The Easter Islanders failed to navigate their way off the island, just as the Romans failed to solve the problem of how to change governments peacefully. If there was a forestry disaster on Easter Island, that was not what brought its inhabitants down: it was that they were chronically unable to solve the problem that this raised. If that problem had not dispatched their civilization, some other problem eventually would have. Sustaining their civilization in its static, statue-obsessed state was never an option.
