A new study challenges the idea that Rapa Nui islanders caused an ‘ecocide’

A new analysis of rock garden farming suggests islanders maintained a small, stable population

A line of the famous Easter Island stone statues face inland, their backs to the ocean.

Rapa Nui’s famous stone statues watched over a population that grew sweet potatoes on a modest scale and reached a peak of only around 3,900 individuals, too few to have triggered a previously hypothesized ecological disaster, a new study contends.

Chakarin Wattanamongkol/Getty Images

Early settlers of the island of Rapa Nui are famous for having created massive stone statues.