5 ms·

There were no humans at all in New Zealand until about 1250AD

72 points by andrewstuart 3y ago

brahbrah 3y ago
The explanation I’ve always heard for why New Zealand was settled by Polynesians so late is that they preferred to start their voyages against the currents when they were fresh so that they wouldn’t have to fight the currents on their way back if they weren’t able to find any new lands to rest and recharge
- teruakohatu 3y ago
  Kiwi here, I haven't heard that before. New Zealand is very isolated and far south. Polynesian explorers went from the North to the South, so New Zealand was last. I am unsure why there wasn't earlier immigration from Australia, possibly technological or cultural. Australia is huge, so maybe there wasn't population or resource motivation to explore and settle new lands.
  - guidedlight 3y ago
    Indigenous Australians are strongly culturally linked to the land. They weren’t a sea faring people, unlike the Polynesians. They did have boats (dugouts), but they weren’t suited for the ocean.
    - defrost 3y ago
      Bark canoes are not dugouts https://australian.museum/learn/cultures/atsi-collection/cultural-objects/indigenous-bark-canoe-from-new-south-wales/ https://australian.museum/learn/cultures/atsi-collection/cul... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Canoes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Canoes Also indigenous to the Sahul * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torres_Strait_Islanders https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torres_Strait_Islanders who lived on islands and travelled between PNG and Queensland, Australia but didn't venture south past the Great Barrier Reef and to New ZEaland - but did have the boats and seafaring skills. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makassar_people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makassar_people who lived in (modern) Indonesia but routinely traded and fished between Northern Australia and China * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trepanging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trepanging again, they never (to current knowledge) travelled around and past the Great Barrier Reef.
      - masklinn 3y ago
        Sounds like largely coastal navigation, with some longer hops, a pretty different beast from the open water austronesian (/ Melanesian / Polynesian) navigation.
  - masklinn 3y ago
    > I am unsure why there wasn't earlier immigration from Australia, possibly technological or cultural. Indigenous Australians were not mariners, they reached australia by island hopping, and at a time when the sea levels were even lowers and thus the distances between islands were lower (Tasmania was a peninsula at the time). While NZ is close to Australia by air, the Tasman sea is 1700km of open unforgiving ocean. This is not a distance you can reasonably cross as a people with little history of navigation, or even a lot of it. Scandinavia to Iceland is 2/3rds that distance and Iceland was only colonised in the 9th century, by a reasonably maritime culture (mid-era norse). Indigenous Australians never reached New Caledonia either even though it’s much closer to Australia (~1200km), as far as I know the earliest arrivals were circa 1500~1000BCE at the earliest and from the other side (the Lapita reached New Caledonia from through).
    - juanani 3y ago
      [dead]
    - masklinn 3y ago
      “From through” should be “from Vanuatu” or “through Vanuatu”, sorry about that.
    - dieselgate 3y ago
      Regarding sailing the Tasman Sea the 1998 Sydney-Hobart race is notable: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_Sydney_to_Hobart_Yacht_Race https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_Sydney_to_Hobart_Yacht_...
  - mkl 3y ago
    It was more west to east, and from the central west-east path, north and south: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/95/Chronological_dispersal_of_Austronesian_people_across_the_Pacific.svg/1280px-Chronological_dispersal_of_Austronesian_people_across_the_Pacific.svg.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/95/Ch... NZ, Easter Island, and Hawaii are most recent.
pluies 3y ago
If you're interested in diving deeper, the History of Aotearoa New Zealand podcast ( https://historyaotearoa.com/ https://historyaotearoa.com/ ) is a great resource, very well researched and engaging.
TheAlchemist 3y ago
Sometimes it feels like there is still not a lot of humans here ! They mention immigration towards the end - it's pretty impressive the speed and scale at which the population is changing towards much more asian. There was a census this year (results to be released in 2024) so pretty curious about the numbers.
- tjpnz 3y ago
  It's kind of astounding how few people you see in public places. If I was an alien who had just crash landed in suburban Christchurch I'd probably conclude that cars were the dominant lifeform.
  - TheAlchemist 3y ago
    Yeah. Sometimes I feel like there was more people walking in city centers in Europe during Covid lockdowns, than here during 'peak hours' !
  - singularity2001 3y ago
    Christchurch is a prime example of failed city planning. Completely carbrained and mostly unwalkable.
- TMWNN 3y ago
  >They mention immigration towards the end - it's pretty impressive the speed and scale at which the population is changing towards much more asian. When watching reaction videos to the country's first Costco, I was amazed at how many Asians a) appeared in the videos, and b) created the videos.
jl6 3y ago
It’s hard to imagine the bravery (or desperation?) of those explorers who ventured off into the open ocean. It seems likely that some would not have seen dry land again. There are probably some archaeological sites waiting at the bottom of the southern ocean.
- jamiepenney 3y ago
  Polynesian navigators were amazing at navigating via the stars. Kupe made the journey from Hawaiki (it's still unclear exactly where that is though) to New Zealand and back, and his grandson was able to navigate back to New Zealand just from his description of the stars. That grandson came to New Zealand on Ngātokimatawhaorua, the canoe that my family traces their ancestry back to.
walthamstow 3y ago
Should the recency of Maori arrival in NZ make white NZers (and Englishmen such as myself) feel less guilty about colonisation? Is it any different to displace a people who had been in place for just 300 years compared to one who had been there for 10k (Americas) or 50k (Australia)? Most peoples have been displaced at some point. My Brythonic ancestors, if I have any, had their land settled by the Romans, the Danes and the Saxons all in the space of ~500 years. I'm not an expert, some facts may be wrong, but it's something I have wondered about.
- danans 3y ago
  > Should the recency of Maori arrival in NZ make white NZers (and Englishmen such as myself) feel less guilty about colonisation? No, the length of time doesn't matter. The guilt is appropriate due to the violence and inhumanity in the way the displacement was carried out (even if that was the norm at the time), and the continued oppression and erasure that occured.
  - PostOnce 3y ago
    Guilt for the faults of one's ancestors is especially strange in this case, since it only ever applies to one side (the European side), and nary a whisper of the past of slavery, cannibalism, and genocide are mentioned because those are things belong to the "oppressed" people (the Maori). That's only part of the picture, though. Some bad things happened, but as a consequence, some arguably much worse outcomes were avoided. The sole reason that slavery and cannibalism do not exist in New Zealand today is precisely because it was colonized. The British outlawed those things (and brought Christianity, which also had an impact). The "displacement" wasn't extensive, either. The link says the "population may have reached 100,000" prior to colonization, in a nation of 100,000 square miles. Much of it, particularly in the south, was never occupied or controlled, the terrain was neither hospitable nor accessible until colonization brought roads. Now that area is highly productive and exports from there pay for hospitals and schools. It's also basically unfathomable that if the British hadn't colonized NZ, it would have been totally left to its own devices to develop. Another, less friendly colonizer may have come. What if it were, say, Belgium? It gets a little tiresome to hear one side of the argument for decades on end, while people fear ostracism for even thinking of mentioning the other half of history.
t8sr 3y ago
Must have been nice.
- andrewstuart 3y ago
  Paradise.
freddealmeida 3y ago
There may actually have none right now. (jk)

72 points by andrewstuart 3y ago

The explanation I’ve always heard for why New Zealand was settled by Polynesians so late is that they preferred to start their voyages against the currents when they were fresh so that they wouldn’t have to fight the currents on their way back if they weren’t able to find any new lands to rest and recharge

teruakohatu 3y ago
Kiwi here, I haven't heard that before. New Zealand is very isolated and far south. Polynesian explorers went from the North to the South, so New Zealand was last. I am unsure why there wasn't earlier immigration from Australia, possibly technological or cultural. Australia is huge, so maybe there wasn't population or resource motivation to explore and settle new lands.
- guidedlight 3y ago
  Indigenous Australians are strongly culturally linked to the land. They weren’t a sea faring people, unlike the Polynesians. They did have boats (dugouts), but they weren’t suited for the ocean.
  - defrost 3y ago
    Bark canoes are not dugouts https://australian.museum/learn/cultures/atsi-collection/cultural-objects/indigenous-bark-canoe-from-new-south-wales/ https://australian.museum/learn/cultures/atsi-collection/cul... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Canoes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Canoes Also indigenous to the Sahul * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torres_Strait_Islanders https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torres_Strait_Islanders who lived on islands and travelled between PNG and Queensland, Australia but didn't venture south past the Great Barrier Reef and to New ZEaland - but did have the boats and seafaring skills. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makassar_people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makassar_people who lived in (modern) Indonesia but routinely traded and fished between Northern Australia and China * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trepanging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trepanging again, they never (to current knowledge) travelled around and past the Great Barrier Reef.
    - masklinn 3y ago
      Sounds like largely coastal navigation, with some longer hops, a pretty different beast from the open water austronesian (/ Melanesian / Polynesian) navigation.
- masklinn 3y ago
  > I am unsure why there wasn't earlier immigration from Australia, possibly technological or cultural. Indigenous Australians were not mariners, they reached australia by island hopping, and at a time when the sea levels were even lowers and thus the distances between islands were lower (Tasmania was a peninsula at the time). While NZ is close to Australia by air, the Tasman sea is 1700km of open unforgiving ocean. This is not a distance you can reasonably cross as a people with little history of navigation, or even a lot of it. Scandinavia to Iceland is 2/3rds that distance and Iceland was only colonised in the 9th century, by a reasonably maritime culture (mid-era norse). Indigenous Australians never reached New Caledonia either even though it’s much closer to Australia (~1200km), as far as I know the earliest arrivals were circa 1500~1000BCE at the earliest and from the other side (the Lapita reached New Caledonia from through).
  - juanani 3y ago
    [dead]
  - masklinn 3y ago
    “From through” should be “from Vanuatu” or “through Vanuatu”, sorry about that.
  - dieselgate 3y ago
    Regarding sailing the Tasman Sea the 1998 Sydney-Hobart race is notable: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_Sydney_to_Hobart_Yacht_Race https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_Sydney_to_Hobart_Yacht_...
- mkl 3y ago
  It was more west to east, and from the central west-east path, north and south: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/95/Chronological_dispersal_of_Austronesian_people_across_the_Pacific.svg/1280px-Chronological_dispersal_of_Austronesian_people_across_the_Pacific.svg.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/95/Ch... NZ, Easter Island, and Hawaii are most recent.

pluies 3y ago

If you're interested in diving deeper, the History of Aotearoa New Zealand podcast ( https://historyaotearoa.com/ https://historyaotearoa.com/ ) is a great resource, very well researched and engaging.

TheAlchemist 3y ago

Sometimes it feels like there is still not a lot of humans here ! They mention immigration towards the end - it's pretty impressive the speed and scale at which the population is changing towards much more asian. There was a census this year (results to be released in 2024) so pretty curious about the numbers.

tjpnz 3y ago
It's kind of astounding how few people you see in public places. If I was an alien who had just crash landed in suburban Christchurch I'd probably conclude that cars were the dominant lifeform.
- TheAlchemist 3y ago
  Yeah. Sometimes I feel like there was more people walking in city centers in Europe during Covid lockdowns, than here during 'peak hours' !
- singularity2001 3y ago
  Christchurch is a prime example of failed city planning. Completely carbrained and mostly unwalkable.
TMWNN 3y ago
>They mention immigration towards the end - it's pretty impressive the speed and scale at which the population is changing towards much more asian. When watching reaction videos to the country's first Costco, I was amazed at how many Asians a) appeared in the videos, and b) created the videos.

jl6 3y ago

It’s hard to imagine the bravery (or desperation?) of those explorers who ventured off into the open ocean. It seems likely that some would not have seen dry land again. There are probably some archaeological sites waiting at the bottom of the southern ocean.

jamiepenney 3y ago
Polynesian navigators were amazing at navigating via the stars. Kupe made the journey from Hawaiki (it's still unclear exactly where that is though) to New Zealand and back, and his grandson was able to navigate back to New Zealand just from his description of the stars. That grandson came to New Zealand on Ngātokimatawhaorua, the canoe that my family traces their ancestry back to.

walthamstow 3y ago

Should the recency of Maori arrival in NZ make white NZers (and Englishmen such as myself) feel less guilty about colonisation? Is it any different to displace a people who had been in place for just 300 years compared to one who had been there for 10k (Americas) or 50k (Australia)? Most peoples have been displaced at some point. My Brythonic ancestors, if I have any, had their land settled by the Romans, the Danes and the Saxons all in the space of ~500 years. I'm not an expert, some facts may be wrong, but it's something I have wondered about.

danans 3y ago
> Should the recency of Maori arrival in NZ make white NZers (and Englishmen such as myself) feel less guilty about colonisation? No, the length of time doesn't matter. The guilt is appropriate due to the violence and inhumanity in the way the displacement was carried out (even if that was the norm at the time), and the continued oppression and erasure that occured.
- PostOnce 3y ago
  Guilt for the faults of one's ancestors is especially strange in this case, since it only ever applies to one side (the European side), and nary a whisper of the past of slavery, cannibalism, and genocide are mentioned because those are things belong to the "oppressed" people (the Maori). That's only part of the picture, though. Some bad things happened, but as a consequence, some arguably much worse outcomes were avoided. The sole reason that slavery and cannibalism do not exist in New Zealand today is precisely because it was colonized. The British outlawed those things (and brought Christianity, which also had an impact). The "displacement" wasn't extensive, either. The link says the "population may have reached 100,000" prior to colonization, in a nation of 100,000 square miles. Much of it, particularly in the south, was never occupied or controlled, the terrain was neither hospitable nor accessible until colonization brought roads. Now that area is highly productive and exports from there pay for hospitals and schools. It's also basically unfathomable that if the British hadn't colonized NZ, it would have been totally left to its own devices to develop. Another, less friendly colonizer may have come. What if it were, say, Belgium? It gets a little tiresome to hear one side of the argument for decades on end, while people fear ostracism for even thinking of mentioning the other half of history.

t8sr 3y ago

Must have been nice.

andrewstuart 3y ago
Paradise.

freddealmeida 3y ago

There may actually have none right now. (jk)