10.6 Part I: A Summary
173
support his rights to a land, which as the first Eastern Polynesian explorer to visit
New Zealand, he claimed to have discovered. Kupe’s grandson, Nuku-tawhiti, is
said to have joined the colony Kupe left behind him at Hokianga, just as hundreds
of years earlier descendants of Maui came to take up land rights they believed they
had inherited from Maui. Even Turi, Captain of the Aotea canoe of the Heke, the
last migration to reach New Zealand, claimed his right to land in the North Island
as a descendant of Maui. He and his crew, along with most of the Heke immigrants,
had no sooner landed than they set their seal on the land by naming features after
themselves and their first experiences in New Zealand.
Place names in New Zealand reflect a long history of migration, the earliest
names probably overlaid many times. There are a few obvious exceptions. Maui
met the chieftainess at Orokoroko in Palliser Bay, a name that, as we have seen,
means “the very first place”, “from the very beginning”, and so may be an ancient
name. As may be the name Cape Te Reinga, “The Leaping Place”, at the northernmost tip of the North Island. As with similar “Leaping Places” in Polynesia it is the
place from which the souls of the dead set out on their journey back to the ancestral
homeland of Hawaiki. For Maori the direction of the spirit leap and path is to the
north rather than to the west (as in Western Polynesia and Eastern Polynesia). This
New Zealand path perhaps enshrines a memory of an ancient migration voyage from
the north that must be matched by spirits in reverse in order to return to their spirit
home. That the name and concept of “The Leaping Place” are of great antiquity is
suggested by their occurrence amongst aborigines along the east coast of Australia
[16]. There, as in New Zealand, the spirits of the dead travel to the “Leaping Place”
in order to find the path to their spirit home in the north. One can only conclude that
both the name and concept must be older than the colonization of the Pacific and
to have reached both Australian aborigines and Polynesians through diffusion from
the Spice Islands – very long ago in the case of the Australian aborigines. Or that
a migration from New Zealand to Ulimaroa (Australia), known in Captain Cook’s
time to the Bay of Island Maori, had a long-term influence on some aboriginal tribes
of the east coast of Australia and led to their adoption of this cultural belief.
10.6 Part I: A Summary
In Part I we propose a new paradigm for the rapid early settlement of the largest
and best uninhabited islands in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. This paradigm has an
oceanographic base in the history of changes within the West Pacific Warm Pool and
in the ocean paths provided by three of its four major currents. And it has a global
climate modifier, warm global climate periods fundamentally determining the periods in which transoceanic current-driven voyaging in the Pacific and Indian Oceans
was feasible and practised. We show that by using the sailing and exploration strategy of following powerful warm currents flowing out of the West Pacific Warm
Pool, Spice Island mariners reached and/or established settlements in Micronesia
and southern Japan to the north, Hawaii and America in the east and Madagascar
173
support his rights to a land, which as the first Eastern Polynesian explorer to visit
New Zealand, he claimed to have discovered. Kupe’s grandson, Nuku-tawhiti, is
said to have joined the colony Kupe left behind him at Hokianga, just as hundreds
of years earlier descendants of Maui came to take up land rights they believed they
had inherited from Maui. Even Turi, Captain of the Aotea canoe of the Heke, the
last migration to reach New Zealand, claimed his right to land in the North Island
as a descendant of Maui. He and his crew, along with most of the Heke immigrants,
had no sooner landed than they set their seal on the land by naming features after
themselves and their first experiences in New Zealand.
Place names in New Zealand reflect a long history of migration, the earliest
names probably overlaid many times. There are a few obvious exceptions. Maui
met the chieftainess at Orokoroko in Palliser Bay, a name that, as we have seen,
means “the very first place”, “from the very beginning”, and so may be an ancient
name. As may be the name Cape Te Reinga, “The Leaping Place”, at the northernmost tip of the North Island. As with similar “Leaping Places” in Polynesia it is the
place from which the souls of the dead set out on their journey back to the ancestral
homeland of Hawaiki. For Maori the direction of the spirit leap and path is to the
north rather than to the west (as in Western Polynesia and Eastern Polynesia). This
New Zealand path perhaps enshrines a memory of an ancient migration voyage from
the north that must be matched by spirits in reverse in order to return to their spirit
home. That the name and concept of “The Leaping Place” are of great antiquity is
suggested by their occurrence amongst aborigines along the east coast of Australia
[16]. There, as in New Zealand, the spirits of the dead travel to the “Leaping Place”
in order to find the path to their spirit home in the north. One can only conclude that
both the name and concept must be older than the colonization of the Pacific and
to have reached both Australian aborigines and Polynesians through diffusion from
the Spice Islands – very long ago in the case of the Australian aborigines. Or that
a migration from New Zealand to Ulimaroa (Australia), known in Captain Cook’s
time to the Bay of Island Maori, had a long-term influence on some aboriginal tribes
of the east coast of Australia and led to their adoption of this cultural belief.
10.6 Part I: A Summary
In Part I we propose a new paradigm for the rapid early settlement of the largest
and best uninhabited islands in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. This paradigm has an
oceanographic base in the history of changes within the West Pacific Warm Pool and
in the ocean paths provided by three of its four major currents. And it has a global
climate modifier, warm global climate periods fundamentally determining the periods in which transoceanic current-driven voyaging in the Pacific and Indian Oceans
was feasible and practised. We show that by using the sailing and exploration strategy of following powerful warm currents flowing out of the West Pacific Warm
Pool, Spice Island mariners reached and/or established settlements in Micronesia
and southern Japan to the north, Hawaii and America in the east and Madagascar