260
15 Dating the First Settlement of New Zealand
rates for population decrease in the richer areas (about 50% of that in poorer areas).
This has enabled us to offer a comprehensive overview of the demographic patterns
shaping the prehistory of New Zealand from 1445 to 1896. That the differential rate
of population decline between pa and non-pa areas is so great highlights the efficacy
of growing and storing kumara to combat starvation. That is, it supports the role of
horticulture and pa-building as strategies for survival.
Our overview confirms the appropriateness of our studying demographic evidence implicit in Maori pa in the context of a rapidly falling rather than a steadily
increasing population. The implications of this approach are profound. We have
argued that a rapidly increasing population is crucial to the theory of a late first
settlement. A rapidly falling population presupposes a very high earlier population
which, in its turn, indicates a long time depth for Maori prehistory and demography.
Pa evidence read in the light of falling populations establishes definitively that a late
first settlement date for New Zealand is out of the question.
In demonstrating the consilience of the evidence on which these interpretations
and consequences depend, we have drawn on many sources of evidence and provided new contexts in which to view old evidence. Statistics, climatology, skeletal
analysis, a power law analysis and field archaeology have all played a part. The
demographic evidence we present and the conclusions we reach are startlingly different from any in the discipline. They paint an extreme and disturbing picture of
climate-driven catastrophic population loss extending over 400 years in the richer
areas. In some less well resourced areas, a rate of decline twice that in the richer
areas would have driven some populations quickly to extinction. The arrival of
Europeans involved a near-fatal contact, with access to muskets intensifying the
consequences of tribal warfare and European diseases reducing what was already a
remnant population to less than 2% of what it had been at the beginning of the Little
Ice Age.
The demographic evidence we present and the interpretations we propose support
the inescapable conclusion that the first settlement of New Zealand took place close
to the beginning of the Lapita colonizing period from 3,600 to 3,000 years ago.
This conclusion has considerable consequences. It changes the way we perceive
the earliest phase in the peopling of the Pacific. A Lapita-age first settlement of New
Zealand assumes a significant place in early Pacific prehistory and in the history
of oceanic migration. Evidence for a Lapita-age first settlement of New Zealand,
moreover, validates the paradigm proposed in Part I for two waves of exploration
and settlement by Spice Island mariners in two oceans, following three of the four
major warm currents flowing out of the West Pacific Warm Pool. Our demographic
analysis makes it clear that first-wave explorers and colonists reached New Zealand
long before the cold period that began in 1000 BC. It also confirms the principles we
have suggested as underlying both first- and second-wave Spice Islanders’ choice of
exploration and sailing strategies and migration routes. These include the limiting
of long-distance migration to global warm periods; avoidance of west–east sailing
against the trade winds and currents in the southern Pacific; and accordance with
a leap-frogging strategy determining settlement sequence in which the largest and
most promising lands were colonized first regardless of distance so long as there
15 Dating the First Settlement of New Zealand
rates for population decrease in the richer areas (about 50% of that in poorer areas).
This has enabled us to offer a comprehensive overview of the demographic patterns
shaping the prehistory of New Zealand from 1445 to 1896. That the differential rate
of population decline between pa and non-pa areas is so great highlights the efficacy
of growing and storing kumara to combat starvation. That is, it supports the role of
horticulture and pa-building as strategies for survival.
Our overview confirms the appropriateness of our studying demographic evidence implicit in Maori pa in the context of a rapidly falling rather than a steadily
increasing population. The implications of this approach are profound. We have
argued that a rapidly increasing population is crucial to the theory of a late first
settlement. A rapidly falling population presupposes a very high earlier population
which, in its turn, indicates a long time depth for Maori prehistory and demography.
Pa evidence read in the light of falling populations establishes definitively that a late
first settlement date for New Zealand is out of the question.
In demonstrating the consilience of the evidence on which these interpretations
and consequences depend, we have drawn on many sources of evidence and provided new contexts in which to view old evidence. Statistics, climatology, skeletal
analysis, a power law analysis and field archaeology have all played a part. The
demographic evidence we present and the conclusions we reach are startlingly different from any in the discipline. They paint an extreme and disturbing picture of
climate-driven catastrophic population loss extending over 400 years in the richer
areas. In some less well resourced areas, a rate of decline twice that in the richer
areas would have driven some populations quickly to extinction. The arrival of
Europeans involved a near-fatal contact, with access to muskets intensifying the
consequences of tribal warfare and European diseases reducing what was already a
remnant population to less than 2% of what it had been at the beginning of the Little
Ice Age.
The demographic evidence we present and the interpretations we propose support
the inescapable conclusion that the first settlement of New Zealand took place close
to the beginning of the Lapita colonizing period from 3,600 to 3,000 years ago.
This conclusion has considerable consequences. It changes the way we perceive
the earliest phase in the peopling of the Pacific. A Lapita-age first settlement of New
Zealand assumes a significant place in early Pacific prehistory and in the history
of oceanic migration. Evidence for a Lapita-age first settlement of New Zealand,
moreover, validates the paradigm proposed in Part I for two waves of exploration
and settlement by Spice Island mariners in two oceans, following three of the four
major warm currents flowing out of the West Pacific Warm Pool. Our demographic
analysis makes it clear that first-wave explorers and colonists reached New Zealand
long before the cold period that began in 1000 BC. It also confirms the principles we
have suggested as underlying both first- and second-wave Spice Islanders’ choice of
exploration and sailing strategies and migration routes. These include the limiting
of long-distance migration to global warm periods; avoidance of west–east sailing
against the trade winds and currents in the southern Pacific; and accordance with
a leap-frogging strategy determining settlement sequence in which the largest and
most promising lands were colonized first regardless of distance so long as there