by Tomas Munita
[...] In his haunting chapter about Easter Island, he weighed the data — radiocarbon dating, charcoal and pollen analysis and botanical and archaeological surveys — and concluded that the inhabitants had mined the forests to extinction, setting off a cataclysm. What, Dr. Diamond wondered in an often cited passage, was going through the mind of the Easter Islander who cut the last tree? [...]
[Case Studies of Civilization Decline:]
