A new way of looking at the history of the Rapa Nui, the civilization that lived on Easter Island, reveals details about how they lived before Europeans arrived on the island in 1722.
It's long been theorized that the Rapa Nui disappeared because they overfarmed their land, leading to widespread starvation and, it's said, maybe even cannibalism.
But a group of scientists from the United States, Chile and New Zealand, writing in the most recent Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that ancient obsidian artifacts from the island told a different story.