Monumental collapse

Who is the author of the article?

• Emma Watson

• Emma Young

• Emma Stone

• Emma Old

Answer explanation

Emma Young is an award-winning science and health journalist and author. She has a degree in psychology and 20 years’ experience working on titles including the Guardian, the Sydney Morning Herald and New Scientist, for which she worked as a senior online reporter in London and Australasian Editor in Sydney.

What does Jared Diamond suggests about the catastrophical events in Easter Island?

• the reason the islanders wiped out their forest is still open to dispute.

• Population estimates based on the remains of prehistoric settlements are difficult to validate.

• The parallels between Easter Island and the whole modern world are chillingly obvious

Answer explanation

Easter's isolation makes it the clearest example of a society that destroyed itself by overexploiting its own resources.

It is a fact that by the time Roggeveen arrived to the Island for the first time, society had already collapsed

• True

• False

Answer explanation

Many conclude that by Roggeveen's time the society had already collapsed. "But that is just absolute speculation," Lipo says.

Soil analysis suggests an estimated 16 million palms once stood on the island, and deforestation seems to have begun as soon as the settlers arrived around ____, and was complete by about ____.

• 800, 1200

• 1000, 1500

• 1200, 1600

• 1200, 1500

What is one possible reason for the people on the Island to get rid of the Forest?

• So they could build houses

• For combustion

• To make space for gardens

Answer explanation

Lipo and Hunt suggest that, given Easter Island's poor soils and relatively low rainfall—which struggles to top 1,500 millimeters a year—it actually made sense to get rid of the forest to make way for these gardens, and to extend agriculture across a greater range of soils and levels of rainfall.

When were Gardens abandoned aproximately?

• 1500

• 1550

• 1600

• 1700

Answer explanation

The earliest gardens seem to date from around 1300. Christopher Stevenson of the Virginia Department of Historic Resources thinks that they were abandoned from about 1600.

What are the stories of starvation and cannibalism based on

• Testimonies of people from the Island

• Found evidence of cannibalism cults

• Oral histories of Europeans

What happened to the last people on the island

• They were killed by colonizers in 1862

• They were taken as slaves, others died from smallpox, and the last ones starved

• They lived happily ever after

• Went missing and nobody knows what happened to them till today

Roggeveen's impression in 1722 was of

• Poverty and Barrenness

• Cannibalism and poverty

• Wonder and Beauty

• Prosperity and richness

What do Lipo and Hunt claim in the conclusion?

• They have all the answers of the mystery

• Cannibalism stories are fake

• The real reason why they wiped all forest is now known

• make other researchers think more critically about the history of Easter Island