Questioning collapse

What Hacker News says

1. dethswatchJul 2018
   rats had been there from the start and are a good (imo) explanation for what happened-- the tree and their seeds were preyed upon.

   [This explains explains it from an academic standpoint.](https://www.amazon.com/Questioning-Collapse-Resilience-Ecolo...)

   Saying that they killed all the trees to help the moai get into place (or similar) is ridiculous.

   In addition, the first reports from the 1720+ timeframe (first contact and there abouts) estimated the population at a few hundred iirc, no trees, toppled moai.

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2. atombenderFeb 2024
   As far as I'm aware, this has been thoroughly debunked, especially by Hunt and Lipo [1], who have argued against the "ecocide" theory, pointing out that the deforestation appeared to have had a positive effective on the islander's agriculture, and that contrary to Diamond's claims, the population was increasing, not falling, at the time of European contact.

   The deforestation was almost certainly caused by the Polynesian rat, as archeological research has shown that the same type of deforestation happened on other islands where rats where accidentally introduced, but not on settled islands where there were no signs of rats having been introduced. I believe Diamond (or maybe it was Heyerdahl) claims the settlers chopped down the forest in order to make rolling logs for transporting statues, but we now know that statues were transported by "walking" them using ropes [2].

   As a pop-sci counterpart to "Collapse", I recommend the podcast The Fall of Civilization's episode on Easter Island [3], which includes this newer research. The podcast is wonderful in general, and that episode is one of the best in the series.

   As far I'm concerned, Diamond has a lot to answer for in perpetuating these modern myths that get repeated long after they've been debunked. His narratives catch people's interest because they are simple explanations that "make sense", and come with a kind of moral component, one of dramatic irony (the settlers were so stupid to chop down their trees, just to make these useless statues!). Diamond also wrote about Greenland and argued for the same kind of story there, despite evidence to the contrary.

   There is an entire academic book [4] devoted to debunking Diamond's claims, which should tell you how annoyed real archeologists, anthropologists, and historians are with his books.

   [1] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2042672

   [2] https://youtu.be/YpNuh-J5IgE?si=arekVaU6AnwEvQwY

   [3] https://open.spotify.com/episode/0pGCsvdjo344EQ2dALE6dD?si=6...

   [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Questioning_Collapse

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3. jcranmerJun 2021
   Diamond is notorious in the anthropological community for pushing outdated and debunked theories, and Collapse has some of the worst. I think every case of ecological self-destruction he lists is considered debunked by the mainstream community (certainly, his views on Rapa Nui and Greenland are thoroughly debunked)--indeed, there's an entire book published that's a lengthy critique of his work, titled (fittingly) Questioning Collapse.
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4. AlotOfReadingJul 2020
   There are lots of books, papers, blogs, etc out there that offer refutations of people like Hancock. The SAA Archaeological Record dedicated an entire section to one of his books (http://onlinedigeditions.com/publication/?m=16146&i=634462&p...). Jared Diamond's books have prompted more than one seminar and rebuttal book, e.g. Questioning Collapse.

   Unfortunately, people are busy, have real research to do, and don't have time to deal with every crank out there. Some are even state sponsored, which opens up a whole world of problems. It's not fair to expect people to do extensive rebuttals of every crank out there. It's the academic version of Brandolini's law.

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