Divergence - go back and look at the material you cite. None of that gets diamond off the hook. Of course youd would have tree stumps and burned tree nuts.. there were people on the island after all.. the assumption you are making is that if rats are to blame then the islanders could not have touched any of the trees. Of course they would have cut down some. The allegation Diamond makes is that they went too far and cut them all down.. whereas Hunt makes the quite logical counter statement, backed by evidence, that rats did for most of the tree cover by eating the seeds (nuts). He also points out that it is known to have happened on other islands.

In any case, I'm not saying Diamond is wrong, but you can't use folk tales (his folk tale evidence has also been dismissed, incidentally) to prove that sort of story. You need a comprehensive archeological dig on the island. They can do wonders with archeological surveys these days.

Until then, as no other academic seems to agree with Diamond, its not really a question of trying to retread his arguments. It remains a fringe theory and that's really it. Nothing more to say. You get lots of them in archeology incidentally - Troy was really in England, Atlantis was really on what is now the bottom of a lake in Turkey, the Arc of the Covenent ended up in Ethiopia, chinese ships sailed all round the world rather than just chunks of the Indian and Pacific, a Roman legion got to China (google China and lost legion). Pay no attention until there is hard confirmation.

Mark, Jared Diamond could not by any stretch of anyone's imagination but yours be described as 'fringe'. Or as you previously have described him, a 'nutter'.

He has published quite widely and intelligently on a number of topics revolving around ecology and evolution. That some academics disagree with some of the details or underlying causes of particular ecological collapses does not in any sense make him 'fringe'.

Quite the contrary, he gets published in the most prestigous of journals and other academics are then left to openly debate his hypotheses, the result? Higher profiles for all concerned of course.

But to somehow equate Diamonds ideas of overarching ecological themes with those truly fringe historical theories you described is a grotesque distortion of reality. But I wouldn't have expected anything less, of course.

You must be thinking of someone else, Divergence.

>>Pericles likes to pretend that Diamond is just an outlier<<

I have no opinion of Mr Diamond whatsoever.

My observation was simply that his theory is merely one among many, none of which has any greater claim to accuracy and credibility than any other.

Except perhaps the one about the long ears and the short ears. That was pretty silly.

Curmudgeon,

Science is a peer reviewed journal. The editor would have sent Diamond's paper to at least two referees and more likely three or four before it was accepted for publication. These referees would have been archaeologists with expertise in the South Pacific and probably Easter Island itself. They would have been selected by the editor, not Jared Diamond. The idea that they would have let Diamond get away with making stuff up (as you suggested on another thread), grossly misrepresenting his references, or failing to deal with significant objections to his theories is as silly as the fringe historical theories you have referred to.

Incidentally, Diamond says those palm trees had a lifespan of 2000 years and had survived on Easter Island for thousands of years. It is hard to see how a rat could harm a mature tree. If people didn't cut them all down, what happened to them?

Prof. LeBlanc at Harvard includes a long section on Easter Island in "Constant Battles" and clearly accepts much of Diamond's account. While there certainly is controversy, it can't be said that "no one agrees with him".

Bugsy and Divergence - fellas look closely at the stuff you cite. Whoever is citing Diamond is just citing stuff that agrees with their own theories without going any further into it. The academics who have looked at Easter Island independently disagree. Sorry, but its a fringe theory, quite isolated from the mainstream. Attractive theories do get some traction however, no matter what evidence there may be.

Bugsy - read the chapter on Australia in that book of Diamond's on collapses. You know he confuses the West Australian State constution with the Federal Constitution.. and that is only one of several howlers. I was horrified. This is a best seller? then you tell me whether you think he should still be taken seriously or treated as fringe. He's fringe and that's really it..

Mark, the journal Science does not publish fringe theories.

Hey, is Plimers book a best-seller? How many howlers in there?

BTW, I haven't found anyone who stocks your book on the shelves yet, where's it available?