What happened on Easter Island (Rapa Nui); a lesson for global overpopulation

'The demographic declines of the Rapa Nui are linked to the long-term effects of climate change on the island's capacity for the production of food... 

'We did not find traces of an idyllic equilibrium with nature, and we did not find traces of a huge collapse. Instead, we found traces of interactions between three factors: Climate change, human population size, and changes in the ecosystem. The climate change manifests itself as a long-term pattern of changes in rainfall over some 400 years. The population grew during this same period, and the islanders also increased and changed their use of natural resources and agricultural methods...

'The islanders were not only aware of the changes, but they were also able to change the way the lived on the island. They gradually changed from the quite complex society that raised the marvelous moai statues, to a later and simpler agrarian society with reduced family sizes and a new way of producing food in stone gardens...

'These three factors affected the population on Rapa Nui, and they are also important on a global scale. We studied Rapa Nui and its history because we are trying to understand what is happening with the planet. Everybody talks about climate change and the resulting problems, but very few people are talking about the rising global population and the problems it causes.'

https://phys.org/news/2020-09-growth-decline-rapa-nui-population.html

RAPA NUI: Tattooed torsos of the ancient 'heads'

In Rapa Nui aka Easter Island, archaeologists have uncovered the buried torsos of the ancient stone 'moai', revealing carvings (petroglyphs) representing Polynesian canoes:

Source: Daily Express
https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1314641/archaeology-news-easter-island-head-statues-bodies-found-moai-rano-raraku-spt

It's theorised that the moai were funerary headstones for members of different tribes on the island, as there are human remains found around these statues.

Story: https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1314641/archaeology-news-easter-island-head-statues-bodies-found-moai-rano-raraku-spt

FRENCH POLYNESIA: C13th Polynesians migrated east, Colombians west, met in French Polynesia?

'After a detailed DNA analysis of the genomes of more than 800 Polynesians and Native Americans, both modern and prehistoric, researchers have found evidence of contact between the two groups as far back as 1200 CE...

"Our analyses suggest strongly that a single contact event occurred in eastern Polynesia, before the settlement of Rapa Nui, between Polynesian individuals and a Native American group most closely related to the indigenous inhabitants of present-day Colombia," the researchers explain in their paper.

https://www.sciencealert.com/new-evidence-shows-prehistoric-contact-between-native-americans-and-polynesians

See also this article from 2017, reporting a study supporting the theory that the Native American / Polynesian interbreeding occurred before the colonisation of Rapa Nui:
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/10/did-early-easter-islanders-sail-south-america-europeans

RAPA NUI / EASTER ISLAND: Polynesians did NOT ruin the island

A counter to the greenstory about humans triggering ecological collapse on Rapa Nui is here:

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/04/07/easter-islands-ecological-suicide-myths-and-realities/

For example:

"Easter Islanders never cut their palm trees at all! According to their cultural legends, when the Polynesians’ canoes reached Easter about 1000 AD, the island was covered in grasses. There were only a few palms. Modern pollen studies confirm this, showing that the island did have palm trees in the ancient past – but most died in the cold droughts of the Dark Ages (600–950 AD). The few surviving palms died during the Little Ice Age after the Polynesians colonized the island. The last palm died about 1650."

RAPA NUI / EASTER ISLAND / MIGRATION: How they came

IMG: Google Maps

It's said that early settlers came to Easter Island (or Rapa Nui) from the Marquesas. The dating is very vague:  as early as 300-400 CE, when some think (1) Hawaii was also first colonised, but possibly as late as 1200 CE - which would tie in with recent research suggesting the later time for New Zealand and Hawai'i (2).

The most ancient depiction of the Polynesian double-hulled voyaging canoe is found at Easter Island/Rapa Nui, scratched into rock at Orongo (3).

IMG: Herb Kawainui Kāne

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Easter_Island#First_settlers

(2) http://pvs.kcc.hawaii.edu/ike/moolelo/discovery_and_settlement.html

(3) http://pvs.kcc.hawaii.edu/ike/kalai_waa/kane_search_voyaging_canoe.html