Easter Island never had a catastrophic population ... Van Tilburg said. Even taking the rock-garden data on its own does not necessarily lead to Lipo and colleagues' conclusions, Van Tilburg ...

The volcanic soil on Easter Island is highly weathered and ... There had been only one 2013 study aimed at determining the island's rock-garden capacity, which relied on near-infrared bands ...

Robert DiNapoli, co-author of a new study about population dynamics on Rapa Nui, stands in front of a rock garden on the ... of the Pacific island Rapa Nui, or Easter Island, experienced a steep ...

A recently-published study challenges the popular myth that Easter Islanders' ancient rock gardening practices caused their own downfall. The journal article, which is titled "Island-wide ...

When British explorer James Cook arrived at Rapa Nui — known to him as Easter Island — in ... 180 acres—or 0.4 percent of the island—was used for rock gardening. This would have supported ...

Hundreds of monumental stone heads dot the coastline of the remote Pacific island of Rapa Nui ... 1 square kilometer (0.4 square mile), and rock garden cultivation alone would only have supported ...

Easter Island, situated around 2,200 miles west of ... According to NASA Earth Observatory, the Rapa Nui people harvested a volcanic rock made of consolidated ash called lapilli tuff from the ...