The walking moai of Easter Island. By Carlo Lipo at Science Alert.

How did Rapanui people move these megalithic giants? …

In 2013, we built a 4.35-ton concrete replica scaled from road moai. It wasn’t an artistic interpretation but a precise reproduction of measurable features from a statue found along the road and abandoned during transport. With 18 people and three ropes, the statue walked 100 meters in 40 minutes.

 

 

Mystery solved: It was rats that deforested the islands, not people:

The third “mystery” is how an advanced society could destroy its own environment. The island was deforested by the end of the 17th century. …

Ecological modeling revealed what we think really happened. Polynesian rats, introduced with the arrival of the first Polynesian colonists around 1200, could grow into a population of millions within just a few years.

By eating 95 percent of the island’s tree seeds, rats prevented forest regeneration. Humans cleared land for cultivation, but rats made the recovery of the palm forests impossible. The synergistic interaction seems to have accelerated deforestation within five centuries.

This wasn’t “ecocide” – intentional self-destruction – but rather unintended ecological transformation caused by an introduced species.

Climate change, yeah sure.