Rapa Nui (also known as Easter Island) is one of the most isolated inhabited places in the world. It has captured the imagination of many owing to its archaeological record, which includes iconic megalithic statues called moai¹. Two prominent contentions have arisen from the extensive study of Rapa Nui. First, the history of the Rapanui has been presented as a warning tale of resource overexploitation that would have culminated in a major population collapse—the ‘ecocide’ theory^2,3,4. Second, the possibility of trans-Pacific voyages to the Americas pre-dating European contact is still debated^5,6,7. Here, to address these questions, we reconstructed the genomic history of the Rapanui on the basis of 15 ancient Rapanui individuals that we radiocarbon dated (1670–1950 ce) and whole-genome sequenced (0.4–25.6×). We find that these individuals are Polynesian in origin and most closely related to present-day Rapanui, a finding that will contribute to repatriation efforts. Through effective population size reconstructions and extensive population genetics simulations, we reject a scenario involving a severe population bottleneck during the 1600s, as proposed by the ecocide theory. Furthermore, the ancient and present-day Rapanui carry similar proportions of Native American admixture (about 10%). Using a Bayesian approach integrating genetic and radiocarbon dates, we estimate that this admixture event occurred about 1250–1430 ce.

拉帕努伊岛（也被称为复活节岛）是世界上最孤立的有人居住的地方之一。由于其考古记录，它吸引了许多人的想象力，其中包括名为 moai¹ 的标志性巨石雕像。对拉帕努伊的广泛研究产生了两个突出的争论。首先，拉帕努伊的历史被描述为资源过度开发的警告故事，最终会导致大规模的人口崩溃——“生态灭绝”理论^2,3,4。其次，在欧洲接触之前跨太平洋航行到美洲的可能性仍在争论^{中 5,6,7}。在这里，为了回答这些问题，我们根据 15 个古代 Rapanui 个体重建了 Rapanui 的基因组历史，我们对这些个体进行了放射性碳测年（公元 1670-1950 年）和全基因组测序 （0.4-25.6×）。我们发现这些人起源于波利尼西亚，与今天的拉帕努伊关系最密切，这一发现将有助于遣返工作。通过有效的种群规模重建和广泛的种群遗传学模拟，我们拒绝了生态灭绝理论提出的 1600 年代严重种群瓶颈的情景。此外，古代和现代拉帕努伊的美洲原住民混合比例相似（约 10%）。使用整合遗传测年和放射性碳测年的贝叶斯方法，我们估计这种混合事件发生在公元 1250-1430 年左右。