Attention, l’histoire de l’ile de Paque - Rapanui, n’est plus considérée que comme une « légende », car la chute du peuple qui y vivait a été initié et précipité justement par l’arrivé des premiers européens, et constitue un exemple typique de génocide et de mise à sac des ressources par l’ordinaire « bienfaiteur » occidental.

Notamment un livre à ce sujet

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/punctuated-equilibrium/2011/sep/07/3

Two anthropologists – Terry Hunt, a professor at the University of Hawai’i, and Carl Lipo, a professor at California State University – set out to correct the record with their book, The Statues that Walked : Unraveling the Mystery of Easter Island [Amazon UK ; Amazon US]. In this book, Hunt and Lipo, who conduct research on Rapa Nui, take a fresh look at the scientific evidence and argue that instead of an example of « eco-cide », Rapa Nui is a monument celebrating the triumph of a small group of people who persevered together under challenging circumstances.

the authors find that, contrary to the popular view that the early Rapanui were irresponsible eco-cidal maniacs, they were clever and caring environmental managers, who devised ingenious methods for enhancing the island’s limited agricultural potential. Hunt and Lipo also found that the early Rapanui did not devastate the palm forest, and their culture did not descend into violence and cannibalism. But I was most surprised to learn that making and moving the enormous moai statutes did not require many people at all, nor did it monopolize the islanders’ precious limited resources. In fact, statue construction was intimately tied to the long-term success of their society.

Voir aussi le texte « The Rape of Rapa Nui », (le viol de Rapanui) qui démonte la légende propagée par Jared Diamond, et démontre en reprenant les écrits et travaux récents, que l’effondrement de la population et intervenue bien longtemps après la création des statues, et est due aux marchands d’esclaves, et autre allumés qui voulurent transformer l’ile en ferme géante pour l’élevage de moutons 

Diamond ignores, or neglects to address the true reasons behind Rapa Nui’s collapse. Other researchers have no doubt that its people, their culture and its environment were destroyed to all intents and purposes by European slave-traders, whalers and colonists - and not by themselves ! After all, the cruelty and systematic kidnapping by European slave-merchants, the near-extermination of the Island’s indigenous population and the deliberate destruction of the island’s environment has been regarded as « one of the most hideous atrocities committed by white men in the South Seas » (Métraux, 1957:38), « perhaps the most dreadful piece of genocide in Polynesian history » (Bellwood, 1978:363).