Yes, precisely. I would suggest that this gives up the opportunity to date the resource crunch. Even though, of course, the evidence for it is very much indirect.
And it may not have been a resource crunch. That is, they may have wrought the destruction, not by hunting the animals to extinction, but simply by changing the environment so that the local flora and fauna could not survive. Setting fires to flush out small game, clearing land to plant gardens, importing new animals that out-competed the native ones, etc. Not fully realizing the destruction they wrought.
I'm also suggesting that, in leiu of physical evidence of the quality of that on Rapa Nui, we might be willing to allow moral codes and native religions that give primacy to the earth/environment to be considered circumstancial evidence that these cultures have experienced serious resource strife in the past.
I think all the races on Earth have experienced serious resource strife in the past. It's been a dominant effect on our evolution, physical and cultural. The current period of relative plenty is what's odd.
Much much smaller 'world'. Any person could walk their planet.
But did they? Polynesians generally divided up islands into chiefdoms, and you didn't have free reign to go wherever you wanted. It was a complex society, and life in complex societies is often constrained. Indeed, the statues seem to be evidence of an "arms race" of sorts, between vying chiefdoms. They may have hidden their resources, just as the Saudis are hiding theirs.
Much more dependancy upon single resource.
I think that's arguable.
The scope of the problem is smaller. Rather than dealing with trillions of barrels, the problem may be expressed in thousands of trees.
I don't think that makes a difference. Most people can't really grasp numbers that large, anyway. Moreover, I think the main issue is not the scope of the problem, but simple human denial. Which seems to be somewhat hard-coded into us. Healthy humans tend to be over-optimistic. We believe we have more control over our lives than we actually do. The only realists among us are the clinically depressed.
A Rapa Nuian could more easily conceive the practical significance of 10 trees than your average Australian can conceive the practical significance of a million barrels of oil. The appropriate null hypethosis would be that whatever awareness modern man has of the risk of a crisis related to oil, we must expect that the Rapa Nuians had at the very least that same level of society-wide appreciation, if not much more.
I don't think I believe that. While I don't discount the intelligence, organization, and accomplishments of the Polynesian peoples, they did not have a written language, and thus didn't have access to the historical warnings we have. That, I think, offsets the simpler nature of the problem they faced.
This is why I think that the challenge that peak oil has presented, does present, is very much to do with information and overcoming ignorance.
While in my view, all the information in the world isn't going to help.
On the other hand, the positive message that I'm trying to get across is that the Rapa Nuian story suggests an overly pessimistic appraisal of our own future. We may have even less chance at preventing a crisis than did the Rapa Nuians, but neither does the crisis need to be that bad.
To my mind, Easter Islanders were never near extinction. And I don't think humans are in danger of extinction now, either. But we are in danger of a dieoff. It has happened numerous times in the past, and left evidence, even when the society continued. (There are still Egyptians, and we know from anthropological and genetic studies that they are the descendants of the pyramid-builders, but they no longer know how to build pyramids. Similarly, China has suffered numerous dieoffs and collapses, but has maintain some cultural continuity for thousands of years.)
According to Tainter, dieoffs of 75% to 90% are pretty common. Easter Island's, at 80%, is not unusual. Sometimes the society continues, in a simpler form. Sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes societies go through more than one dieoff.
So I guess the main point of disagreement here is how much we know about past collapses. I don't think the evidence of complex societies is easily destroyed. Ordinary Americans may not know much about them, but that's more a reflection of our U.S.-oriented education system than of scientific evidence.