For the study, a team of researchers combed through satellite data of Rapa Nui's landscape for signs of rock gardening, which is a technique that transforms unproductive land into fertile soil. Rapa Nui people knew that bedrock had the ability to enrich the ground.
(The scientists assumed fishing resources were relatively fixed. What could vary is the amount of land crops, like sweet potatoes, the land could produce to feed the islanders.) They found the number was about 3,000 people, the same number of inhabitants the Europeans first encountered before the diseases they carried decimated the islander population.
"That gives credit to the Rapa Nui people, their ancestors, and the ingenuity they had for surviving on this island," Carl Lipo, archaeologist and professor at Binghamton University in New York, told reporters on Monday. He is the lead.
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