Easter Island history revised?

After having read Jared Diamond’s book Collapse, one of the stories of civilization collapse that sticks is the one about the people on Easter Island. I wrote about the book in futuramb blog in March last year (in Swedish). It is both puzzling and intriguing to ponder about what the people on Easter Island were thinking when they were cutting down the last tree throwing their civilization into starvation, civil war and cannibalism.

Two scientists are now presenting another theory on what actually happened. It is a far less dramatic and less long one and where rats were responsible for the deforestation and not the people.

[Carl] Lipo thinks the story of Easter Island’s civilization being responsible for its own demise might better reflect the psychological baggage of our own society than the archeological evidence.

Read the short article in LiveScience

Regardless if their theory holds, they really have a good point about how our own perspective and our own problems are ordering the way we look at the history.