A groundbreaking study has analyzed 5 baby teeth found in a famous cave in Croatia and determined that Neanderthal development and maturation was faster.
Most people have heard of the decimation of the population of Easter Island (also called Rapa Nui) and have seen pictures of the massive stone statues (moai) that line the coastline. The conventional explanation of population decline is that the islanders cut down all the islandâs trees, precipitating an ecological reaction that killed off most of the population.
But this is no longer accepted as an accurate description of what happened. Anthropologist Terry Hunt, who carried out extensive archaeological field research on Easter Island, tells the story in The Folio Book of Historical Mysteries (The Folio Society, 2008).
Easter Island, 24km long by 16km wide, was named by Dutch navigator Jacob Roggeveen, who landed there on Easter Sunday 1722. Located in the South Pacific, it is one of the most isolated inhabited islands in the world â the nearest inhabited land is Pitcairn Island (colonised by the Bounty mutineers) 2,015km away. Chile is more than 3,000km away.