In 1722 when, on Easter Sunday, Dutchman Jacob Roggeveen discovered the island. He was the first European to discover this enigmatic island. Roggeveen and his crew estimated that there were 2,000 to 3,000 inhabitants on the island. Apparently, explorers reported fewer and fewer inhabitants as the years went on, until eventually, the population dwindled to less than 100 within a few decades. Now, it\u2019s estimated the island\u2019s population was around 12,000 at its peak.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nAn amazing pigment production<\/h4>\n Easter Island is famous throughout the world especially for its gigantic human-like statues, the moai, representations of the ancestors of the Rapanui people.\u00a0But in addition to statues,\u00a0the inhabitants of Easter Island also produced a reddish pigment, based on red ocher, which they applied to cave paintings, petroglyphs, moai… as well as in funerary contexts.<\/p>\n
While the presence of this pigment was already well known to researchers,\u00a0its source and possible production process were unclear.\u00a0In recent years, archaeologists have excavated and conducted scientific studies at four pit locations, suggesting that there was large-scale pigment production on the island.<\/p>\nDrawing showing a section with three graves, discovered in Vaip\u00fa, containing ocher. \u00a9 Photo A. Mieth<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nThe pits located at Easter are rich in very fine particles of iron oxides, hematite and maghemite, minerals that have a bright reddish colour. Geochemical analyzes that have been carried out on microcarbons and phytoliths (remains of plant mass) indicate that the minerals were heated, possibly to obtain an even brighter colour. Some of the pits were plugged, which would indicate that they were used both for the production and storage of these pigments.<\/p>\n
The phytoliths found in the pits of Easter Island come mainly from\u00a0Panicoideae, plants of the subfamily of grasses.\u00a0The researchers believe that these phytoliths were used as part of the fuel used to heat the pigments.<\/p>\nTrench excavated by archaeologists at Poike. It contains thin layers of ocher, and palm root molds were found at its base. \u00a9 Photo: HR Bork<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nDetail of palm roots in one of the excavated pits. \u00a9 Photo: HR Bork<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nThe graves\u00a0investigated on the island\u00a0date between 1200 and 1650.\u00a0At Vaip\u00fa Este, the site where most of the graves were found, researchers discovered that many\u00a0of them were located where palm roots had previously been found,\u00a0as well as in Poike, where another grave was found.\u00a0This suggests that pigment production took place after the cleaning and burning of the old palm vegetation.<\/p>\n
This indicates that even though the palm tree vegetation had disappeared, the prehistoric population of Easter Island continued pigment production, and on a substantial scale. This fact contrasts with the previous hypothesis that the clearing of vegetation resulted in social collapse.\u00a0The discovery provides us with new insights into the flexibility of humans to cope with changing environmental conditions.<\/p>\n
Conclusion<\/h4>\n In the end, the questions remain, how were the Rapanui People extinct from that island? Why did they disappear abruptly? Also, there are a number of questions about their actual origin, it is still unknown on the island where they came from. Socially and culturally from all aspects, they have shown intelligence and superiority in history, but their sudden extinction without a trace remains a big mystery<\/a> to this day. Now, our eyes can only see some of the leading sculptures and crafts left behind by this great society that fascinate and astonish us even today.<\/p>\n","protected":false,"gt_translate_keys":[{"key":"rendered","format":"html"}]},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Researcher Jared Diamond in his book Collapse (2005), assumed that the removal of vegetation and overcrowding rats resulted in tremendous erosion, a great scarcity of resources and food, and, ultimately, the collapse of the Rapanui Society of Easter Island \u2015 a hypothesis that most of the mainstream researchers believe. But a new study on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false,"gt_translate_keys":[{"key":"rendered","format":"html"}]},"author":1,"featured_media":14373,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,8,224],"tags":[88,152,244,151],"blocksy_meta":[],"gt_translate_keys":[{"key":"link","format":"url"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mru.ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14368"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mru.ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mru.ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mru.ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mru.ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mru.ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14368\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mru.ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mru.ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mru.ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mru.ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}