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W

Zealand, centuries of independence cam

e to a brutal end for the M

oriori people in Decem

ber 1835. On N

ovember 1

9 of that year, a ship

carrying 500 Maori anried w

ith guns, clubs, and axes arrived, followed on

Decem

ber 5 by a shipload of 400 more M

aori. Groups of M

aori began to w

alk througk-Moriori settlem

ents, announcing that the Moriori w

ere now

their slaves, and killing those who objected. A

n organized resistance by the M

oriori could still then have defeated the Maori, w

ho were outnum

- bered tw

o to one. How

evec, the Moriori had a tradition of resolving dis-

putes peacefully. They decided in a council m

eeting not to fight back but

to offer peace, friendship, and a division of resources. B

efore the Moriori could deliver that offer, the M

aori attacked en m

asse. Over the course of the next few

days, they killed hundreds of Mori-

ori, cooked and ate many of the bodies, and cnslaved all the others, killing

most of them

too over the next few years as it suited their w

him A

Moriori

survivor recalled, '[The M

aori] comm

enced to kill us Wre sheep. . . . [We]

were terrified, fled to the bush, concealed ourselves in holes yidergound,

and in any place to escape our enem

ies. ~t w

as of no avail; we w

ere discov- and killed-m

en, w

omen, and children indiscrim

inately." A M

aori conqueror explained. 'W

e took possession. . . in accordance w

ith our cus-

toms and w

e caught all the people. Not one escaped. Som

e ran away from

us, these w

e killed, and others we killed-bur

what of that? It w

as in accor- dance w

ith our custom."

The brutal outcom

e of this collision between the ,M

oriori and rhe Maori

could have been easily predicted. The M

oriori were a sm

all, isolated popu- lation of hunter-gatherers, equipped w

ith only the simplest technology and

weapons, entirely inexperienced at w

ar, and lacking strong leadership or organization. T

he Maori invaders (from

New

Zealand's

Nonh Island)

came from

a dense population of farmers chronically engaged in ferocious

wars,

equipped with

more-advanced

technology and

weapons,

and operating under strong leadership. O

f course, when the tw

o groups finally cam

e into contact, ir was theM

aori who slaughtered the M

oriori, not vice versa.

The tragedy of the M

oriori resembles m

any other such tragedies in both the m

odern and the ancient world, pitting num

erous well-equipped people

against few ill-equipped opponents. W

hat makes the M

aori-Moriori colli-

sion grimly illum

inating is that both groups had diverged from a com

mon

origin less than a millennium

earlier. Both w

ere Polynesian peoples. The

modern M

aori are descendants of Polynesian farmers w

ho colonized New

Z

ealand around A.D

. 1000. Soon thereafter, a group of those M

aori in turn colonized the C

hatham Islands and becam

e the Moriori. In the centu-

ries after the two groups separated, they evolved in opposite directions,

the North Island M

aori developing moreiom

plex and the Moriori less-

complex technology and political organization. T

he Moriori reverted to

being hunter-gatherers, while the N

orth Island Maori turned to m

ore intensive farm

ing. T

hose opposite evolutionary courses sealed the outcome o

f their even- tual collision. If w

e could understand the reasons for the disparate devel- opm

ent of

those tw

o island societies,

we

might

have a

model

for understanding the broader question of differing developm

ents on the con- tinents.

MO

RIO

RI

AN

D M

AO

RI histo~

y constitutes a brief, small-scale natural

experiment that tests how

mvironm

enrs affect human societies. Before you

read a whole book exam

ining environmental effects on a very large scale--

effects on human societies around the w

orld for the last 13,000 years- you m

ight reasonably want assurance, from

smaller tests, that such effects

....- - .. t. !r$

really are significant. If you were a laboratory scientist s~

dy

ing

rats, you

might perform

such a test by taking one rat colony, distributing groups of those ancestral rats am

ong many cages w

ith differing environments, and

coming back m

any rat generations later to see what had happened. O

f course, such purposeful experim

ents cannot be carried out on human soci-

eties. Instead, scientists must look for "natural experim

enn," in which

something sim

ilar befell humans in the past.

Such an experiment unfolded during the settlem

ent of Polynesia. Scat- tered over the Pacific O

cean beyond New

Guinea and M

elanesia are thou- sands of islands differing greatly in area, isolation, elevation, clim

ate, productivity, and geological and biological resources (Figure 2.1). For m

ost of human history those islands lay far beyond the reach of w

ater- craft. A

round 1200 s.~

. a group of farming, fishing, seafaring people from

the B

ismarck A

rchipelago north of New

Guinea finally succeeded in reach-

ing some of those islands. O

ver the following centuries their descendants

colonized virtually every habitable scrap of land in the Pacific. The process

was m

ostly complete by A

.D. 500, w

ith the last few islands settled around

or soon after A.D. 1000. ~

hu

's, within a modest tim

e span, enormously diverse island environ-

ments w

ere settled by colonists all of whom

stemm

ed from the sam

e founding population.. T

he ultimate ancestors of all m

odern Polynesian populations shared essentially the sam

e culture, language, technology, and set of dom

esticated plants and animals. H

ence Polynesian history consti- tutes a natural experim

ent allowing us to study hum

an adaptation, devoid of the usual com

plications of multiple w

aves of disparate colonists that often frustrate our attem

pts to understand adaptation elsewhere in the

world. W

ithin that medium

-sized test, the fate of the Moriori form

s a smaller

test. It is easy to trace how the differing environm

ents of the Chatham

Islands and of N

ew Z

ealand molded the M

oriori and the Maori differ-

ently. While those ancestral M

aori who first colonized the C

hathams m

ay have been farm

ers, Maori tropical crops could not grow

in the Chatham

s' cold clim

ate, and the colonists had no alternative except to revert to being hunter-gatherers. Since as hunter-gatherers they did not produce crop sur- pluses available for redistribution or storage, they could not support and feed nonhunting craft specialists, arm

ies, bureaucrats, and chiefs. Their

Prey were seals, shellfish, nesting seabirds, and fish that could he captured

hand or with clubs and required no m

ore elaborate technology. In addi-

Figure 2.1. Polynesian islands. (Parentheses denote sa

e non-Polynesian

lands.)

tion, the Chatham

s are relatively small and rem

ote islands, capable of sup- porting a total population of only about 2,000 hunter-gatherers. W

ith no other accessible islands to colonize, the M

oriori had to remain in the C

hat- ham

s, and to learn how to get along w

ith each other. They did so by

renouncing war, and they reduced potential conflicts from

overpopulation by castrating som

e male infants. T

he result was a sm

all, unwarlike popula-

tion with sim

ple technology and weapons, and w

ithout strong leadership or organization.

In contrast, the northern (warm

er) part of New

Zealand, by far the

largest island group in Polynesia, was suitable for Polynesian agriculture.

Those M

aori who rem

ained in New

Zealand increased in num

bers until there w

ere more than 100,000 of them

. They developed locally dense pop-

ulations chronically engaged in ferocious wars w

ith neighboring popula- tions. W

ith the crop surpluses that they could grow and store, they fed

craft specialists, chiefs, and part-time soldiers. T

hey needed and developed varied tools for grow

ing their crops, fighting, and making art. T

hey erected elaborate cerem

onial buildings and prodigious numbers of forts.

Thus, M

oriori and Maori socieries developed from

the same ancestral

society, but along very different lines. The resulting y

o societies lost

awareness even of each other's existence and did not com

e into contact again for m

any centuries, perhaps for as long as 500 years. Finally, an A

ustralian seal-hunting ship visiting the Chatham

s en route to New

Z

ealand brought the news to N

ew Z

ealand of islands where "there is an

abundance of sea and shellfish; the lakes swarm

with eels; and it is a land

of the karaka berry.. . . The inhabitants are very num

erous, but they do not understand how

to fight, and have no w

eapons." T

hat news w

as enough to induce 900 M

aori to sail to the Chatham

s. The outcom

e clearly illustrates how

environments can afkct econom

y, technology, political organization, and fighting skills w

ithin a short time.

As

I A

LR

EA

DY

mentioned, the M

aori-Moriori collision represents a

small test w

ithin a medium

-sized test. What can w

e learn from all of Poly-

nesia about environmental influences on hum

an societies? What differ-

ences am

ong societies on

different Polynesian islands

need to

be

explained? Polynesia as a w

hole presented a much w

ider range of environmental

conditions than did just New

Zealand and the C

hathams, although the

latter define one extreme (the sim

ple end) of Polynesian organization. In their subsistence m

odes, Polynesians ranged from the hunter-gatherers of

the Chatham

s, through slash-and-bum fanners, to practitioners of inten-

sive food production living at some of the highest population densities

of any hum

an societies. Polynesian food producers variously intensified production of pigs, dogs, and chickens. T

hey organized work forces to

construct large irrigation systems for agriculture and to enclose large

ponds for fish production. The econom

ic basis of Polynesian societies con- sisted of m

ore or less self-sufficient households, but some islands also sup-

ported guilds

of hereditary

part-time

craft specialists.

In social

organization, Polynesian societies ran the gamut from

fairly egalitarian village societies to som

e of the most stratified societies in the w

orld, with

many hierarchically ranked lineages and w

ith chief and comm

oner classes w

hose mem

bers married w

ith their ow

n class. In political organization, Polynesian islands ranged from

landscapes divided into independent tribal or village units, up to m

ulti-island proto-empires that devoted standing

military establishm

ents to invasions of other islands and wars of conquest.

5 8

GU

NS,

GE

RM

S.

AN

D S

TE

EL

Finally, Polynesian material culture varied from

the production of no more

than personal utensils to the construction of monum

ental stone architec- ture. H

ow can all that variation be explained?

Contributing to these differences am

ong Polynesian societies were at

least six sets of environmental variables am

ong Polynesian islands: island clim

ate, geological t).pe, marine resources, area, terrain fragm

entation, and isolation. Let's exam

ine the ranges of these factors, before considering their specific consequences for Polynesian societies.

The clim

ate in Polynesiavaries from w

arm tropical or subtropical on

most islands, w

hich lie near the equator, to temperate on m

osr of New

Z

ealand, and cold subantarctic on the Chatham

s and the southern part of N

ew Z

ealand's South Island. Haw

aii's Big Island, though lying w

ell within

the Tropic of C

ancer, has mounkins high enough to support alpine habi-

tats and receive occasional snowfalls. R

ainfall varies from the highest

recorded on Earth (in N

ew Z

ealand's Fjordland and H

awaii's

Alakai

'swam

p on Kauai) to only one-tenth as m

uch on islands sodry that they are m

arginal for agriculture. Island geological types include coral atolls, raised lim

estone, volcanic islands, pieces of continents, and m

ixtures of those types. At one extrem

e, innum

erable islets, such as those of the Tuam

otu Archipelago, are flat, low

atolls barely rising above sea level. O

ther former atolls, such as H

enderson and R

ennell, have been lifted far above sea level to constitute raised lime-

stone islands. Both of those atoll types present problem

s to human settlers,

because they consist entirely of limestone w

ithout other stones, have only very thin soil, and lack perm

anent fresh water. A

t the opposite extreme,

the largest Polynesian island, New

Zealand, is an old, geologically diverse,

continental fragment of

Gondw

analand, offering a range of

mineral

resources, including comm

ercially exploitable iron, coal, gold, and jade. M

ost other large Polynesian islands are volcanoes that rose from the sea,

have never formed pans of a continent, and m

ay or may not include areas

of raised limestone. W

hile lacking New

Zealand's geological richness, the

,oceanic volcanic islands at least are an improvem

ent over atolls (from the

Polynesians' perspective) in that they offer diverse rypes of volcanic stones, som

e of which are highly suitable for m

aking stone rools. T

he volcanic islands differ among them

selves. The elevations of the

higher ones generate rain in the mountains, so the islands are heavily

weathered and have deep soils and perm

anent streams. T

hat is uue, for instance, of the Societies, Sam

oa, the Marquesas, and especially H

awaii,