The rise and fall of Easter Island is a classic study of climate change, overexploitation of resources, and conflict. Discovered by Polynesian explorers at the end of the Holocene warming period due to a shift in winds, the island's population was the most isolated in the world.The early generations were blessed with fertile soil, though the islanders' high birth rates and cultural practices quickly stressed the environmental fabric of the island. By around AD 1400, the population had reached approximately 10,000, too high for the available resources to support. A coup began a series of civil wars, and by the 18th century when the first Europeans arrived, the surviving populace hovered around 2,000 due to starvation, civil war, and an inability to flee the island