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Adolf
Why?
Over the years I’ve read so much about history, including much conjecture on the motivation for various events happening.
Not the God-bothering type stuff (e.g. Egypt’s building, Mediterranean monotheist creation and building of temples, The Inca’s pyramids etc.) but why people moved to various places.
Early it was following game so they could eat (This also contributed speech and language to mankind) and then being unable (or unwilling) to return from whence they came.
The great European diaspora that was caused by population pressure starting in the late middle ages.
Most historians put the movement of man into the Americas as simply as the ice melted they could – again probably following food.
A large part of these mass movements was caused by one people not getting on with their neighbour (see the Greeks (BC), the Jews ( both 2,000 years ago and again from the 1930s) and, more recently, many southern Europeans.
Most of these migrations are acknowledged and understood but one, that affects New Zealand, is never explored.
Why would a people with no relevant technology to enable the success of the trip, living in a warm, food-abundant area somewhere near Hawaii (it is thought) at a time when Chinese and Taiwanese traders were enriching the area, suddenly up-sticks and travel thousands of miles (notably bypassing several significant Island chains) to a cold, food-deprived area of the world?
And, given they then lost, completely, the means of that travel, how did they do so?
Could it be that those people had garnered such a reputation, locally, (probably for constant thieving, cannibalism and general dishonesty and objectionable practices) that no other Pacific Islanders wanted anything to do with them and drove them out?
Could it be that they, in fact, travelled on ships of those Chinese traders/explorers (much like they used modern European trader’s ships to attack the Chatham Island and Canterbury) and could only build boats suitable for close-to-land travel hence.
I don’t know but I would love to find out.
Ummm MT. As you have not cited any sources for some of your historical claims so its a bit hard to form a view. I didn’t know about the Chines and Taiwanese trading in the areas you mention. Apart from coconuts , the nut, and slaves what possible reason could they have to trade.
As for population pressure in the late Middle Ages I thought it was political pressure, and opportunities that forced people to move. My scotch ancestors were cleared off the lands to farm sheep. The Irish were forced to move due to reliance on one thing, the spud, and the crop failures that came with that. Political repression by the English was another factor.
Most countries had repressive regimes, and the revolutions of 1848 encouraged population movements.
However you raise a good point about the new ruling classes here in NZ as they await the time to assume their true cloaks of power.
Ive always had a nagging doubt about it myself, especially as it seems not supported by much archeological evidence. All these giant sea going hulls strapped together seem to have disappeared from physical record.
I think a lot of that stuff, like the Treaty , have been glamourised to suit a political narrative
Similarly the bullshit story about discovering Antarctica doesnt hold much ice either.
Small canoes from the closer islands more likely, as a result of accidents and population pressure. Basically they came from a race or races of people who were particularly nasty to each other, and due to dietary deficiencies ate each other at every opportunity is my view.
5000 BC our ancestors were like this but evolved. I also suspect medical issues, and evolving agricultural practice put paid to this practice. As there was no technological evolution by Maori, period, that were doomed to repeat the cycle of life and death.
As we are unaware of currents and winds 1000 or more years ago they may have devolved from the flesh eating Inca’s?
Rossco have a read of 1421 and 1434 for the story of Chinese trading with the world. Even kickstarting Da Vinci’s renaissance. A British submarine commander deciphered Chinese maps of the period by allowing for known currents.
There is archaeological evidence that Māori arrived here sometime between 1400 and 1600 in that their maddens don’t date any earlier than that.
A potential reason for the lack of development and loss of seafaring is they had found a land of milk & honey with plenty of food running around. Unfortunately due to their careful guardianship we hear so much about they managed to kill off the main food source, the Moa, in short order. Only took a couple of hundred years.
What is especially interesting is how they have successfully killed off any mention of those here before them. Maori oral history talks of pale skinned people meeting the first canoes. Then there’s the Kaimanawa wall and a stone village in the Waipoua forest.
I have visited the Kaimanawa wall. It is undoubtedly a natural formation.
Well Harry I met a Victoria University archaeologist up there one day who pointed out the features that showed it was definitely man made. You have to remember it’s over 1800 years old as it has Taupo eruption pumice on top of it.
Well Harry one day I met a Victoria university archaeologist up there who pointed out the features that show it is undoubtedly man made. You have to remember it’s over 1800 years old as there is Taupo eruption pumice on top of it.
But Rossco, you’ve got it all wrong! They were benign, gentle people. That’s why they only shot 30,000 of their neighboring tribesmen when they could easily have knocked over 50,000.
And how dare you question their navigation skills. Why, they can find their way from the WINZ office to the pub with their eyes closed.
Confusion of languages leading to misunderstandings then violence; The escaping refugees moving for repeated generations losing technology as they got farther out. Yes, eating out the easy wild foods and having to move-on or stay and risk being mugged by those behind them, if they managed to develop a prosperous agricultural style.
Tech that suited the new landscape and game was retained Like boomerangs in Arabia and Australia on the open savannahs; Bow hunting in the forests of Africa and Papua New Guinea…….but somehow not as far as NZ .
“people who were particularly nasty to each other, ” kind of sums up the Maori mugging the earlier Moriori refugees.
The lost tribes of the Amazon give us a pointer to the future of the Maori circa 1750 – 1800 when there was little or no contact with the white coloniser and the Maori coloniser.
That future pointed to a future full of poverty, violence ,degradation, and hunger combined with the continued need to eat human flesh to gain a balanced diet.
It is very clear from Polynesia, the Amazon and NZ ,if the white progressives arrived today July 1 2023, the country would be a living museum to depravity of the human condition.
No doubt for the first generations of the Maori coloniser they had it so good, as suggested above, there was no need to maintain their primitive sailing technology, melded together with the fact it was so bad from whence they came there was no drive to go back.
Guardians of the Landscape, Kaitiakitanga, is a euphuism for its destruction, or just another way to spell BULLSHIT.