The indigenous people of Easter Island, the Rapa Nui, were thought to have undergone a societal collapse some time after the 17th聽century due to in-fighting over depleted natural resources. But a new study of the tools they used to carve their famous moai statues adds to the evidence that the Rapa Nui in fact had a highly collaborative society.
Easter Island covers just 170 square kilometres and is one of the most remote places on Earth, sitting thousands of miles from the nearest landmass in the south-eastern Pacific Ocean. Once lush with palms, the island was devoid of trees by about 1500. Some scientists have suggested that the resulting erosion led to food shortages, and the lack of wood limited boat building, which could have led to violence and the eventual collapse of Rapa Nui society.
Dale Simpson at the University of Queensland says the evidence suggests otherwise. He and his colleagues used maps of stone quarries compiled by the Easter Island Statue Project to trace the path of the volcanic basalt mined and formed into chisels, picks, and axe-like tools. These were used for making canoes as well as the moai, massive monoliths carved into human figures that are set along the coastline.
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Cooperating clans
The team analysed 17 picks and tool fragments out of the 1600 they excavated from near the statues. They compared the chemical elements present in the basalt to those found in the 31 largest quarries on the island, which are marked by extraction pits and chipped debris.
鈥淪ometimes, complete tools such as toki [axe-like tools] and picks are found at the larger quarrying sites, which could have been in use more than 500 years ago,鈥� Simpson says. They analysed 7 samples from each of those five sites, and found that the majority of the tools matched the basalt found in one quarry complex where high-quality basalt was mined.
鈥淭his pattern suggests more communal use of stone, which arguably facilitated socio-political and economic interaction between clans and confederations of the ancient Rapa Nui chiefdom,鈥� Simpson says.
Peaceful prehistory
Robert DiNapoli at the University of Oregon agrees. 鈥淭his does indeed suggest cooperation between different clan communities in accessing and utilizing these basalt sources,鈥� he says. 鈥淣o particular clan seems to have control or differential access to these resources, so they must be cooperating in using them.鈥�
DiNapoli says this pattern is seen in other raw materials on Easter Island. Obsidian tools from one main source show up all across the island. A red volcanic rock called scoria that was used to make the hats that sit atop some of the moai is similarly distributed.
鈥淥f course, it鈥檚 hypothetically possible for a society to go from cooperation to conflict,鈥� says DiNapoli. 鈥淏ut there is simply no archaeological evidence for large scale conflict among the Rapa Nui,鈥� he says. 鈥淣early all evidence points to a relatively peaceful society throughout prehistory.鈥�
Journal Reference: Journal of Pacific Archaeology
