion, resource exploitation from moai construction and agriculture and potential deforestation.

References

Bahn, P. and Flenley, J. (1992) Easter Island, Earth Island London: Thames and Hudson

Diamond, J. (2005) Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive London: Allen Lane

Easter Island: An Introduction

Within a matter of centuries, the people of Easter Island saw their complex society spin into chaos, warfare and cannibalism, they saw their forests destroyed, and their food and animals driven to extinction. How did this happen to the same society that created the famous stone statues, and who built a life on the most uninhabitable place on Earth? The story of Easter Island’s rise and fall is one of both wonder, and warning. 

Walcot and Conrad (2011) suggest that deforestation, population expansion, resource exploitation and warfare are all potential causes for the demise of Easter Island. Could the collapse of Easter Island have been avoided if its people stopped what they were doing - whether it be stopping cutting down their trees  or curbing population increases - or was their fate down to the hands of mother nature. Essentially, was the collapse of Easter Island murder, or suicide?

In a time where resource exploitation, population expansion and unprecedented environmental change threatens our very society, looking back at past societal collapses like Easter Island allows us to investigate the reasons behind their collapse, whether or not it was their own doing, and what we can learn from their mistakes to avoid the same fate.

As this is my first post, I am not going to launch into the nitty gritty of Easter Island now and attempt to answer any of these questions. However, in the following months I intend to unpack some of the mysteries surrounding the collapse of Easter’s society, and the lessons that we can learn from each of the theories of collapse, whether it be deforestion, population expansion, resource exploitation or warfare.  I will leave you with a video that provides a fantastic introduction into the Easter Island story, its geography, people, culture, rise and fall. It sets the scene for the content of my blog in the coming months, and is well worth a watch!