One of the most striking chapters in the book. Collapse (Gallimard, 2006), by Jared Diamond, is about Easter Island. The American anthropologist and physiologist defends the thesis that its first inhabitants overexploited the resources of this islet lost in the South Pacific, in particular to erect giant hieratic statues, condemning themselves to extinction. The Europeans, who discovered the island in 1722, would have done nothing but precipitate a demographic catastrophe that was already underway.
Archaeology had already pointed out the weak points of such a story, showing, for example, that the islanders had been able to adapt to the change in vegetation thanks to ingenious stone gardens, the size of which made it possible to estimate the size of the population. “really drives the point home”estimates Evelyne Heyer, professor of genetic anthropology at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris.
Do not mix with Europeans
A study she co-authored NaturePublished on Wednesday 11 September, it analyses the genomes of fifteen inhabitants of Rapa Nui – the indigenous name for Easter Island – whose remains were found in the collections of the Museum of Man following the expeditions of Alphonse Pinart (1877) and Alfred Métraux (1935). The conditions under which these human remains were removed from the site are unclear, but the DNA extracted from them spoke volumes. The individuals in question bore no trace of mixing with Europeans. This facilitated the reconstruction of the dynamics of this population. “We reject a scenario that implies a serious bottleneck during the 17th century, as proposed by the theory of ecocide”write Anna-Sapfo Malaspinas (Universities of Lausanne and Copenhagen), who led this work, and colleagues.
Models suggest that the population of Rapa Nui, where the first Polynesian sailors are believed to have landed some eight hundred years ago, grew steadily until the arrival of Europeans, never exceeding 3,000 inhabitants, rather than 15,000 according to some estimates. This figure of 3,000 agrees with accounts of the first Europeans to arrive there, but also with the latest study of the stone gardens. Only later, with the importation of diseases, then the enslavement of a third of the inhabitants in the 1860s by Peruvian “slave traders” and an episode of smallpox, did the population decline to around 110 individuals; it has now risen to 7,750 people.
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