[hnlmorg]

One needs to be very careful when making statements like that because early accounts of Easter Island are varied and subjective. However what is known with greater certainty is that they saw lots of visitors who brought diseases like smallpox and who took substantial numbers of Easter Island natives into slavery.

[marginalia_nu]

I don't understand, are you saying the trees got smallpox and were enslaved and that's why they are gone?

[hnlmorg]

My point is that some of the accounts do report trees. While the stories of deforestation are true it’s a far cry from the island being baron and inhabitants turning into savage cannibals. That’s the subjective part.

Yet we do know with certainty that hundreds, if not thousands, of inhabitants were taken as slaves and the remaining suffered from rampant diseases that were introduced to that island.

So what killed them might not have been lack of resources but rather the same old story of more powerful nations exploiting them.

[marginalia_nu]

Well this is a discussion about trees. The post I replied to suggested we start chopping down trees when we run out of other resources. Hence my suggestion that this may not be a good idea.

I don't understand where you're getting the cannibalism from.

[hnlmorg]

Your opening comment was terse enough to be ambiguous and cannibalism is often (subjectively) cited as the end game of Easter Island. That’s how.