Qualla: Easter Island: The Mystery of Rise and Collapse https://qualla.com/easter-island-collapse en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:05 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/3/e/4/j/easter-island-wk/hero-small.webp Qualla: Easter Island: The Mystery of Rise and Collapse https://qualla.com/easter-island-collapse Easter Island: The Mystery of Rise and Collapse: Introduction https://qualla.com/easter-island-collapse/ Photo credit Redondo8, CC BY-SA 3.0. The moai stand with their backs to the sea, nearly 900 stone giants facing inward across the island their creators called Rapa Nui. Some weigh over 80 tons. Some stand over 30 feet tall. They were carved from volcanic rock between 1250 and 1500 AD by a Polynesian civilization that somehow transported them miles from the quarry to platforms around the island's coast. Then the statue-building stopped. When Europeans arrived in 1722, the population had crashed, the forests were gone, and many statues had been toppled. What happened on Easter Island became a parable about environmental collapse - and a scientific controversy that continues today.

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Image: Redondo8 | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Thu, 15 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/3/e/4/j/easter-island-collapse-wk/3e4j-easter-island-the-mystery-of-rise-and-collapse-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Easter Island: The Mystery of Rise and Collapse: The Builders https://qualla.com/easter-island-collapse/ Photo credit Aurbina, Public domain. Polynesians reached Easter Island around 1200 AD, sailing thousands of miles across the Pacific in double-hulled canoes to settle the most isolated inhabited island on Earth - 2,300 miles from Chile, 2,500 miles from Tahiti. What they found was a lush island covered in giant palm...

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Image: Aurbina | Public domain

]]> Thu, 15 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/3/e/4/j/easter-island-collapse-wk/3e4j-easter-island-the-mystery-of-rise-and-collapse-the-builders.mp3 0:06 2 full Easter Island: The Mystery of Rise and Collapse: The Collapse https://qualla.com/easter-island-collapse/ Photo credit American at German Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0. The traditional story, popularized by Jared Diamond's 'Collapse,' describes ecological suicide. The islanders cut down all the trees to move statues and build canoes. Deforestation led to soil erosion, crop failure, and the extinction of native birds. Without trees for canoes, fi...

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Image: American at German Wikipedia | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Thu, 15 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/3/e/4/j/easter-island-collapse-wk/3e4j-easter-island-the-mystery-of-rise-and-collapse-the-collapse.mp3 0:06 3 full Easter Island: The Mystery of Rise and Collapse: The Revision https://qualla.com/easter-island-collapse/ Photo credit Jptorrent, CC BY-SA 3.0. Recent research has complicated this narrative. Anthropologist Terry Hunt and archaeologist Carl Lipo argue that rats, not humans, destroyed the palm forests - rats that arrived with the colonizers and ate the palm nuts that would have regenerated the trees. They suggest the popu...

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Image: Jptorrent | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Thu, 15 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/3/e/4/j/easter-island-collapse-wk/3e4j-easter-island-the-mystery-of-rise-and-collapse-the-revision.mp3 0:06 4 full Easter Island: The Mystery of Rise and Collapse: The Moai Today https://qualla.com/easter-island-collapse/ Photo credit Picture taken by Bjarte Sorensen., CC BY-SA 3.0. Nearly 900 moai remain on the island, about 400 still at the quarry in various stages of completion, the rest scattered around the coast. Some stand on restored ahu platforms, their red stone topknots (pukao) replaced on their heads. Many lie face-down where they were toppled cen...

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Image: Picture taken by Bjarte Sorensen. | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Thu, 15 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/3/e/4/j/easter-island-collapse-wk/3e4j-easter-island-the-mystery-of-rise-and-collapse-the-moai-today.mp3 0:06 5 full Easter Island: The Mystery of Rise and Collapse: What Easter Island Means https://qualla.com/easter-island-collapse/ Photo credit Jptorrent, CC BY-SA 3.0. Easter Island's story has been used to prove many things - that civilizations inevitably destroy their environments, that rats are worse than humans, that colonialism kills more surely than deforestation. The truth is probably complex: multiple factors - deforestation, rat predat...

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Image: Jptorrent | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Thu, 15 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/3/e/4/j/easter-island-collapse-wk/3e4j-easter-island-the-mystery-of-rise-and-collapse-what-easter-island-means.mp3 0:06 6 full