This is really fucking bugging me. There's a long held racist, colonial narrative that the people of Easter Island were so backwards they would rather build their idols than eat food and it led to the complete collapse of their civilization, it's the kind of narrative that Europeans at the time used to justify murder, rape and enslavement. An alternative theory is presented that totally upends this and you ask "What does it matter?"Goes to great lengths to demonstrate that deforestation was the fault of rats rather than Moai-making. What does it matter? The ecology of the island changed dramatically after human arrival, that's not disputed.