Over the years there have been many competing theories of what happened to the Easter Islanders and why there cultured declined from its height. Rats eating the the roots and seeds of the palm trees is one of the more recent ones. Before that it was climate change, before that it was the shear exuberance of Moai building (887 moai from 1100CE to 1700CE, ~1.5 moai/year!) and over-harvesting the wood that was needed.
Of course researchers only pick one and try to prove it on order to make a name for themselves. It is possible that all are right. That the trees could have survived the rats if only the climate hadn’t changed or they weren’t cut so fast to make Moai. Perhaps the trees would have kept up with Moai building if there were seeds left from the rats. But no one gets published with a moderate paper saying that the decline was a combination of factors because it looks like then you don’t know the answer.
The other thing not mentioned in the story is that there was disruption on the island of the culture and authority structures. At one point in the early 1800’s every single standing moa on the ahu on the island were knocked down during intertribal fighting. Any Moai standing today not in the quarry or the quarry road have been restored to be upright. That to me sounds like the Easter Islanders didn’t quietly accept and gradually accept their fate, there were disruptions.
The final one was the arrival of Europeans, European diseases, and finally Peruvian slave traders that raided the island. I wish we had the alternate history version where the culture survived and spread, we learned Rongorongo and they told us what happened.
