Posted on 09/27/2007 3:46:25 PM PDT by blam
> So did they have a 14th century “Pearl Harbor” attack or was it all peaceful kumbaya?
Along with trade there would probably have been regular dinner meetings between Tahiti, Aotearoa and Hawaii.
> You can point to all the supposed scholarly articles you want. I still have trouble believing that people who apparently could leave no written record, could navagate thousands of miles over open oceans to places they didn’t know existed.
Over the years I have wavered to-and-fro on this one. My current view is that they most certainly could and definitely did navigate thousands of miles over open oceans, just as they claim. I used to think they shipwrecked, and that there was no way a stone-age culture (for they never discovered metal) was far too primative to do anything clever like stellar navagation and read tides and ocean currents.
I have since met many Maori and am convinced that such feats were certainly within their grasp.
The absence of a written record no longer poses a problem, to my way of thinking. I have met many Maori who can recite their whakapapa (family tree) going back generation after generation after generation (and complete with all the cross links to other family trees), complete with humorous stories about some of their ancestors, all the way back to the canoe that their greatgreatgreatgreat...great granddaddy landed on NZ shores some 900-is years ago.
They do this, amongst other reasons, so that they know, and everybody else around them knows, precisely who they are in the grand scheme of things.
Their oral history is both detailed and remarkably accurate.
Anyone who has ever tried to commit to memory vast screeds of difficult information accurately (Freemasons, for example) will tell you that this is not a simple task: it requires concentration and repetition to get it word-perfect, and constant practise to keep it that way.
Stone age savages they irrefutably were. Pig-ignorant they were demonstrably not.
I would go as far as to say that Maori achieved amazing feats with their memory and powers of recall — the sorts of things our Western Civilizations delegated to pen-and-paper because we are lazier.
They would have had little difficulty figuring out how to cross the Pacific ocean.
> What sort of provisions to you lay in for such a trip?
Root crops like Kumara, which keep reasonably well. Some say they came from South America: I would argue that just as likely the South Americans got them from the South Pacific instead. Hi-energy starches and complex sugars.
Rats, definitely. In NZ the rat was introduced by the Maori (or even earlier settlers). It is called “Kiore” and it is supposed to taste nice. With the added benefit of a fast gestation cycle.
Muttonbird: preserved in fat, it lasts forever and tastes quite nice. Chock-full of calories, precisely what you need to paddle a canoe for thousands of miles.
Oh yeah, and people. Normally to be had at the next island’s Drive Thru facility. They had amazing weaponry designed specifically for killing and eating people efficiently, and brilliant cooking technologies and methods. Easy for us to say “yuck” to that, but there wasn’t alot of readily-available protein available in any easy-to-catch quantities on the islands for regular diet — aside from the local inhabitants.
Many of these old ways and technologies are at risk of being forever lost and forgotten, due to “civilization”. I think that is a real shame.
Mine had haplogroup I1a DNA, from a Viking lineage.
Check out this light fishing. Unbelieveable...my kind of fishing!!
I had seen the original Julie Andrews / Max von Sydow movie about the early missionaries (in it’s first run in NY) and parts of the sequel taken from the second generation story (The Hawaiians). I knew that the novel covered much more (I’d read and enjoyed some other Michner novels, particularly The Source and just knew that movie didn't cover the whole thing) but was really impressed with the breadth of the story. I’m also really impressed with how well it stands up to time.
The opening “pre-history” section was really excellent and has long been vindicated by this type of archeology. The later sections covering the racial mix of the islands was dismissed in the 80s and 90s as simplistic and the “white mans view,” but that too is being vindicated by actual research. Though Michner wasn’t mentioned he could easily have been used as a primary source for the Ken Burns World War 2 series that is on PBS this week when they talked about the Japanese American divisions that fought during the war.
Michner's Hawaii would make a spectacular “long form television” ala The Sopranos. Imagine if they made the entire book into a TV series, each major section covering one or two seasons? And who would you cast in the roles? Certainly you would use actual members of each ethnic group represented for those roles, and think of the education that could provide for LOTS of things. For one thing I don’t think the Japanese would like how their grotesque historic racism is exposed. But if done well, covering the deep cultural roots of those various traditions, Polynesian, Hawaiian, European, American, Japanese, Chinese, a lot of people would understand history better, for good and ill.
Every NZ schoolkid is taught Maori culture, legends, traditions, poi dances, the Haka, songs etc...
Every NZ child knows that the 7 canoes came from Tahiti...
Maoris had an ongoing culture, and life style before the white man...
They were extremmely intelligent and left a “written” history...
They cultivated and grew vegetables such as the kumara, (a sweet potato)..hunted for meat etc...their clothes were beautifully woven from softened flax..or bird feathers or softened skins...
They were militarily intelligent and defended themselves from enemies with a double fence affair...(wonder if they would build our border fence?)..their defences was a fence then a big hand dug ditch and then another fence....
Most NZ children know Maoris at school etc...
A Maori woman was a Miss NZ as long ago as the early 1960’s, aznd they are considered no different than “white” children...
Many “Maoris” have red hair and blue eyes...
Mutton bird is a sea bird that is fat and lives on the rocks of cliffs etc...easy to catch, bang on the head...tastes like chicken....very greasy though....simmer it in a few different lots of water to get make it less greasy and its a corker feast...
Unlike the US the Maori have been part of the NZ govt etc since the 19th Century as MP’s etc (Member of Parliament)...many Maoris are titled by the Queen and well to do...
Although there were cannibals in NZ at one time, (the Moa hunters may have been) when the Pakeha (white man/strranger) arrived, the Maoris had moved onto other culinary choices LOL
I first read Hawaii when it was first published...
Of the 1,200 pages only 200 of thje book were used for the movie, Hawaii..
There was also a Made for TV Movie called The Hawaiians about the plague and the fire and the internment of orientals in big fenced holding areas while their houses were burnt down...
I dont know of any other productions, but the description of the jouirney from Bora Bora (Tahiti) to Hawaii by the natives would have been like the trip the original Maoris took...
Imagine, history that I learnt nearly 50 years ago in school is now being “discovered” and disected by liberal, socialist ijits with too much PC time on their hands and no life...LOL
Here I was, thinking the 7 canoes were a forgone conclusion...An “anchor” carved from a stone was found in the sand of a NZ beach while I was in school...
The trip was “proven” decades ago...LOL
Pitcairn has been a long time fascination to me. Several of us sent fuel to Tom Christian many years ago for the island generator. We received hand made baskets in return.
Tom and Betty (and several others) are ham radio operators and even today you will occasionally hear Tom on a Pacific net talking about island life. I listened carefully as he explained them going out to meet ships at sea to swap goodies and provisions. I cant imagine paddling to Tahiti much less Hawaii.
Amazing.
Environmental setting of human migrations in the circum-Pacific RegionA period of stable climate and sea level 45,000-40,000 years BP gave rise to the first major pulse of migration, when modern humans spread from India, throughout much of coastal southeast Asia, Australia, and Melanesia, extending northward to eastern Russia and Japan by 37,000 years BP. The northward push of modern humans along the eastern coast of Asia stalled north of 43° N latitude, probably due to the inability of the populations to adjust to cold waters and tundra/steppe vegetation. The ensuing cold and dry Last Glacial period, ~33,000-16,000 year BP, once again brought dramatic changes in sea level and climate, which caused abandonment of many coastal sites. After 16,000 years BP, climates began to warm, but sea level was still 100 m below modern levels, creating conditions amenable for a second pulse of human migration into North America across an ice-free coastal plain now covered by the Bering Sea. The stabilization of climate and sea level in the early Holocene (8,000-6,000 years BP) supported the expansion of coastal wetlands, lagoons, and coral reefs, which in turn gave rise to a third pulse of coastal settlement, filling in most of the circum-Pacific region. A slight drop in sea level in the western Pacific in the mid-Holocene (~6,000-4,000 year BP), caused a reduction in productive coastal habitats, leading to a brief disruption in human subsistence along the then densely settled coast. This disruption may have helped initiate the last major pulse of human migration in the circum-Pacific region, that of the migration to Oceania, which began about 3,500 years BP and culminated in the settlement of Hawaii and Easter Island by 2000-1000 years BP.
Davina Quarterman
10-Oct-2007
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