The Human Transformation of Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Pacific Ocean)

Rapa Nui (Easter Island) has become widely known as a case study of human-induced environmental catastrophe resulting in cultural collapse. The island\u27s alleged ecocide is offered as a cautionary tale of our own environmental recklessness. The actual archaeological and historical record for the island reveals that while biodiversity loss unfolded, the ancient Polynesians persisted and succeeded. Demographic collapse came with epidemics of Old World diseases introduced by European visitors. In this paper, we outline the process of prehistoric landscape transformation that took place on Rapa Nui. This process includes the role of humans using fire to remove forest and convert to land for agricultural use as well as the impact of introduced rats (Rattus exulans) as agents that depressed recruitment of native vegetation and contributed to the island\u27s deforestation. For humans, the transformation of the landscape improved productivity. Burning of palms and other trees provided a short-term addition of nutrients to poor soils. Rock mulch and agricultural enclosures solved problems of cultivation and mitigated risk in an uncertain environment. The environmental transformation of Rapa Nui, while a tragedy in terms of biodiversity, was a success for a sustainable Polynesian subsistence economy

Triumph of the Commons: Sustainable Community Practices on Rapa Nui (Easter Island)

The history of Rapa Nui (Easter Island) has long been framed as a parable for how societies can fail catastrophically due to the selfish actions of individuals and a failure to wisely manage common-pool resources. While originating in the interpretations made by 18th-century visitors to the island, 20th-century scholars recast this narrative as a “tragedy of the commons,” assuming that past populations were unsustainable and selfishly overexploited the limited resources on the island. This narrative, however, is now at odds with a range of archaeological, ethnohistoric, and environmental evidence. Here, we argue that while Rapa Nui did experience large-scale deforestation and ecological changes, these must be contextualized given past land-use practices on the island. We provide a synthesis of this evidence, showing that Rapa Nui populations were sustainable and avoided a tragedy of the commons through a variety of community practices. We discuss this evidence in the context of Elinor Ostrom’s “core design principles” for sustainable communities and argue that Rapa Nui provides a model for long-term sustainability

Crop Fertilization on East Texas Soils.

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Crop Fertilization on East Texas Soils.

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Revealing oft-cited but unpublished papers of Colin Pittendrigh and coworkers

Among the scientific resources that Colin Pittendrigh passed on to his colleagues after his death in 1996 were two unpublished papers. These manuscripts, developed first in the mid-1960s and continually updated and refined through the late 1970s, centered on the development and experimental exploration of a model of circadian entrainment combining aspects of the well-known parametric (continuous) and nonparametric (discrete) models of entrainment. These texts reveal the experimental work surrounding Pittendrigh's determination of the limits of entrainment and the explanation of the bistability phenomenon. These manuscripts are being made publicly available in their final format (February 1978) as supplementary material to this introduction

The Pukao of Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile)

Structure from motion (SfM) mapping is a photogrammetric technique that offers a cost-effective means of creating three-dimensional visual representations from overlapping digital photographs. The technique has seen increasing uses for documenting the archaeological record. We demonstrate the utility of SfM through a study of the form of red scoria bodies known as pukao from Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile). We study 50 pukao that once adorned the massive statues (moai) of Rapa Nui, and compare them to 13 additional pukao located in Puna Pau: the island’s red scoria pukao quarry. Through SfM, we demonstrate that the majority of these bodies have petroglyphs and other surface features that are relevant to archaeological explanation and are currently at risk of continued degradation

Using Structure from Motion Mapping to Record and Analyze Details of the Colossal Hats (Pukao) of Monumental Statues on Rapa Nui (Easter Island)

Structure from motion (SfM) mapping is a photogrammetric technique that offers a cost-effective means of creating three-dimensional (3-D) visual representations from overlapping digital photographs. The technique is now used more frequently to document the archaeological record. We demonstrate the utility of SfM by studying red scoria bodies known as pukao from Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile). We created 3-D images of 50 pukao that once adorned the massive statues (moai) of Rapa Nui and compare them to 13 additional pukao located in Puna Pau, the island’s red scoria pukao quarry. Through SfM, we demonstrate that the majority of these bodies have petroglyphs and other surface features that are relevant to archaeological explanation and are currently at risk of continued degradation

The Ethnohistory of Freshwater Use on Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile)

Sources of drinking water on islands often present critical constraints to human habitation. On Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile), there is remarkably little surface fresh water due to the nature of the island’s volcanic geology. While several lakes exist in volcanic craters, most rainwater quickly passes into the subsurface and emerges at coastal springs. Nevertheless, the island sustained a relatively large human population for hundreds of years, one that built an impressive array of monumental platforms (ahu) and statues (moai). To understand how Rapanui acquired their scarce fresh water, we review ethnohistoric data from first European arrival (1722) through the mid-twentieth century. Ethnohistoric accounts identify a diversity of freshwater sources and describe various Rapanui freshwater management strategies. Our findings highlight the importance of coastal freshwater seeps and provide much-needed insight into how Rapanui procured this vital and necessary resource

Population structure drives cultural diversity in finite populations: A hypothesis for localized community patterns on Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile)

Understanding how and why cultural diversity changes in human populations remains a central topic of debate in cultural evolutionary studies. Due to the effects of drift, small and isolated populations face evolutionary challenges in the retention of richness and diversity of cultural information. Such variation, however, can have significant fitness consequences, particularly when environmental conditions change unpredictably, such that knowledge about past environments may be key to long-term persistence. Factors that can shape the outcomes of drift within a population include the semantics of the traits as well as spatially structured social networks. Here, we use cultural transmission simulations to explore how social network structure and interaction affect the rate of trait retention and extinction. Using Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile) as an example, we develop a model-based hypothesis for how the structural constraints of communities living in small, isolated populations had dramatic effects and likely led to preventing the loss of cultural information in both community patterning and technology