Worth checking this paper out: Rethinking Easter Island’s ecological catastrophe (pdf – 2 column, sorry).

While the entire collapse discussion tends to occupy a dismally low intellectual plane, it’s useful to track some of the main points and samples just to keep up on the latest best understanding.

At some point I’ll post a review of Joseph Tainter’s The Collapse of Complex Societies, which is frequently cited as a key work, but which I’m finding to be a somewhat depressing display of typically second, possibly third, rate pseudo-intellectualism. Oh, whoops, did I give away the core of the coming review? never mind, then.

Personally I found Jared Diamond’s book Collapse to be pretty decent, not perfect, but far better than Tainter’s tainted work. Some people seem to believe that making errors when you are basing your work off of best available information is somehow proof the work is bad, but that’s not the case, the work is bad when it starts with bad premises, bad logic, and bad methods, ala Tainter…

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