Easter Island's society might not have collapsed
August 13, 2018, Field Museum
You probably know Easter Island as "the place with the giant stone heads." This remote island 2,300 miles off the coast of Chile has long been seen as mysterious—a place where Polynesian seafarers set up camp, built giant statues, and then destroyed their own society through in-fighting and over-exploitation of natural resources. However, a new article in the Journal of Pacific Archaeology hints at a more complex story—by analyzing the chemical makeup of the tools used to create the big stone sculptures, archaeologists found evidence of a sophisticated society where the people shared information and collaborated.
"For a long time, people wondered about the culture behind these very important statues," says Field Museum scientist Laure Dussubieux, one of the study's authors. "This study shows how people were interacting, it's helping to revise the theory."
Read more at:
https://phys.org/news/2018-08-easter-island-society-collapsed.html#jCp
