Scientists turn to ancient DNA to understand the history of Easter Island, a remote island in the Pacific Ocean also known as Rapa Nui.

The new study also indicates the Polynesian people who settled Rapa Nui mixed with indigenous South Americans centuries before the arrival of Europeans.

Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island or Te Pito o Te Henua (the navel of the world), is one of the most remote inhabited locations on Earth, situated over 1,900 km from the nearest Polynesian island and 3,700 km from South America.

Two recent studies have cast doubt on a popular theory that the ancient residents of Easter Island suffered a societal collapse because they overexploited their natural resources, an event often labelled one of history's first "ecocides".

In the southern Pacific Ocean, far off the coast of Chile, lies the remote island of Rapa Nui, or Easter Island. Since the 1700s, when European explorers first reached its shores, Western anthropologists developed a theory about ‘ecological collapse,

The scientists have debunked what they say was a colonial narrative, and one which has been used as a warning about overexploiting nature.