380
21 A Consilience of Evidence
local archaeological context and placed in an earlier wider oceanographic context.
Its place in that context transforms the way we see its prehistory and palaeodemography. New Zealand acquires a radically new chronology, a new place in the history
of the peopling of the Pacific. It recovers the long prehistory recorded for it in Maori
tradition. And it gains a new climate-driven demography that leads to a very different reading of its history in the Little Ice Age and to a new understanding of the
7,000 pa built in that period.
We have attempted in our book to draw on an extended range of scientific evidence relevant to the study of Pacific prehistory and to encourage a flexibility of
approach by combining scientific insights with traditional knowledge. With a Spice
Island and West Pacific Warm Pool base, the powerful role of oceanography in determining the evolution of exploration, trading and migration in two oceans becomes
clear. We are able to explain how and why the last lands on the planet to be colonized
were settled by a single people with a unique genetic heritage speaking dialects of a
single language, who were the inheritors of an ancient maritime trading culture. The
Spice Islanders’ genetic and maritime evolution are tied both to the oceanographic
history of the West Pacific Warm Pool and to their possession of unique spices. The
economic motivation of horticultural trading is seen as a persistent driving force in
their genetic and maritime development We stress the importance of the geographical position of the Spice Islands (lying at the edge or within the West Pacific Warm
Pool, poised between two oceans and two biological zones) in shaping the Spice
Island’s horticultural trading history. And our analysis is presented in a context of
global climate change that gives it additional coherence, validity and relevance. We
set our version of Maori prehistory during the Little Ice Age, for example, in the
context of catastrophic population losses worldwide and suggest that, to be properly understood, the whole history of the settlement of the Pacific has to be read in
the light of global climate history. The global climate context we evoke enables the
oceanic prehistory we unfold to be seen not as isolated and idiosyncratic but as part
of global history.
We have shown some of the ways in which insight and historical information
can be gleaned from traditional sources. But one cannot discount the difficulties
that are sometimes involved. The catastrophic population losses during the Little
Ice Age in both New Zealand and in tropical Polynesia, the probable extinction of
indigenous tribes possessing the oldest histories and the cultural shock and nearfatal impact of European contact throughout the Pacific must have led to a vast loss
of traditional knowledge. Contradictions and difficulties in interpreting traditional
knowledge are hardly surprising in these circumstances for often we may be working with a confused subset of knowledge. Yet to dismiss traditional knowledge as
“mere myth” is to lose the valuable insights that can sometimes be gained, especially now when events recorded in traditional histories can be examined anew in
the light of modern climate proxy data capable of dating events with more precision
than radiocarbon analysis. The value of the few long carefully preserved genealogies we have studied is apparent: their value as historical sources enhanced by the
precision of high-resolution climate proxy dating.
21 A Consilience of Evidence
local archaeological context and placed in an earlier wider oceanographic context.
Its place in that context transforms the way we see its prehistory and palaeodemography. New Zealand acquires a radically new chronology, a new place in the history
of the peopling of the Pacific. It recovers the long prehistory recorded for it in Maori
tradition. And it gains a new climate-driven demography that leads to a very different reading of its history in the Little Ice Age and to a new understanding of the
7,000 pa built in that period.
We have attempted in our book to draw on an extended range of scientific evidence relevant to the study of Pacific prehistory and to encourage a flexibility of
approach by combining scientific insights with traditional knowledge. With a Spice
Island and West Pacific Warm Pool base, the powerful role of oceanography in determining the evolution of exploration, trading and migration in two oceans becomes
clear. We are able to explain how and why the last lands on the planet to be colonized
were settled by a single people with a unique genetic heritage speaking dialects of a
single language, who were the inheritors of an ancient maritime trading culture. The
Spice Islanders’ genetic and maritime evolution are tied both to the oceanographic
history of the West Pacific Warm Pool and to their possession of unique spices. The
economic motivation of horticultural trading is seen as a persistent driving force in
their genetic and maritime development We stress the importance of the geographical position of the Spice Islands (lying at the edge or within the West Pacific Warm
Pool, poised between two oceans and two biological zones) in shaping the Spice
Island’s horticultural trading history. And our analysis is presented in a context of
global climate change that gives it additional coherence, validity and relevance. We
set our version of Maori prehistory during the Little Ice Age, for example, in the
context of catastrophic population losses worldwide and suggest that, to be properly understood, the whole history of the settlement of the Pacific has to be read in
the light of global climate history. The global climate context we evoke enables the
oceanic prehistory we unfold to be seen not as isolated and idiosyncratic but as part
of global history.
We have shown some of the ways in which insight and historical information
can be gleaned from traditional sources. But one cannot discount the difficulties
that are sometimes involved. The catastrophic population losses during the Little
Ice Age in both New Zealand and in tropical Polynesia, the probable extinction of
indigenous tribes possessing the oldest histories and the cultural shock and nearfatal impact of European contact throughout the Pacific must have led to a vast loss
of traditional knowledge. Contradictions and difficulties in interpreting traditional
knowledge are hardly surprising in these circumstances for often we may be working with a confused subset of knowledge. Yet to dismiss traditional knowledge as
“mere myth” is to lose the valuable insights that can sometimes be gained, especially now when events recorded in traditional histories can be examined anew in
the light of modern climate proxy data capable of dating events with more precision
than radiocarbon analysis. The value of the few long carefully preserved genealogies we have studied is apparent: their value as historical sources enhanced by the
precision of high-resolution climate proxy dating.