Expert Error: Easter Island

Sometimes writers learn something and assume that what is new to them is genuinely new to everybody. If their editors are careless, that information can be misrepresented as new and earthshaking.

Recently, a news aggregator called getpocket.com ran an item by a writer named Sarah Sloat about a breakthrough in our understanding of the mysterious Easter Island.

Scientists contend in a new study that the island’s most iconic features are also the best evidence that ancient Rapa Nui society was more sophisticated than previously thought, and the biggest clue lies in the island’s most iconic features.

Those “most iconic features” if you don’t know, are giant stone heads facing out to sea that were put there by people living on the island around 600 years ago.

The short article contrasts the alleged discovery with the previous theories of science writer Jared Diamond, who in a book titled Collapse, has suggested that the Easter Island culture imploded after depleting the island’s natural resources — especially trees— to the point where they could no longer support the existing population. It contends that the new research proves that the islanders were sophisticated — and hints that Diamond thought otherwise.

The getpocket article links to a scientific journal. That journal article (the source of the “breakthrough” ) describes tests that enable researchers to say where on the island the stone tools used to shape the giant statues were quarried. From that, the scientists have hypothesized something new about the social structure of the Easter Islanders. Here’s a taste of the abstract to that scientific article:

Pacific and Rapa Nui (Easter Island) volcanologists and geologists have set the stage for the island’s archaeologists working in lithic sourcing studies by providing practical data regarding the island geodynamic activity, geomorphological formation and dating, and the macroscopic, microscopic, and elemental proprieties of Easter Island stone.

So, the breakthrough research is all about “lithic sourcing” and geomorphological formation and dating.” Chances are pretty good that you don’t know much about that, and I know I don’t. But here’s the point: Chances are good that the writer of the getpocket article doesn’t understand it, either.

She contends that this “new” discovery proves the previous research of Jared Diamond wrong. More particularly, she says that Diamond’s contention that the Easter Islanders wrecked their island’s ecosystem and collapsed must be wrong, because we now know that Easter Island was “sophisticated.”

Well, Jared Diamond absolutely never implies in his book that the Easter Islanders weren’t sophisticated. His book is filled with appreciation of the tremendous social order and engineering capabilities needed to build the statues. But knowing they were smart and sophisticated does not preclude them from ruining their island, no more than the smarts and sophistication of mankind in 2020 precludes us from ruining the planet.

The problem here is that most news writers are novices. They are often asked to write about something they know little better than the average reader. Faced with a heavy topic, they grab onto the little piece of the issue they understand, and pretend that it is the whole story.