Island at the Edge of Time. Easter Island Ecocide Case Study in Environmental Self-Destruction by Isolated Society

This book probes how the story of Easter Island became a global parable of environmental self-destruction, weaving together archaeology, oral memory, and climate constraint to ask whether "ecocide" was self-wrought or a myth imposed from the outside. It follows the island as a microcosm of big-history questions: how fragile ecosystems, social competition over monumental symbols, and external contact reshape the fate of a small, isolated world. First, it examines the traditional "ecocide" narrative-the image of Moai-driven deforestation, soil erosion, and population collapse-showing how wood scarcity, shifting subsistence, and the loss of long-distance voyaging reconfigured Rapa Nui life long before European contact.
Second, it traces how recent DNA, paleoecological, and agricultural studies have unsettled this picture, suggesting a more stable, adaptive population that managed severe limits through rock-garden agriculture and flexible social structures rather than reckless overexploitation. Third, it weighs the role of external forces-disease, slave-raiding, and colonial disruption-showing why the true "collapse" may lie more in post-contact rupture than in an earlier ecological suicide.