Price of Gas Around the World

I've lost most of this thread just because I haven't been following it, but there is an interesting alternative theory that has come up in the anthropological community that humans were only a contributing factor. The theory goes that when the people inhabited Easter Island, the inadvertently brought rats with them. Because the rats were not native to Easter Island, there were no natural predators to keep their population in check.

Why didn´t the rats eradicate the forests from other Pacific islands, then?

He has examined new data from the Hawaiian and other Pacific islands that shows that by early historic times the deforestation of Easter Island was already complete, or nearly so. A dense forest of palm trees and more than 20 other types of trees and shrubs had mostly disappeared. As many as six land birds and several seabirds had also become extinct.

The island had a relatively simple ecosystem with vegetation once dominated by millions of palms. The original ecosystem of the island, with a limited range of plants, and few if any predators, would, says the report, have been particularly vulnerable to alien invasions.

Almost all of the palm seed shells discovered on the island were found to have been gnawed by rats. Thousands of rat bones have been found, and crucially, much of the damage to forestry appears to have been done before evidence of fires on the island. Evidence from other Pacific islands also confirms how devastating rats can be.

Exactly how rats got on to the island is not known, although one theory is that they arrived as stowaways in the first canoes of Polynesian colonists. Once they arrived, the rats found palm nuts offered an almost unlimited high-quality food supply.

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/rats-not-men-to-blame-for-death-of-easter-island-431105.html

perhaps email the anthropologist (Terry Hunt) with your questions.

looks like me! Fastest I've been was 135 MPH (217 KPH) in my old mercedes 450SL. I loved that car.

Ha! Easy street!;) Let's see you do it on this machine.
Suzuki Hayabusa Turbo:eek:
I know it's off topic but he does fill her up at the beginning.
The fastest I have ever been on a motorcycle, about 130 mph, I'm just not that crazy. But if I was in the right setting, with little chance of traffic or outside non self inflicted hazards, I probably would not turn down a chance to experience this ride.:)