(CNN) For decades, mystery has swirled around what happened to the founding population of the remote Easter Island, known for its towering stone statues depicting large carved heads. A long-held theory suggests that after the islanders set up camp and carved the giant statues, they destroyed their own society through infighting and a depletion of natural resources. 
 
 But a new study suggests a different scenario entirely, and the islanders could have a more complex history than previously believed. 
 
 Many aspects of the island, the statues and the Polynesian seafarers who arrived there 900 years ago have been studied over the years. But a study published Monday in the Journal of Pacific Archaeology uses multiple data sets from recent excavations to provide a better understanding of the society that created the statues and how they were carved. 
 
 So the researchers used an unlikely method to study the society and discern what might have happened: a chemical analysis of stone tools used on the statues. 
 
 What they learned from excavating four of the statues and the volcanic stone basalt tools used to carve them painted a different picture: a sophisticated and collaborative society. 
 
 "The idea of competition and collapse on Easter Island might be overstated," said lead study author Dale Simpson Jr., an archaeologist at the University of Queensland, in a statement. "To me, the stone carving industry is solid evidence that there was cooperation among families and craft groups." 
 
 Moai are spread across the landscape of Easter Island. 
 
 A complex society 
 
 Easter Island is 2,300 miles off the coast of Chile. About 900 years ago, the founding population landed on the island, called Rapa Nui in the local language. These Polynesian seafarers came on two canoes and were led by Hotu Matu'a, who would become the island's first chief, according to oral tradition. 
 
 The population soared to include thousands of people, and they carved full-body figures, called moai, to represent important Rapa Nui ancestors. There are nearly a thousand statues, many buried up to their heads due to the passage of time. The largest statue is over 70 feet tall. 
 
 Their sheer size and number is indicative of a complex, sophisticated society, according to the researchers. 
 
 "Ancient Rapa Nui had chiefs, priests, and guilds of workers who fished, farmed, and made the moai. There was a certain level of sociopolitical organization that was needed to carve almost a thousand statues," Simpson said. 
 
 During the statue excavations, Jo Anne Van Tilburg, director of the Easter Island Statue Project, and her Rapa Nui excavation team recovered about 1,600 stone tools. They did a close chemical and mass spectrometer analysis of fragments from 17 of the tools, called toki. 
 
 "We wanted to figure out where the raw materials used to manufacture the artifacts came from," said Laure Dussubieux, a study co-author and Field Museum scientist, in a statement. "We wanted to know if people were taking material from close to where they lived." 
 
 The location is key because there are three sources, or quarries, where the islanders could have gathered material for tools. The basalt quarries cover the size of two football fields. Basalt samples reveal their sources through their chemical elements, which link back to the geology of the site. 
 
 "The majority of the toki came from one quarry complex -- once the people found the quarry they liked, they stayed with it," Simpson said. "For everyone to be using one type of stone, I believe they had to collaborate. That's why they were so successful -- they were working together." 
 
 Looking ahead 
 
 This contrasts with the idea that the residents ran out of resources and fought amongst themselves, the researchers said. But later on, it is believed that the arrival of colonists and the institution of slavery decimated the population. 
 
 "There's so much mystery around Easter Island, because it's so isolated, but on the island, people were, and still are, interacting in huge amounts," Simpson said. "There are thousands of Rapa Nui people alive today -- the society isn't gone." 
 
 But the researchers also urge caution and believe that this study is just the beginning, laying the groundwork for more research. 
 
 "The near exclusive use of one quarry to produce these seventeen tools supports a view of craft specialization based on information exchange, but we can't know at this stage if the interaction was collaborative," Van Tilburg said. "It may also have been coercive in some way. Human behavior is complex. This study encourages further mapping and stone sourcing, and our excavations continue to shed new light on moai carving." ||||| You probably know Easter Island as "the place with the giant stone heads." This remote island 2,300 miles off the coast of Chile has long been seen as mysterious--a place where Polynesian seafarers set up camp, built giant statues, and then destroyed their own society through in-fighting and over-exploitation of natural resources. However, a new article in the Journal of Pacific Archaeology hints at a more complex story--by analyzing the chemical makeup of the tools used to create the big stone sculptures, archaeologists found evidence of a sophisticated society where the people shared information and collaborated. 
 
 "For a long time, people wondered about the culture behind these very important statues," says Field Museum scientist Laure Dussubieux, one of the study's authors. "This study shows how people were interacting, it's helping to revise the theory." 
 
 "The idea of competition and collapse on Easter Island might be overstated," says lead author Dale Simpson, Jr., an archaeologist from the University of Queensland. "To me, the stone carving industry is solid evidence that there was cooperation among families and craft groups." 
 
 The first people arrived on Easter Island (or, in the local language, Rapa Nui) about 900 years ago. "The founding population, according to oral tradition, was two canoes led by the island's first chief, Hotu Matu?a," says Simpson, who is currently on the faculty of the College of DuPage. Over the years, the population rose to the thousands, forming the complex society that carved the statues Easter Island is known for today. These statues, or moai, often referred to as "Easter Island heads," are actually full-body figures that became partially buried over time. The moai, which represent important Rapa Nui ancestors, number nearly a thousand, and the largest one is over seventy feet tall. 
 
 According to Simpson, the size and number of the moai hint at a complex society. "Ancient Rapa Nui had chiefs, priests, and guilds of workers who fished, farmed, and made the moai. There was a certain level of sociopolitical organization that was needed to carve almost a thousand statues," says Simpson. 
 
 Recent excavations of four statues in the inner region of Rano Raraku, the statue quarry, were conducted by Jo Anne Van Tilburg of Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, UCLA and director of the Easter Island Statue Project, along with her Rapa Nui excavation team. To better understand the society that fabricated two of the statues, Simpson, Dussubieux, and Van Tilburg took a detailed look at twenty one of about 1,600 stone tools made of volcanic stone called basalt that had been recovered in Van Tilburg's excavations. About half of the tools, called toki, recovered were fragments that suggested how they were used. 
 
 For Van Tilburg, the goal of the project was to gain a better understanding of how tool makers and statue carvers may have interacted, thus gaining insight into how the statue production industry functioned. "We wanted to figure out where the raw materials used to manufacture the artifacts came from," explained Dussubieux. "We wanted to know if people were taking material from close to where they lived." 
 
 There are at least three different sources on Easter Island that the Rapa Nui used for material to make their stone tools. The basalt quarries cover twelve thousand square meters, an area the size of two football fields. And those different quarries, the tools that came from them, and the movement between geological locations and archaeological sites shed light on prehistoric Rapa Nui society. 
 
 "Basalt is a grayish rock that doesn't look like anything special, but when you look at the chemical composition of the basalt samples from different sources, you can see very subtle differences in concentrations of different elements," explains Dussubieux. "Rock from each source is different because of the geology of each site." 
 
 Dussubieux led the chemical analysis of the stone tools. The archaeologists used a laser to cut off tiny pieces of stone from the toki and then used an instrument called a mass spectrometer to analyze the amounts of different chemical elements present in the samples. The results pointed to a society that Simpson believes involved a fair amount of collaboration. 
 
 "The majority of the toki came from one quarry complex--once the people found the quarry they liked, they stayed with it," says Simpson. "For everyone to be using one type of stone, I believe they had to collaborate. That's why they were so successful--they were working together." 
 
 To Simpson, this level of large-scale cooperation contradicts the popular narrative that Easter Island's inhabitants ran out of resources and warred themselves into extinction. "There's so much mystery around Easter Island, because it's so isolated, but on the island, people were, and still are, interacting in huge amounts," says Simpson. While the society was later decimated by colonists and slavery, Rapa Nui culture has persisted. "There are thousands of Rapa Nui people alive today--the society isn't gone," Simpson explains. 
 
 Van Tilburg urges caution in interpreting the study's results. "The near exclusive use of one quarry to produce these seventeen tools supports a view of craft specialization based on information exchange, but we can't know at this stage if the interaction was collaborative. It may also have been coercive in some way. Human behavior is complex. This study encourages further mapping and stone sourcing, and our excavations continue to shed new light on moai carving." In addition to potentially paving the way for a more nuanced view of the Rapa Nui people, Dussubieux notes that the study is important because of its wider-reaching insights into how societies work. "What happens in this world is a cycle, what happened in the past will happen again," says Dussubieux. "Most people don't live on a small island, but what we learn about people's interactions in the past is very important for us now because what shapes our world is how we interact." 
 
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– The tale of the demise of Easter Island's people may have to be rewritten. The story has long held that infighting as resources ran out was one of the main drivers of the collapse, but a new study published in the Journal of Pacific Archaeology suggests a different scenario. CNN reports on the "unlikely method" of examining the society via of some of the stone tools used to carve the island's famous stone figures: Researchers performed a chemical analysis on four of the statues and fragments from 17 of the roughly 1,600 basalt tools, called toki, that had been excavated. The goal was to determine where the basalt had come from. There were three quarries on the island that were potential sources of the volcanic rock; the key discovery is that there was "near exclusive" use of a single quarry to make the toki. Here's the jump researchers are making from there, per a press release: Lead study author Dale Simpson Jr. sees that as "solid evidence that there was cooperation among families and craft groups. ... The idea of competition and collapse on Easter Island might be overstated." But Jo Anne Van Tilburg, who led the excavations, cautions against coming to an overstated conclusion in this case. She says the findings bolster the view "of craft specialization based on information exchange, but we can't know at this stage if the interaction was collaborative. It may also have been coercive in some way. Human behavior is complex." (This separate study pushes the same theory but based on different evidence: obsidian.)