21 A Consilience of Evidence
381
Over a range of contexts the interface between traditional knowledge and modern scientific research provides exciting possibilities for unravelling ancient history
from tradition. We have shown, for example, how the demographic information
implicit in two ancient genealogies preserved in the isolation of the Chatham
Islands, read in the context of global climate history and of the documented survival
problems of small isolated populations, makes it possible to reconstruct the early
history of Lapita-age Spice Island migrants in New Zealand, to date their arrival, to
posit the likelihood of a near-extinction event, to suggest its date and possible cause
and to sensibly explain the extraordinarily low genetic diversity of modern Maori.
Modern statistics helps decode from skeletal data evidence of extreme population
losses in the Little Ice Age. A power law approach can decode new demographic
information implicit in New Zealand’s 7,000 hill-forts. Studying pa in the light of
falling populations leads to a quite different reading of their fortification history.
Modern climate research enables us to read the migration history of the central
and eastern Pacific from the timing of extreme El Niño events triggering drought,
famine and associated conflict over land and resources. The same research enables
us to understand the demographic history of New Zealand Maori. And recurrent
patterns of intense El Niño events help us to date the activities of a line of famous
navigators in Eastern Polynesia during the Medieval Climatic Optimum and to
suggest dating for some early migrations to New Zealand. The Huguang Maar
climate proxy data confirms the genealogical dating inherent in two rare Moriori
genealogies.
This book has been driven by our sense of exciting possibilities for illuminating
prehistory by combining scientific and traditional contexts to reclaim some of the
power and relevance of oral traditions. It is in traditional histories that we meet some
of the individuals who shaped Pacific prehistory. Their personalities and deeds,
made vivid in story, give a richness to tradition that a prehistory with a limited
artefactual base simply cannot match.
The archaeologist literally seeks material evidence and when he finds none may
assume there is none. Evidence trails are often subtle and implicit. In New Zealand
perhaps even archaeological evidence has to be approached with some subtlety. The
finding of a Lapita rat haplogroup at Palliser Bay, for example, the early settlement
where, tradition tells us, Maui met the chieftainess of Orokoroko, can be seen, not
as an anomaly that cannot be accounted for, but as evidence for a Lapita-age rat
introduction into New Zealand. This creates in turn a context in which Richard
Holdaway’s 1,800-year-old fossil rat is more explicable, as is the unique New
Zealand mutation of the ancient Lapita rat haplotype that was found at Palliser Bay.
A consilience of evidence confronts the late settlement theorist. In the light of
our paradigm and of evidence from global climate history for a 600-year early total
isolation for New Zealand 400 years after first settlement, the account of Maui’s
visit to New Zealand has historic resonance. In Chapter 3 we considered evidence
for the presence in New Zealand of the Japanese taro, better suited to higher latitudes than the tropical varieties found in Eastern Polynesia (where the Japanese taro
is not found). Hendy’s evidence that the New Zealand form underwent a mutation
381
Over a range of contexts the interface between traditional knowledge and modern scientific research provides exciting possibilities for unravelling ancient history
from tradition. We have shown, for example, how the demographic information
implicit in two ancient genealogies preserved in the isolation of the Chatham
Islands, read in the context of global climate history and of the documented survival
problems of small isolated populations, makes it possible to reconstruct the early
history of Lapita-age Spice Island migrants in New Zealand, to date their arrival, to
posit the likelihood of a near-extinction event, to suggest its date and possible cause
and to sensibly explain the extraordinarily low genetic diversity of modern Maori.
Modern statistics helps decode from skeletal data evidence of extreme population
losses in the Little Ice Age. A power law approach can decode new demographic
information implicit in New Zealand’s 7,000 hill-forts. Studying pa in the light of
falling populations leads to a quite different reading of their fortification history.
Modern climate research enables us to read the migration history of the central
and eastern Pacific from the timing of extreme El Niño events triggering drought,
famine and associated conflict over land and resources. The same research enables
us to understand the demographic history of New Zealand Maori. And recurrent
patterns of intense El Niño events help us to date the activities of a line of famous
navigators in Eastern Polynesia during the Medieval Climatic Optimum and to
suggest dating for some early migrations to New Zealand. The Huguang Maar
climate proxy data confirms the genealogical dating inherent in two rare Moriori
genealogies.
This book has been driven by our sense of exciting possibilities for illuminating
prehistory by combining scientific and traditional contexts to reclaim some of the
power and relevance of oral traditions. It is in traditional histories that we meet some
of the individuals who shaped Pacific prehistory. Their personalities and deeds,
made vivid in story, give a richness to tradition that a prehistory with a limited
artefactual base simply cannot match.
The archaeologist literally seeks material evidence and when he finds none may
assume there is none. Evidence trails are often subtle and implicit. In New Zealand
perhaps even archaeological evidence has to be approached with some subtlety. The
finding of a Lapita rat haplogroup at Palliser Bay, for example, the early settlement
where, tradition tells us, Maui met the chieftainess of Orokoroko, can be seen, not
as an anomaly that cannot be accounted for, but as evidence for a Lapita-age rat
introduction into New Zealand. This creates in turn a context in which Richard
Holdaway’s 1,800-year-old fossil rat is more explicable, as is the unique New
Zealand mutation of the ancient Lapita rat haplotype that was found at Palliser Bay.
A consilience of evidence confronts the late settlement theorist. In the light of
our paradigm and of evidence from global climate history for a 600-year early total
isolation for New Zealand 400 years after first settlement, the account of Maui’s
visit to New Zealand has historic resonance. In Chapter 3 we considered evidence
for the presence in New Zealand of the Japanese taro, better suited to higher latitudes than the tropical varieties found in Eastern Polynesia (where the Japanese taro
is not found). Hendy’s evidence that the New Zealand form underwent a mutation