An interesting article in the new issue of the American Scientist, challenges the view, made popular by Jared Diamond in Collapse, among others, of the collapse of Easter Island civilization due to overpopulation and cutting down of trees:
"Easter Island has become a case study of human-induced environmental disaster, or "ecocide." The popular narrative, most famously recounted in Jared Diamond's book Collapse, depicts native inhabitants triggering the fall of their once-flourishing civilization by cutting down all of the island's trees. But recent archaeological and paleoenvironmental research point to a very different story. The island may not have been settled until around 1200 A.D., centuries later than previously thought, and it may have been a large rat population, not the human inhabitants, that caused widespread deforestation. This evidence sheds new light on a story that has long fascinated outsiders."
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Sure. And the rats erected all those statues too.
Interesting...
These weren't mere terrestrial rats; these were space rats with technology beyond our wildest imaginings. I cover all of this in my forthcoming book Vermin of the Gods.
I read that article. I thought it was weak. They largely presented alternative and disparate theories sans evidence (I haven't read the origional articles). No mention was made of protein (insuffient land mammals, so must rely on seafood, but no more trees for canoes, so must develop cannibalism), which provided some flesh to Diamond's narrative (which itself is not new, just, as you say, popularised).
For now, I am still sticking with Diamond, until something more persuasive comes up.