Easter Island settled later

Easter Island, also known as Rapa Nui, was not settled until around the year 1250, says a recent study. Picture / Angela Gregory

The first Polynesian voyagers to reach Easter Island arrived up to 800 years later than previously thought, according to research by a University of Hawaii archaeology professor, Terry Hunt.

Easter Island, also known as Rapa Nui, was not settled until around the year 1250, says a study published in the journal Science by Professor Hunt, and a colleague, Carl Lipo.

This would put Easter Island's settlement closer to the time of the mass Polynesian migration to New Zealand.

Professor Hunt suggested about 50 people settled on the island and grew to a stable population of about 3000. Many of those on the island were probably wiped out by diseases introduced by the Dutch, and later by the slave trade.

A New Zealand archaeologist, Atholl Anderson of Australian National University, said the paper was important because it was part of a revision of the chronology of the Pacific.

The new theory showed a big gap between the settling of west Polynesian islands such as Samoa, and the marginal areas of south and east Polynesia, such as New Zealand.

Professor Hunt conducted an extensive dig at the sand dunes of Anakena, the best canoe-landing spot on Easter Island, testing charcoal samples and rat-eaten palm nuts to get his 1250 date for settlement.

It would mean that the island's ecological collapse began almost immediately on settlement, rather than meeting its textbook portrayals as a once-thriving civilisation that doomed itself by wiping out its natural resources.

Professor Hunt, the study's lead author, said the new findings highlight the dangers of human-induced environmental change, especially to islands.

"Changes can occur very rapidly," he told the National Geographic magazine.

Before humans arrived on the isolated island, which is 166sq km in area, it had 16 million giant palm trees, and 20 or more other tree and woody shrub species formed a forest.

Early research led scientists to believe the island was colonised around AD 400. More recent researchers argued that settlement first took place around the year 800, with the deforestation of the island beginning around 1300.

But Professor Hunt's new dating theory would mean that the island started losing its environmental stability from the moment humans arrived.

- NZPA