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.
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