Island at the Edge of the World: The Forgotten History of Easter Island – A Provocative Archaeological Study of Colonial Legacy, Indigenous Reclamation, and the Collapse Myth

by Mike Pitts

“The true and fascinating story of Easter Island and its amazing statues” — Ken Follett

“Revelatory…fascinating… wholly convincing” — Daily Mail (UK)

“Striking . . . a stunning unraveling of many layers of hidden history.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

A vital and timely work of historical adventure and reclamation by British archeological scholar Mike Pitts—a book that rewrites the popular yet flawed history of Rapa Nui (Easter Island) and uses newly unearthed findings and documents to challenge the long-standing historical assumptions about the manmade ecological disaster that caused the island’s collapse.

Rapa Nui, known to Western cultures as Easter Island for centuries, has long been a source of mystery. While the massive stone statues that populate the island’s landscape have loomed in the popular Western imagination since Europeans first set foot there in 1722, in recent years, the island has gained infamy as a cautionary tale of eco-destruction. The island’s history as it’s been written tells of Polynesians who carelessly farmed, plundered their natural resources, and battled each other, dooming their delicate ecosystem and becoming a warning to us all about the frailty of our natural world.

But what if that history is wrong?

In The Island at the Edge of the World, archeological writer and scholar Mike Pitts offers a direct challenge to the orthodoxy of Rapa Nui, bringing to light new research and documents that tell a dramatic and surprising story about what really led to the island’s downfall. Relying on the latest archaeological findings, he paints a vastly different portrait of what life was like on the island before the first Europeans arrived, investigating why a Polynesian people who succeeded for centuries throughout the South Pacific supposedly failed to thrive in Rapa Nui. Pitts also unearths the vital story of one of the first anthropologists to study Rapa Nui, an Oxford-trained iconoclast named Katherine Routledge, who was instrumental in collecting firsthand accounts from the Polynesians living on Rapa Nui in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. But though Routledge’s impressive scholarship captured the oral traditions of what life had been like pre-1722, her work was widely dismissed because of her gender, her reliance on indigenous perspectives, and her conclusions which contradicted her historical peers.

A stunning work of revisionism, this book raises critical questions about who gets to write history and the stakes of ignoring that history’s true authors. Provocative and illuminating, The Island at the Edge of the World will change the way people think about Easter Island, its colonial legacy, and where the blame for its devastation truly lies.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Anthropology

368 pages, Kindle Edition

Expected publication January 27, 2026

About the author

Archeologist, who also writes as Michael W. Pitts.

Reviews

[Brendan (History Nerds United) · Rating 3 out of 5]

The funny thing about books which are revisionist is that they need to straddle the line of tearing down previously established information without seeming like they have an axe to grind. I personally don't like it when someone is too antagonistic with their peers. Again, very much a personal preference so please keep that in mind as I review Island at the Edge of the World by Mike Pitts.

The book is a tale of three narratives. The first is Pitts telling the generally accepted history of Rapa Nui, otherwise known as Easter Island. This portion of the book is a bit too speedy and negative for my tastes. Not so much when Pitts is calling out murderous Europeans trampling all over the island inhabitants, but more so when the author has some off-handed and dismissive verbiage towards non-explorers. Again, I recognize this is a personal pet peeve, but it really took my out of the flow of the book when I felt a potshot is taken without significant attribution.

The second narrative is about Katherine Routledge and her exploration of Rapa Nui while an anthropologist there. This section is a bit better but feels rushed and Pitts talks her up so much that I expected more about her work and findings. There are some reasons for that which the author chronicles. However, I couldn't help but feel that this section either needed to be expanded or eliminated completely because there wasn't enough.

The final portion of the book is by far the strongest and contains almost none of my criticisms from the first two. Pitts digs into (pun intended!) the current archaeological science and what we can glean from it when looking into the history of Rapa Nui. Pitts cites exciting new discoveries and takes a much more positive tone. I couldn't help but thinking that the whole book should have been this.

Ultimately, there is still a lot to learn from this book. I'd tell any reader who doesn't share my frustrations to give this one a look if you find the subject interesting.

(This book was provided as an advance reader copy by NetGalley and Mariner Books.)

[Lilisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read an historical book set on Rapa Nui or Easter Island last year, so I was interested in checking out this nonfiction book to dig deeper into the theories around its history, people, and the mysterious statutes from an expert’s vantage point. The book is certainly a worthwhile read debunking contentions by others about the supposed self-implosion of the island’s population and the playing down of the potential destructive impacts of “outsiders” who plundered the island’s human resources. I found the section about the Routledges’ travel experiences in part because of the interactions with the locals, interviews, and what they (mostly Katherine) learned firsthand. It was unfortunate that her archives were virtually ignored. There was overlap information in various sections of the book that I felt could have been tightened, although I get it was how the book was structured. The last part of the book was way too detailed for me, but probably the most interesting for others more archeologically inclined (!) and my eyes glazed over a bit. So, while I cannot say this book was a riveting read for me, I can say that overall, it was a worthwhile read and helped me learn more about what could have happened to past generations of Rapa Nui or Easter Island populations. Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book.

[Maggie Timlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A completely different view of the world’s most remote island.

This is a fascinating story of two parts. The first part is the history of an interesting sounding woman called Katherine Routledge who visited Rapa Nui in the early years of the twentieth century. The second half is about how Rapa Nui has been viewed since then and how the islanders story has been told by others.
Katherine Routledge worked on an extensive survey of the island, this included talking to the inhabitants as well as examining the fascinating standing stones and enigmatic heads that the place is famous for. Her findings were never fully published however and this left a vacuum in the west’s knowledge of this far flung island. Into this vacuum seeped assumptions. One of the most persistent of these assumptions is that there had once been a thriving forest on the island which the islander had destroyed themselves in a frenzy of statue building. The idea being that the trees were used to roll the statues into place (Pitts has very interesting findings on this idea and on the more modern theory that the statues ‘walked’). Pitts shows that these conventions can be questioned very robustly.
There was an culturally devastating event which lead to the depopulation of the island but rather than being a self-inflicted wound that can actually be traced back to the moment Europeans came to the island and started taking away the residents and forcing them to work as slaves in other parts of the world.
Pitts in this case becomes an archaeologist not only of the earth but of the records. He examined what was left of Routledge’s work and was able to debunk many of the racist theories that grew up in the twentieth century around Rapa Nui.
This book is something special. It is an account of how we got a history of an entire island wrong for years. It is also a vindication of the work of Katherine Routledge who has since been forgotten. This deserves a place on the shelf of anyone who takes an interest in world archaeology and anyone who enjoys having their own assumptions challenged.

Thank you to publisher for a review copy of this book.

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read Thor Heyerdahl as a teen, and also Chariots of the Gods by van Daniken, and even Jared Diamond’s Collapse, all with their ideas about Easter Island, who erected those statues and what happened to the native society. Island at the Edge of the World proves their assertions are ridiculous. Sure, even as a teen I knew that space aliens didn’t erect all of Earth’s early monuments. Still, it was fun to read. But Diamond’s argument seems interesting, that the Easter Islanders caused their own ecological collapse. I mean, we see this happening today across the world.

Mike Pitts argues that all of the false narratives would have been avoided had Katherine Routledge’s research been public. In the early 20th c, Routledge was one of the first anthropologists to study Easter Island and record oral histories.

By this time, Europeans had been plundering the island for over a hundred years, taking slaves and bringing disease. The colonizers dismissed farming traditions that had supported thousands for generations, including the use of rocks to preserve ground moisture. The removed stone heads and artifacts.

Katherine and her husband spent three years on the island, unable to leave during WWI. She published a book in 1919, “half ethnography and archaeology, half travelogue,” but the bulk of her research was never released. Instead, her marriage in trouble, her husband forcible incarcerated Katherine in a lunatic asylum for the rest of her life.

Then one day, for some forgotten reason, people looked at a small, roughly carved stone figure, and wondered. What if it was big? really big? from Island at the End of the World

From the first settlers to Easter Island as a tourist attraction, this history answers some questions while others remain a mystery.

Fascinating reading.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book through NetGalley.

[Colleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't know very much about Easter Island before reading Island at the Edge of the World.

(I decided to read this book to learn about Easter Island; and in doing so I feel that I did learn a great deal about Easter Island.) Very interesting history indeed!

Much of archaeologist and anthropologist's Katherine Routledge's research was lost. Katherine Routledge was born Aug 11, 1866 and died institutionalized Dec 13, 1935. As a woman archaeologist, often her husband was credited with findings when she was not.

Island at the Edge of the World is non-fiction. As mentioned, I learned a lot. This book felt very much like a thesis paper where questions were provided and then rationale to substantiate the authors (Mike Pitts) theories. This format did provide for a bit of overlap in the information provided. Still glad that I read this book.

Many thanks to NetGalley, author Mike Pitts and publisher Mariner Books for approving my request to read the advance read copy of Island at the Edge of the World in exchange for an honest review.

Approx. 368 pages. Publication date Jan 27, 2026.

[Jan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first section is a bit of a slog retelling the usual info as known in the past with all of its mismanagement and abuse of the locals.
Then is the section describing the work that was done by Katherine Routledge and her exploration of Rapa Nui as an anthropologist working there on an extensive survey and oral histories in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
The third section regards the current archaeological studies and what we can glean from the
explanations of the artifacts and architectural details that bring the ancients come to life.
Finally there is all of the references and source material.
I requested and received a temporary uncorrected advance reader e-proof from Mariner Books via NetGalley. Pub Date Jan 27, 2026 #preorder
#IslandattheEdgeoftheWorld by #MikePittsArchaeologist @Netgalley @marinerbooks @harpercollins @goodreads @bookbub @librarythingofficial ***** Review #thestorygraph #bookshop_org #bookshop_org_uk #bookshop_org_ca #archaeology #historicalresearch #anthropology

[Cherryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

** Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing a digital ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review **
This is a fascinating blend of archaeology, history, and travelogue, taking readers to remote Skara Brae in Orkney. The chapters trace the site’s discovery, its place in Neolithic life, and the mysteries still surrounding its sudden abandonment. Pitts writes with the enthusiasm of someone who has walked the windswept paths and felt the past underfoot. His explanations of the artifacts and architectural details make the ancient village come alive. I appreciated how he balanced hard evidence with thoughtful speculation, letting the reader feel the pull of unanswered questions. It’s the kind of nonfiction that leaves you both informed and itching to visit for yourself.

[MaddiBReading · Rating 5 out of 5]

[ARC Review] This was an interesting read! I had to read up on Easter Island for a class last year and this added way more context to the academic articles I read. Its an indepth read on the progress of the development on the island and impact of different periods (and people). It was enlightening but also read really easy so I wasnt bogged down with a dense amount of notes or information.

[Toby Gordon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting

[J R · Rating 5 out of 5]

great nonfiction with a very well-done thread of connection throughout and filled with a lot of detail. 5 stars. tysm for the arc.