First People In New Zealand // Maori History Documentary

When

people

first

came to New Zealand, they found there, at the very edge of the vast Pacific, a virgin land of wild rainforest and burning mountains of impenetrable forests and monsters within, for before that time, a few 800 years ago, crusaders and steppe nomads fought in it. Far away, on the other side of the world, in Eurasia, no human being had ever set foot in New Zealand; On those islands that existed in perfect isolation from the rest of the world you could find a rich tapestry of life that had been brewing for eons from that landmass. It

first

separated from Earth's other continents about 80 million years ago and embarked on its own unique evolutionary paths.

Not only was New Zealand not populated by humans but it was largely devoid of mammals in general, as it was a land of birds, avian fauna had filled every ecological niche in the food chain, from the colossal megafauna known as MOA, that once stalked the forest floor, far larger than any bird that walks the earth today, to the last little holdouts that survived to the presence here, at the very edge of the earth back then. There was a lost prehistoric world of flightless giants and winged predators that grew to immense sizes in perfect balance with each other for millions of years, but all this was about to change for a time about 800 years ago, slipping along the waves by sail and/or in double canoe catamarans probably numbering no more than a few hundred hardy and determined travelers who were at first fleeing conflicts in their homeland or attacking new humans who arrived in New Zealand and originated in Southeast Asia about 3,000 years ago or more. known today as Polynesians had made crossing the open Pacific their specialty henceforth secured by the innate human desire to move and explore guided across the horizon by the skill of master navigators using traditional wayfinding techniques passed down to chosen individuals throughout the world. over generations.

Today we can only speculate and wander about the lives those early Polynesian settlers lived, the stories they told, the places they saw and the voyages they took when the first ship to reach New Zealand left their original homeland, perhaps somewhere of the society islands, far from the The land reaching the north was far from guaranteed. Archaeological and anthropological evidence suggests that the settlers who first landed in New Zealand did so in the late 13th century. It had a different name to our Taiaroa, meaning land of the long white cloud which originally only represented the North Island.

By chance, this turned out to be the last major land mass colonized by humans anywhere on the planet, being in fact one of the last exploratory expeditions by the Polynesians anywhere, as the tradition of great sea voyages fell into disuse by around the 14th century, however, over time that clan or perhaps groups of clans that did not reach their destination until the early Middle Ages would grow to become one of the most populated Polynesian islands of all, with about 100 thousand

people

in the moment they were discovered by Europeans on the brink of the Victorian era, we know them today as the Maori, the first people to arrive in New Zealand, this video is sponsored by Magellan TV, a new educational streaming service with more of 2000 documentaries to watch on all kinds of different topics.

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There is much to see about Rome, Egypt, China and much more. Those of you who visit Magellan tv.com, click on History time or use my link in the description below, we will get a free trial, so what are you waiting for? Come in and get free knowledge in the year 1768, a lone British sea ship slipped into the vast South Pacific Ocean and was destined to be the first European ship. To make landfall on the New Zealand islands built with new state-of-the-art technology, HMS Effort had been tasked on behalf of the Royal Navy to undertake a scientific research and exploration voyage in the area with a view to locating the alleged continent of Terra Australis, long hypothetical, was then little more than a blank section on the map.

The first Europeans to visit New Zealand were the Dutchman Abel Tasman in the 17th century. However, they did not make landfall and after encountering a hostile reception. Some of the natives made a quick exit for the next 128 years until the arrival of the effort. The place remained a distant and unknown land. The Pacific Ocean covers 1/3 of the entire surface of the planet, one hundred and sixty-five million square kilometers of Uninterrupted sea dotted with thousands of islands, archipelagos, volcanic rocks and coral atolls along with an eclectic diversity of flora, fauna and flourishing human societies. The company's commanding officer, Captain James Cook, was amazed by the eclectic variety of peoples and tribes he and his crew met.

As they passed through the region in the late 18th century, they spread across thousands of miles of open blue, although these people living on islands as far apart as Tonga, Samoa, Easter Island and Hawaii had differences in their For the most part, it was their similarities that were most notable. Even though some were completely cut off from the outside world when Cooke arrived, how had these people reached islands as far away as Hawaii and Easter Island? The men wandered to islands that were thousands of miles away from each other and completely unknown to Europeans until a few years ago.

Decades earlier, of course, theories abounded for decades to come about lost continents in the Pacific that sank beneath the sea at some point in ancient times, leaving those distant islanders presumably clinging to mountains and highlands while the last survivors searched for era. European disdain for the people they encountered, of course, the truth was much more surprising than anyone could ever invent. The real origin of these people was the simplest of all. all descended from a single group of sailors known as the Polynesians, separated only by geographical distance and the passage of In September 1769, the effort anchored off the coast of New Zealand, becoming the first European ship to successfully reach the islands since that of Abel Tasman 127 years earlier in a six-month-long meeting.

Cook and his crew met with the Maori inhabitants of the island. region dozens of times aboard his ship and in its settlements, on one occasion he even sailed 20 kilometers inland to meet the tribes of the Interior, in reality the secret of the success of the expedition was a Polynesian priest who had been taken on board as a guide in Tahiti to aid in the search for the continent lost in time he became integral as a performer. Tupaia could converse at a rudimentary level in both English and Maori, being a language related to the one he spoke in Tahiti and this was probably the reason why the group of cooks did not encounter similar levels of hostility as they had been.

Tasmania to the Maori, they also had legends of a lost continent, the ancestral homeland in the Pacific, from which their ancestors had emerged all those hundreds of years before, known to them as hyah waka papaya, able to understand. his cousins ​​at a rudimentary level had a significant impact on the Maori and were understandably seen as a much more important figure than Captain Kirk or the gentleman scientist Joseph Banks if you wish to hear Cook's first-hand account of his landing in New Zeeland and You can do it here on our second channel, voices from the past, and don't forget to subscribe for more historical content about a tragic, yet very common, event in which Paya died on the return voyage in December 1770 from a disease.

European Maori culture and history went with it, although Cook had intended no particular malice or ill will. Over the next century, tens of thousands of Polynesians would continue to be burned to the grave by a combination of disease and devastation as a result of the European war. Cook also did not return to Europe and was eventually assassinated in Hawaii in 1779 during the course of his three voyages and four visits to the country. Cook circumnavigated all of New Zealand and spent a total of three hundred and twenty-eight days outside his country. On the coast there were misunderstandings in 1773, for example ten members of the expedition were killed and eaten after a particularly deadly encounter with a group of Maori warriors;

However, overall, with the initial help of to paya, Cook was as respectful as possible in introducing numerous areas to the existence of the world at large. In the late 18th century the Maori population was probably around one hundred thousand when the Europeans arrived in the Most areas of daily life did not change much; It would take some time for the negative impacts of diseases and introduced species to become evident, although the turnips and potatoes introduced by Cook quickly became staple foods in the areas to which they were introduced and the metal began to revolutionize the life in others over time, pigs, metal and muskets were introduced, as well as a constant line of Salus without seals. whaling traders and a variety of adventurers from Europe seeking a new life in the wilds of the new continent life would never be the same in the early 19th century when Christian missionaries began to make significant inroads into the islands diseases began to spread. leave their mark on Over thousands of years, Europeans had developed hard-won immunities to the many animal-born epidemics that arose with animal domestication.

New Zealand had no farm animals and therefore no immunity developed over generations as epidemics swept through the native population, the Europeans known as Pakeha did not die, leading many Maori to start to wonder if their gods had abandoned them. Some of them joined European missionaries in condemning their own ancestral way of life as devil worship. By the 1840s, two-thirds of Māori had converted to Christianity with each passing year. More wisdom and knowledge was lost, but cultural amnesia and disease were not the only danger in the 1820s. Bartering and adaptation by the Maori living on the northern tip of the North Island led to an arms race between the old world and the new that these tribes knew.

When the Pooey Nagas came to possess muskets in front of their rifles, it thus triggered a full escalation of older tribal conflicts known as the Musket Wars. and 1837 some 3,000 battles were fought between Maori tribes resulting in the enslavement of tens of thousands and the death of up to 40,000 armed people. At the time, it was a relatively simple matter for the British to deceive elements of the Maori leadership into accepting the rule of the Maori. British Empire by signing the deceptive Treaty of Waitangi, but the Maori did not surrender by any stretch of the imagination, a series of counterattacks continued well into the 1870s, including numerous embarrassing defeats for the British at the hands of outnumbered and outgunned Maori warriors.

At this time, however, the Europeans almost outnumbered the natives there would be no turning back despite their clearly impressive levels of adaptability, racial stereotyping of the Maori began in art very early, as this was the era of the Social Darwinism which generally portrayed Malory's as little more than savages, a different type to Australia's supposedly simple but wild ones, however the reality is that Australia simply had no domestic or table animals or plants, meaning that The people there were still hunter-gatherers and New Zealand had very few, leading to the agricultural society that formed many Maori who had adapted relatively quickly to European customs. of life, no matter how hard the missionaries tried, veneration for ancestors and ancient traditions could not be uprooted.

Maori were extremely interested in their own past, preserving itthrough a culture of oral storytelling, a culture that was still very much alive when certain European writers and Maori who had only recently learned to write began documenting it during the 19th century, solidifying a rich corpus of mythological tales on paper for the next generation, from Easter Island to Tonga, across the vast arc of the Pacific Ocean, is a distance of more than 6,500 kilometers. kilometers Hawaii is even further away, however, many of the same legends and stories can be found in these distant lands, one of the most famous being that of Maui, a trickster.

God is always curious and explores the story has different details and variations from Island Hopping, however, there are several common aspects among all, and it is generally said that Maui brought the Pacific Islands to the surface using his magic fishing hook after to go sailing with his brothers one day. This may seem like an unusual story, but in the context of Polynesia, it makes perfect sense to travel hundreds, perhaps even thousands of miles, without seeing dry land, without the aid of any modern navigation aids. Master navigators would rule with a single large current or by using the ocean current, the planets, the clouds, the moon, the stars and the Sun as guides who see the ocean not as an obstacle but as a path, in short, around the year 1500 BC.

C., when the ancestors of Polynesian fishermen and farmers left Southeast Asia to make a new life on the wide ocean, there were many Maui among those who followed them. Over the years, the old way of meeting would have seemed to have done exactly that, essentially plucked land from nothing in the infinite ocean. They still had sacred priestly associations when Cook arrived. In the 18th century, over the next 1,000 years, the culture and languages ​​of these peoples took on unique Polynesian aspects, clearly distinguishable by their material culture, often linked to Ocean Voyage Inc and colonization. . Large double-headed canoes could carry up to 200 people a short distance and hundreds of people, as well as supplies much further afield, we do not know what prompted these people to leave their home countries, whether it was the result of conflict, social pressures or simply the innate human desire to travel that we have carried within all of us for hundreds of thousands of years. wandering the open savannah, but we do know that the benefits for those who succeeded were impressive.

The Pacific was the last large region of Earth populated by humans about 2,000 years ago. Led by master navigators who traveled to distant lands during dawn. He was Samoan. Explorers who set out across the vast ocean to the east, here the islands are much more dispersed and smaller than those to which they traveled from volcanic and coral atolls scattered over huge expanses of water. The common thing must have been the journey that came to no end. Particularly careful organization was needed. and while some islands maintained contacts with each other, others would never hear from their relatives again, remaining completely isolated in their new homes, taking with them coconut, breadfruit, paper, mulberry, pandanus, taro, yam, pumpkin, kumara, dogs, pigs , rats and edible birds, everything needed to start a new civilization in In recent years, the first Polynesian explorers and settlers responsible for populating the entire Pacific Ocean have been called Pacific Vikings, but in reality long before the Sails in Scandinavia, Polynesians embarked on some of the greatest voyages of exploration ever undertaken by humans, though often Isolated from each other, parts of the Pacific were once a gigantic interconnected system held together by the greatest sailors who ever lived, men and women, who traveled thousands of miles of open sea with nothing to guide them but the ocean, the wind and the sky, the required expeditions. amazing skills and levels of guidance that have been lost today the travel culture that developed over the years as each island adopted a new culture in the 16th century, major travel seemed to have mostly ceased, We know about these voyages from the very existence of the island nations. and from the written observances of the oral tradition of Europeans, archaeological evidence in items such as petroglyphs, and testing them for ourselves in the mid-20th century, there was still a certain level of skepticism surrounding the exploits of the ancient Polynesians.

Norwegian writer Thor Heyerdahl took it upon himself to not only prove these detractors wrong, but also show that Polynesians may have even reached America, a prospect hinted at by the existence of a South American sweet potato in the pantry of certain Polynesians and small quantities of genetic evidence also between April and August 1947. Dow completed his voyage on the kontiki from South America to Hawaii using only traditional techniques and a Polynesian canoe. Another similar expedition was successfully launched in the 1970s when a ship called the Haki Layer traveled from Hawaii to Tahiti using only traditional Polynesian techniques, sparking a renaissance. of interest in the old ways interest that culminated most recently in 2017, when a hockey player completed a world voyage using ancient techniques, a three-year circumnavigation of the Earth that covered some 47,000 nautical miles, sometime in the 13th century, at the end, but perhaps at the pinnacle.

Of this period of expansion, a canoe similar to this first made landfall on the islands we now know as New Zealand until relatively recently. Colonization of New Zealand was thought by many to have occurred as early as the 10th century led by a Polynesian navigator called Ku Pay. Only about 400 years later, it was followed by a large fleet of Maori canoes that displaced the earlier Moriori people, although there may have been There was a navigator called Koopa, a figure spoken of in many myths throughout the islands, the rest of the story still What was taught in schools well into the second half of the 20th century is a complete myth invented largely by the Europeans and then eventually adopted by the Maori through the education system.

In reality, there is no evidence at all that a group of earlier settlers were then displaced by the Traditional Maori ethnographers have long traced their ancestry back to around 1300 and in recent years there has been much evidence that this did not The analysis of Earlier dates of rat DNA stowaways aboard ocean-going ships arriving in New Zealand at the same time as the first people suggests that there may in fact have been multiple colonizations around this time, although it remains almost impossible to determine exactly where they were located. these travelers. They first landed with different theories existing from north to south, it is even possible that some of the canoe journeys mythologized by later descendants actually began within New Zealand itself with clans traveling to a different part of the islands to finding the best lands and resources One of the most tantalizing clues found in recent years in a Lior pearl shell fish found on Tarawa, on the eastern side of the Cormandel Peninsula, dating to the late 13th century, was this paper by one of New Zealand's earliest genetic and archaeological towns.

Evidence at the Alabar Albar site in the north of the South Island suggests a date of around 1280 for the arrival of the Polynesians. The fact that some Polynesian crops obviously survived the crossing suggests that at least some of the initial settlers reached somewhere on the North Island or at least made their initial base here further south and the crops simply would not survive because this was a land much colder than they were used to. Of the eight root crops and eleven plant crops found in Polynesia, only six would grow in New Zealand if they had brought chickens and pigs with them and they soon became extinct, leaving only dogs and rats as introduced species. the abundant secret coconut of Polynesian success in the Pacific and the reliable banana could not grow in this temperate climate, not even the kumara sweet potato could only be grown with significant effort in very favorable conditions, but still, more than any of Their ancestors had hit the jackpot with 18,000 kilometers of coastline to explore, filled with seemingly inexhaustible quantities of food and textiles in the form of the abundant and widespread hardy flax plants.

Fish and crustaceans abounded in the wetlands that provided essential material for clothing, baskets, mats, twine, and much more. The seals and sea lions were resting on the shore, never having encountered humans before, they were easy prey. Colossal whales even ran aground from time to time, no doubt feeding entire communities. and over time it formed an important part of Maori mythology, but it was in the interior that the greatest prizes could be found for all those who dared to go looking for, as in Australia, mammals as we know them never were anyway. They arrived in New Zealand, but unlike Australia, where marsupials instead developed.

The birds of New Zealand became the superior animals that filled all the niches that their mammalian cousins ​​would normally occupy in the rest of the world. Some 378 species, often many of which cannot be found anywhere else on Earth. The most iconic of these bird species must surely have been the colossal flightless birds that developed in isolation without the risk of mammalian predators, spent their lives peacefully roaming the forest floor and, of course, became easy targets for hungry people and, over time, their staple diet in the same way that Rhobar's excavations revealed a world shaped by People hear that the lawnmower used eggshells to transport water and their bones to make hooks, harpoons and ornaments, but at the mouth of the Waitaki River between 29,000 and 90,000 individual specimens have been found further south, at the mouth of the Shaged River at least 6,000 MOA were slaughtered in a very short space of time.

Recently discovered cave paintings hint at a bygone era when humans and megafauna lived side by side, although archeology also hints at other beasts, as before the arrival of humans, MOAs had a single predator. Another animal that grew larger and larger over millions of years, mirroring its prey with vertebrae the size of a child's head, the heart-shaped eagle was the largest predatory eagle to ever take to the skies and is likely to have for a brief time developed a taste for human flesh, although curiously, MOA seemed not to have survived in Maori legend, the hearts of the Eagle certainly did in mythological tales from the south to the North Island, all birds have wings and they are often carnivorous, with few alternative food sources as easy to acquire as molars. that did not fear humans, the Polynesians newly arrived in New Zealand quickly got used to killing and eating them within a century, all the slow-breeding MOA along with their predators disappeared forever, it had been the same all over the world in places where there were animals. was not used to humans in Australia, South America and even with the mammoths of Europe, the slow reproducing megafauna simply would not survive after the rapid reproduction and intelligent tools that humans used entered an area, although eventually the Maori They would be forced to adopt the primarily vegetarian diets on which the early settlers lived.

A land of plenty with enough meat for all the protein is excellent for fertility, which means that the population would have increased very quickly and geneticists and demographers argue that an initial population of only 100 to 200 people could have easily increased to one hundred thousand. in the XVIII century. Given the enormous boost provided by the lawnmower, archaeological evidence suggests that those early settlers, whether arriving in just a handful of canoes or many more, had explored all of the islands by the 14th century, even visiting the most remote Fiordland and they were not finished. Some groups may have left New Zealand entirely to try to settle in the Norfolk Islands and reach a weigh station at Pitcairn, on Raoul Island, at Kurma Docks, and certainly to the Chatham Islands, where a distinct group known as the Moriori developed the true origin of that earlier New Zealand myth of two Maori tribes, the initial colonial period lasted about one hundred to one hundred and fifty years, after which the slow-breeding Moer were almost all dead in most areas. areas, leading to a complete revolution of the society and roots of the later Maori tribes.

The Maori culture arrived in the South Island, many groups began a mass migration to better climates in the north andThere is evidence of a large cataclysmic fire that devastated the islands towards the end of this period, perhaps this was a last attempt to eradicate the survivors. MOA by desperate people, perhaps it was a slash and burn style agricultural pursuit that has occurred around the world in ancient times, for example in Neolithic and Bronze Age Europe, no Polynesian settler would have wanted to kill all the mowers didn't even realize that's what they were doing. whose effects ended their world, but for better or worse, the damage was already done and they would have to live with the consequences from then on, going alone, a new era had aunt an era of man on a misty dawn in December 1642 121 days from the port city of Jakarta to Dutch merchant ships sailing on behalf of the Dutch East India Company in search of the supposed continent of Terra Australis, they sighted land on the horizon heading east from Mauritius through of completely unexplored waters.

Abel Tasman ships They had managed to miss Australia completely, but found land. However, on the morning of the 17th they saw smoke rising from the shore. The unmistakable sign of the people. What happened next exists only in Dutch records. The Māori themselves who participated have no voice in this story. They themselves were wiped out by musket-wielding invaders from the Northern Islands in the early 19th century, although recent archaeological research has shown that Tasmanian ships probably reached an important agricultural area based on ship records when Tasmanian Man rode to the coast to collect water twice. In turn, canoes full of Maori came out to inspect them, having no idea of ​​the complicated and traditional etiquette of Maori gathering rituals.

The Tasmanian man inadvertently launched into what must have seemed like a challenge to the natives, returning a trumpet horn and shouting at those gathered. The Maori warriors who quickly attacked ramming Tasman's ships and killing several of the terrified Dutch were fired upon from both sides and when Tasman finally sailed out of the bay he observed 22 war canoes closer to shore, 11 of which were packed with warriors eager to fight against Tasmin's instructions. They have been clear about not confronting the natives he quickly abandoned never to return, but not before naming the murderous place Bey. The body of at least one deceased Dutchman appears to have been brought ashore, possibly to be cooked and eaten so that his manna would have a sort of spiritual capital often translated as prestige or authority to be absorbed by the victors, they noted. or not.

The Maori had gotten off lightly. Diseases did not reach the islands at that time and Europeans would not return for another hundred and fifty years. Over the next twenty years, they also failed to realize that the Tasmanian Screw had just come into contact with their first contact with the complex traditions of Maori life. Fermanagh was not the only concept that played an important role in society because it was often considered a A kind of tit-for-tat revenge is much more complicated than that: it is an obligation of not simply negative but positive reciprocity; For example, a leading warrior is bound by tradition to return a gift, as much as an attack, the breaking of taboos such as trespassing on a sacred area was tantamount to betrayal and a death sentence, the roots of this elaborate system of mutual respect between groups.

They are found in the mysterious 14th and 15th centuries, generally seen as a time of transition in which Maori became less nomadic, settled to find territory, and began to form associations based on kinship and tribal affiliation, many of which claimed descend from one of those first canoes that reached the islands. This desire to put down roots may have arisen in part as a result of the harsh adjustments people were forced to make to their lifestyles following a massive population increase and the resulting disappearance of New Zealand's megafauna, it is even It is possible that certain Māori groups collectively learned from this experience and chose not to hunt many of the remainder. birds later and continued to foster wide-ranging trade networks between areas with access to different food products, so the Māori not only survived but prospered by expanding and intensifying the remaining sources of food production, with the exception of the south of the Island South, which remained spatially populated and fishing reigned supreme gardening became especially important horticulture perhaps provided half of the islands' food in the 18th century foraging remained important and many trees and forests were partially domesticated acting As a garden very similar to the ancient Amazon rainforest, it was not just food that was sold in the 15th century.

The Maori of the South Island exported greenstone to the rest of the islands on an industrial scale. Settlers from the Bay of Plenty in the North Island oversaw the distribution of volcanic obsidian to the remote coasts and residents of Nelson in the north of the South Island mined and distributed argillite, a variety of food products that were only available in certain areas were also stored and traded with other tribes, so although the large ocean-going canoes had disappeared by the 18th century, the waka was still widely used for travel. across lakes, rivers and coasts from north to south to trade the worst, so by the time Europeans arrived in New Zealand every possible social niche had been used and an incredibly complex series of states had been born.

This was the last major community in the world to be on the fringes of globalization in the Chatham Islands east of New Zealand, where resources were scarce and the population remained small as a testament to the power of human adaptability, war and violence. were generally banned in New Zealand, the population was simply too large to say something like this. but complicated checks and balances existed to prevent any one power from overtaking the others. New Zealand arguably had a more complex and extensive culture than anywhere else in Polynesia. Throughout the 15th century, as the Maori population continued to grow, competition for resources increased not only leading to tribal organizations, but the war, a general culture of competitiveness meant that there was a constant need to be alert.

Sometimes tribes came together to federate, other times they fought each other in a shifting mosaic of loyalties. It is possible that their system eventually migrated to the South Island, where people still lived a nomadic existence for longer, perhaps through invading tribes, eventually certain groups would build enormous fortresses partly to claim the land and partly as places of refuge. meeting and shelters to flee to in times of war. It was here that Maori warriors made their stand against the British in the land wars of the 1860s, these forts known as Park were elaborately built with ditches, banks, palisades and usually an inner fortress almost impregnable to sieges. of pre-European type and, in themselves, a way to avoid war, but living on these roads was usually not a permanent way of life, they were there for wartime emergencies that came and went, e.g.

When Cooke and his men arrived in 1769, they found the Maori living extremely different lifestyles and noted that while some lived presumably in perfect peace and harmony. Having had peace secured by Tupaia's diplomacy, others appear to be in a constant state of war, having taken up residence in their former fort complexes in the hills, we now know that it was probably the arrival of the cooks that precipitated this temporary change of lifestyle, traditionally war. It only took place in the summer months and the population was largely unaffected by it, relying only on melee weapons, tribal groups were rarely able to defeat their rivals, fully skilled warriors were of course members highly appreciated by society, but there were many other aspects. of life also before the arrival of the Europeans The Maori enjoyed a deep spiritual connection with the world they inhabited until a kind of priestly class sometimes called chosen once acted as intermediaries between humanity and the spiritual world they knew how to use the forces of nature primarily to invoke protection and healing, although in some circumstances they were said to use black magic to bring misfortune to their enemies.

Flax, a fiber crop, was an invaluable resource for everyday life. Weaving with linen was a career reserved for the women of the tribe. many became master craftsmen in their own right, tattooing a tradition spread throughout the Pacific Islands became increasingly elaborate and unique as time went on, an intricate storytelling system glued directly to the skin, each design was a different chapter in the book, although the tattoo artists were greatly admired. Another art form, wood carving, eventually became perhaps the most sought after skill of all and one that over the course of the transitional 15th century distinguished the Maori from their Eastern Polynesian ancestors.

This was largely a career reserved for skilled master craftsmen who would spend their entire lives enhancing the mana of their entire community through the depiction of deities and the spirits of ancestors, these intricate motifs somewhat reminiscent of the styles of Animal art found throughout the land would be placed wherever they could be on doors, houses, canoes, weapons, staffs and trinkets however this was an incredibly hard life to live around 30 probably the life expectancy to live to be 50 was exceptional Tupaia was not the only Polynesian islander who accompanied Cook on his missions to New Zealand an interpreter named Hetty Hitty accompanied him on his second mission and I'm on my third.

Over the space of many years and many meetings with Māori, these men successfully communicated to their cousins ​​that a much larger world existed outside their own, and of course this knowledge lit a fire of curiosity in many of them. their hearts um, he had even visited England, of course, upon learning of this wider world, many Maori wished to travel with Cook away from their islands to see these wonders for themselves. It is against this backdrop that in the 1770s a young adventurer named Taylor aru and his even younger relative, koa, simply wouldn't take no for an answer from the cook and eventually accompanied their new friend and mentor to the Cook Islands of Tonga and , finally, to the societies where their ancestors may have first colonized New Zealand about 400 years earlier.

It is a sad ending to this story, like that of so many Polynesians throughout the century to come, the three men died a few years before returning to New Zealand. The 19th and 20th centuries were not kind to Māori epidemics and the general loss of their place in the world led to a sharp decline in population until around 1900, despite fighting admirably on the front lines for the British during the First and Second World War. World War, until very recently endemic social disadvantages and government laws kept them in a status of second class citizenship, a situation that The nation is still struggling to overcome in the present, only time will tell what the future holds.