http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/53200?fulltext=true&print=yes

Now name all the genocides you can think of. Okay stop.

Im guessing not too many ecocides and lots of genocides.

Diamonds account is rife with inconsistencies. He says on page four of “Easter’s end”:

“Not long after 1400 the palm finally became extinct”

Which he corrected in “Collapse”, probably realizing that if deforestation was what caused the collapse and civil war…well his dates were off. He says forest clearance “peaked around 1400″ but lengthens the islands forest cover by over 200 years.

As piglet was saying, why would the extinction of the palm cause the collapse of the civilization? Diamond makes an amazing leap in his discussion of the island’s garbage heaps:

“Every species of native land bird became extinct…shellfish were overexploited until people had to settle for small sea snails…porpise bones disappeared from garbage heaps around 1500…The Easter Islanders intensified their production of chickens, which had only been an occasional food item. They also turned to the largest remaining meat source available: humans, whose bones became common in late Easter Island garbage heaps.”

No more turtles and shellfish…so now its time to eat each other. Sure…seems logical on an island with abundant fish supplies and incredibly fertile soil. Diamond says later that chickens and cannibalism just wouldnt quite balance the diet, and that statuettes with sunken cheeks and visible ribs suggest that people were starving.

I can see my ribs. Am I starving?

Also, isnt it kind of silly to think that the islanders would keep cutting down the trees just to build the statues? And if the palm was so important, would they not cultivate it when they noticed it was declining instead of letting the rats eat all the nuts? Poor savages. If only they had kept Thor Heyerdahls white “non-semitic” race around, they might have been ok.

Diamonds story is an agenda driven tale which once again exploits the natives of Easter Island. This is what we get now instead of science…pulp fiction posing as science.

I just completed translating a wonderful book that my father (dr. in Easter Island for almost two years ) spent with his family when ships went there once a year. I suggest checking out this exciting and non-conventional book:
Life and Solitude in Easter Island. Visit Authorhouse.com and after tabing bookstore, serach under: family, travel or History
Great reading from a unique family experience

Jared Diamond’s worldview is common currency today. Even the French, who snobbed Guns Germs and Steel when it was published, are now making Collapse a huge success ; I hear from a friend that it is being sold by the tens in a remote country……

“Why should it matter? I’m simply … “

It doesn’t matter on both your entries, the one on Hunt’s research and this one, but it is relevant to my understanding of your arguments on Diamond’s Collapse.

“.. someone else’s arguments which I think might be of interest to our readers.”

Thank you for that. I was not attacking you.

Why should it matter? I’m simply summarizing someone else’s arguments which I think might be of interest to our readers. I haven’t read Hunt’s research either. I just read the USA Today article about it. If you find it interesting you can go read both and come to your own conclusions.

I’ll see if I can locate the 1998 Orliac and Orliac paper (the Diamond chapter refers a couple times to findings by the Orliacs). I can’t find any libraries which have a copy of the proceedings in which the paper was published, so I may end up ordering it from the publisher (the Easter Island foundation).

I did look up and read the 2002 Rainbird paper. I don’t think it cited much new evidence (Rainbird’s area of specialization appears to be the Caroline islands), it just argued for a different interpretation of Flenley and Bahn’s evidence.

I’ll also pick up Flenley and Bahn’s book.

Thanks for the exhaustive summary. The most damning thing I see in your summary is regarding the toromiro. This does indeed raise questions about how much Peiser can be trusted.

I also found an inconsistency in the two essays regarding cannibalism. Peiser says that there is no evidence in Diamond, other than oral histories, for collapse and cannibalism, but the paper you linked to discusses archaeological evidence, including piles of human bones and the decline of certain other types of food. I assume this is in the chapter as well.

Have you looked at Orliac and Orliac (1998)? It would also be interesting to look at what they actually say about deforestation, since they seem to be the ones who throw most doubt on the archaeological data.

NOTE: I’ve updated the original post to reflect these concerns (directing people to read the comments).