PLAY PODCASTS
Headed for Trouble (rebroadcast)

Headed for Trouble (rebroadcast)

The stone heads on Easter Island are an enduring mystery: why were they built and why were they abandoned and destroyed? The old ideas about cultural collapse are yielding to new ones based on careful investigation on the ground - but also from above....

Big Picture Science

January 4, 202154m 0s

Audio is streamed directly from the publisher (podtrac.com) as published in their RSS feed. Play Podcasts does not host this file. Rights-holders can request removal through the copyright & takedown page.

Show Notes

The stone heads on Easter Island are an enduring mystery: why were they built and why were they abandoned and destroyed? The old ideas about cultural collapse are yielding to new ones based on careful investigation on the ground - but also from above. What surprising explanations have we found and are we off base to think that ancient societies such as the Easter Islanders or the classical Egyptians were, in the end, failures? Can what we learn from these histories help predict which societies will survive?

Guests:

Originally aired September 30, 2019

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices