Abstract
Easter Island deforestation has traditionally been viewed as an abrupt island-wide event caused by the prehistoric Rapanui civilization, which precipitated its own cultural collapse. This view emerges from early palaeoecological analyses of lake sediments, which showed a sudden and total replacement of palm pollen by grass pollen shortly after Polynesian settlement (800-1200CE). However, further palaeoecological research has challenged this view, showing that the apparent abruptness and island-wide synchronicity of forest removal was an artefact due to the occurrence of a sedimentary gap of several millennia that prevented a detailed record of the replacement of palm-dominated forests by grass meadows. During the last decade, several continuous (gap-free) and chronologically coherent sediment cores encompassing the last millennia have been retrieved and analysed, providing a new picture of forest removal on Easter Island. According to these analyses, deforestation was not abrupt but gradual and occurred at different times and rates, depending on the site. Regarding the causes, humans were not the only factors responsible for forest clearing, as climatic droughts as well as climate-human-landscape feedbacks and synergies also played a role. In summary, the deforestation of Easter Island was a complex process that was spatially and temporally heterogeneous and took place under the actions and interactions of both natural and anthropogenic drivers. In addition, archaeological evidence shows that the Rapanui civilization was resilient to deforestation and remained healthy until European contact, which contradicts the occurrence of a cultural collapse. Further research should aim to obtain new continuous cores and make use of recently developed biomarker analyses to advance towards a holistic view of the patterns, causes and consequences of Easter Island deforestation.
Highlights
Deforestation is a common feature linked to human settlement of forested areas
The case of Easter Island (Rapa Nui), the easternmost Polynesian island and one of the most remote inhabited places on Earth (Fig. 1), has become iconic, as it has been considered an example of a cultural collapse purportedly caused by human overexploitation of natural resources, including the total removal of palm forests that dominated the island before human settlement
Deforestation did not cause a cultural collapse, and the ancient Rapanui culture remained healthy until the arrival of the first Europeans (1722 CE), when the degradation of the Rapanui culture began, with the culture collapsing due to slave trading and the introduction of alien epidemic diseases (Rainbird, 2002; Peiser, 2005)
Summary
Deforestation is a common feature linked to human settlement of forested areas. Oceanic islands are sensitive to deforestation because of the low likelihood of forest regeneration resulting from the physical isolation that prevents recolonization from other potential forest sources. The case of Easter Island (Rapa Nui), the easternmost Polynesian island and one of the most remote inhabited places on Earth (Fig. 1), has become iconic, as it has been considered an example of a cultural collapse purportedly caused by human overexploitation of natural resources, including the total removal of palm forests that dominated the island before human settlement. Other researchers have proposed that the deforestation was caused by extensive palm fruit consumption by Pacific rats (Rattus exulans), which would have hindered forest regeneration (Hunt, 2006, 2007) These rats were carried to the island by the first Polynesian colonizers, whose arrival occurred between approximately 800 CE and 1200 CE, according to different authors (Flenley & Bahn, 2003; Hunt & Lipo, 2006; Vargas, Cristino & Izaurieta, 2006; Wilmshurst et al, 2011; Mieth & Bork, 2015). The first section places the topic in a historical context by briefly summarizing the main cultural developments between the island’s settlement and European contact, on the basis of the archaeological, anthropological and ethnological evidence collected to date
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