Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

by Jared Diamond

Easter is the sole known Polynesian island at whose archaeological sites rat bones outnumber fish bones. In case you’re squeamish and consider rats inedible, I still recall, from my years of living in England in the late 1950s, recipes for creamed laboratory rat that my British biologist friends who kept them for experiments also used to supplement their diet during their years of wartime food rationing.