Deforestation and Ecological Transformation of Rapa Nui (Easter Island)
- Date
- c. 1600 CE
- Category
- Environment & climate
- Region
- Rapa Nui (Easter Island), Oceania
- Era
- Early Modern
- Significance
Within a few centuries of Polynesian settlement around 1200 CE, the subtropical forest that once covered Rapa Nui (Easter Island) - dominated by a now-extinct giant palm (Paschalococos disperta, related to the Chilean wine palm Jubaea) alongside more than twenty other woody taxa - was almost entirely eliminated, leaving the island effectively treeless by roughly 1600.
The loss is attributed to a combination of human clearing, burning, and agriculture together with seed predation by the introduced Polynesian rat (Rattus exulans), whose gnawing of palm nuts suppressed forest regeneration. Deforestation removed timber for canoes and transport, contributed to soil erosion and the extinction of native land birds, and reshaped subsistence toward stone-mulched gardening. The episode became the iconic case study in environmental history after Jared Diamond framed it as self-inflicted 'ecocide' and societal collapse, a narrative since contested by archaeologists such as Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo, who argue for adaptive resilience and date the true demographic catastrophe to nineteenth-century slave raids and disease. The island had no trees taller than a few metres when Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen arrived in 1722.
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Empires active in c. 1600 CE
- Ottoman Empire1299 CE – 1922 CE
- Solomonic dynasty1270 CE – 1974 CE
- Mughal Empire1526 CE – 1857 CE
- Ming Dynasty1368 CE – 1644 CE
- Portuguese Empire1415 CE – 1999 CE
- Spanish Empire1492 CE – 1976 CE
Related environment & climate events
- 1556 Shaanxi EarthquakeJanuary 23, 1556
- Eruption of Huaynaputina19 February 1600
- The Little Ice Age and the General Crisis of the 17th century17th century (peak cooling c. 1600–1700)
- The Great Lisbon Earthquake, Tsunami, and Fire1 November 1755
- Laki Fissure Eruption and the Mist Hardships Famine8 June 1783 – 7 February 1784
- Great Bengal Famine of 17701769–1770
Further reading
The wider story
A New Green History of the World
The classic accessible account of how environment and climate have shaped human history.
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