> 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.
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