For context, Diamond argues that the collapse occurred around 1600, much earlier than the 19th century slaving raids you mention. The first European contact occurred around 1720, with a 1770 Spanish estimate of 3000 people living on Easter Island. Honestly, it's not an outlandish thought that 887 gigantic statues were crafted by a larger population.
It's funny that lots of folks complain about the game being oversexualized while me and my partner - 120 hours in, in Act 3 now - somehow managed to completely fail triggering any romance subplots despite actually trying to raise approval of all the companions (okay maybe we gave up on Astarion). Not sure if it's a somewhat clunky split-screen handling of approval mechanics or just bad luck.
I played it a second time after the patch and still found the characters too sexual. Sure, at the beginning everyone was awkwardly horny, but even afterward, I still I got quite some unwanted attention from most companions. It felt a bit like taking the worst parts of owlcat’s romances in WotR where you accidentally romance some of them, and apply it to everyone.
I’m pretty sure it’s just glitches then. These things are nigh unavoidable with at least some party members. I tried to be as rude to gale as possible at every dialogue but he still liked me.
Split screen did seem to have some bugginess whereby side characters would randomly decide they wanted to fuck whichever player talked to them first, regardless of past interactions.
i had to backtrack about three hours when i started act 3 since for some reason Karlach was saying our relationship had fizzled out. i had missed a lot of interactions from not visiting camp enough.
other than that i do remember the companions being really horny for me at the big camp party in act 1. i did find it jarring but one perspective that i liked was that you could look at it as casual sex - games usually treat sex as an end goal for relationship mechanics. its still hard to square it up with almost everyone wanting to get in your pants - but i think that's a by-product of making sure players have choice and i can live with that. it also only happened to me once and once i turned everyone down i wasn't interested in they left the matter alone ( except Gale lol )
I thought the fact that some characters seemed down for casual sex not as a relationship end goal was good too.
I found it outrageous that shadowheart was so reticent, while simultaneously encouraging polyamory and saying she was down for a hooker foursome. Three side characters offered to fuck before shadowheart. Felt like those narratives either should have been much longer and deeper or not there at all.
I was in a museum in Sardinia (was part of Carthage) sometime ago and saw some of the tophets mentioned in the article. The argument from the linked article was repeated on one of the info boards - that the Romans demonized their enemies and lots of our sources on alleged child sacrifice come from them. I am not sure about the Carthagenian sources on the matter, but they did not make it into the argument, so I assume the evidence was either slimmer or newer.
https://www.skao.int/en/explore/big-data