In the 1600s, Easter Island's population suffered a sharp decline. This event has been the subject of much speculation by scientists and laypeople, and has spawned dozens of theories; people have guessed everything from alien flu to slavery to plague to a combination of things. For decades, scientists thought this was because the population used much of the island's natural resources. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Before 2006, the leading theory was that around 800 AD - give or take a few hundred years - a small group of settlers, most likely Polynesians, arrived on Easter Island. At one point there was a population peak of around 20,000 people. They used minimal resources and their lifestyle was compatible with the environment. Around 1200 they began to use more and more resources, such as trees. There is much speculation as to why this happened, but most think it was to build boats to transport rock for the Maui heads. All this destruction can only lead to disaster. The island was increasingly losing its ability to sustain life and people began to starve. When Europeans arrived around the 18th century, Easter Island was reduced to a suffering population of around 3,000 people, on a sandy and virtually uninhabitable wasteland. The latest plausible theory on this subject is that this is completely wrong, from start to finish. There was a study conducted by Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo in late 2006 that did radiocarbon dating of ancient soil on Easter Island. The results place the date of the settlers' arrival on the island around 1200; centuries later than we thought. This discovery implies that they did not have centuries of peace before, nor did they have time to bring the population close to 20,000. The people who came to that island are what destroyed it in the first place. That said, there may not have been a mass demographic collapse at all. Another possibility is that the island was never able to accommodate more than 3-5 thousand people. Furthermore, Hunt and Lipo do not believe that whatever happened was necessarily the fault of the Polynesian settlers, but of the Europeans. Or rather, their rats. They took Polynesian settlers as slaves and also brought rats (and later diseases) on their boats. The rats, having no predators, reproduced incredibly quickly and ate all the palm seeds on the island (and everything else). In fact, Lipo believes that the story of settlers destroying themselves may just be the alarming stories of 20th century missionaries, and that we cannot simply assume that the terrible things we are doing to the environment now, we also did in the past. Please note: this is just an example. Get a custom paper from our expert writers now. Get a custom essay therefore, I believe that, assuming there has been a major population decline, it is unlikely to happen again. I think the rat theory is the most plausible. If this is what happened, it couldn't really happen on a large portion of land, like North America, or even Austrailia or Greenland. There are too many resources and we have technology that can eliminate pests. That would be a possibility on a small remote island.