2024/06/21 by Dylan S. Davis, Robert J. DiNapoli, Gina Pakarati +2 · 1 voice · 7 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Environmental Science · Social Sciences · #Agriculture #Archaeology #Biology #Demography #Ecology #Geography #Geology and Paleoclimatology Research #Isotope Analysis in Ecology #Overexploitation #Pacific and Southeast Asian Studies #Population #Population growth #Sociology #Sustainability
paper · doi:10.1126/sciadv.ado1459
published in Science Advances 10(25), eado1459 (American Association for the Advancement of Science)
openalex publication_date 2024/06/21 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
Communities in resource-poor areas face health, food production, sustainability, and overall survival challenges. Consequently, they are commonly featured in global debates surrounding societal collapse. Rapa Nui (Easter Island) is often used as an example of how overexploitation of limited resources resulted in a catastrophic population collapse. A vital component of this narrative is that the rapid rise and fall of pre-contact Rapanui population growth rates was driven by the construction and overexploitation of once extensive rock gardens. However, the extent of island-wide rock gardening, while key for understanding food systems and demography, must be better understood. Here, we use shortwave infrared (SWIR) satellite imagery and machine learning to generate an island-wide estimate of rock gardening and reevaluate previous population size models for Rapa Nui. We show that the extent of this agricultural infrastructure is substantially less than previously claimed and likely could not have supported the large population sizes that have been assumed.