Dong Xiuna's "Pen Goes to the End of the World" series 40:
Auckland Museum and the world's largest moa
Wherever I go, visiting local museums is a must for my trip. Our road trip was in New Zealand's South Island, so we didn't go to Wellington, the capital of New Zealand, and the Auckland Museum was our first choice.
The author is in Auckland
We come to the Auckland Museum. Located in Auckland Park in the heart of the city, this museum is a spectacular landscape of majestic architecture. Tour guide Yang Tong told us that Auckland has more than 1,600 parks and reserves, and this is one of the protected areas.
Auckland Street Park Photo by Lin Yan
The Auckland Museum is a Gothic building with a rich collection of the history and Māori artifacts of the country and city. There is no need to buy tickets to visit the exhibition, and donations are accepted for entry. There is a donation box at the entrance of the museum, where visitors can throw coins at will. A group of 10 of us donated a symbolic donation of S$20 (about 100 yuan) and walked into the museum.
There are not many museum staff, they all seem to be older people, and they work extremely seriously, and I heard that they are all volunteers.
Auckland Museum Photo by Dong Xiuna
The museum has three floors. The first level focuses on Māori culture. Here we learn how the Maori discovered the continent in the first place. Glass cases display their clothes and gear, as well as Maori canoes made of "kauri". It was a small boat carved out of a whole tree, without a single nail, and it was a veritable "canoe". It was in such canoes that the Maori discovered and developed the land.
In the 10th century, New Zealand was an uncultivated and barren land. Polynesian navigators from the Cook Islands and Tahiti came to New Zealand in canoes and began their reclamation and life. By the twelfth century AD, the Maori had established several settlements in the area.
In 1642, Dutch navigator Abel Jansson Tasman discovered the west coast of New Zealand during an ocean-going expedition, but was attacked by the Maori during an attempt to land and had to leave quickly. But the navigator named the land after a region of the Netherlands (Nieuw Zealand), and he also mapped parts of the west coast. In 1769, British Navy captain James Cook and his crew passed through New Zealand waters on a chart, becoming the first Europeans to set foot on New Zealand soil. Seals and whale hunters followed, missionaries soon followed, and more European settlements began to be established.
By 1840, New Zealand's Māori population was about 100,000, with about 2,000 European settlers (Maori called them white), spread across the coast. There was no national government and national leader in New Zealand, and Maori and white groups asked Britain for protection and law and order.
The author (1st from right) visits the Auckland Museum with friends
On 6 February 1840, the Maori and the British Crown signed the Treaty of Waitangi in the town of Waitangi in the Bay of Islands, which made New Zealand a colony of the British Crown. Later considered New Zealand's founding document, the treaty gave early pioneers the right to settle in New Zealand and promised Maori continued ownership of their land, forests and fisheries as they wished.
This treaty established the rights of New Zealanders to British citizenship. The Maori would make their own decisions on their land and way of life, and promised a Government that would enable all people to live in peace and the rule of law. After the treaty was signed, more people settled in New Zealand, most to the South Island because the land there was more suitable for farming. During this period, gold was discovered in Otago and the West Coast, and gold prospectors from all over the world flocked to New Zealand. Our old Chinese ancestors in Cambridge are the third group of pioneers to come to New Zealand after the Maori and British.
Within a year of the Treaty of Waitangi, 2,000 British immigrants came to New Zealand to carry out forest logging and land reclamation. New Zealand became a self-governing British colony in 1856. It became an autonomous region in 1907. In 1947, New Zealand became a fully independent country.
The museum displays images of nine Maori chiefs signing an agreement with the British and the British buying the land in Auckland. The British government bought 3,000 acres of land around Auckland (too cheap to buy even a toilet now) with 50 sheets, 20 trousers, 10 petanies, 10 beanies, 10 iron pots, four barrels of tobacco, a box of pipes, a woolen cloth, sugar and flour. This immediately reminds me of Hong Kong, China, where the unequal treaties signed between the British government and the Qing government made Hong Kong return to the embrace of the motherland more than 100 years later. Hong Kong is more than half a world away from New Zealand, and the British really wanted to rule the world.
Brick sculpture at the Auckland Museum Photo by Dong Xiuna
On the second floor of the museum are exhibited various animal and plant materials and specimens. One of the most striking is the remains of moa. I thought the ostrich was the biggest bird among birds, who knows, compared to moa, the ostrich is small.
Here we see specimens of New Zealand's national bird, the KV bird. This is a huge and incomparable "bird" that has only been found in New Zealand in the world at present, and it is a "big bird" that makes New Zealanders extremely proud. A specimen of a moa stands tall in a glass window, looking a bit like an ostrich, so large that it is reminiscent of a dinosaur. According to reports, moa is a bird that cannot fly. This moa is more than 3 meters tall and weighs about 250 kilograms.
Moa specimen with visitor Photo by Dong Xiuna
Once the dominant herbivore in New Zealand's forest ecosystem, the moa population began to decline before humans reached the land, and its extinction was largely due to the hunting and clearing of forests by Maori ancestors. According to scientists in New Zealand, the natural predator of moa birds is the Haasthawk, one of the world's largest eagles, which eats moa as its main food, and with the break of the food chain, the Haasthawk is now extinct.
The living environment of moa Yang Tong at the Auckland Museum
The museum exhibits the discovery of moa. In 1839, a Maori found a bone of about 15 centimeters, which was very light and had many small honeycomb-like holes. He gave the unusual bone to an English businessman interested in natural history. The merchant brought the bone back to England and gave it to his uncle, who was a surgeon. Surgeons later transferred the bone to Richard Owen, who was working at the Hunter Lane Museum in London at the time. Owen studied the bone fragment for 4 years and concluded that it was the femur of a large animal. Four years later, Owen announced to the skeleton community and the world that it was the bones of a giant extinct ostrich-like bird. His reasoning was once ridiculed by the scientific community. Later, fossils of moa birds were discovered in New Zealand, an archaeological discovery that proved Richard Owen's research and inference correct.
Scientists believe that moa became extinct 1,500 years ago. But the Maori Aboriginal people told European settlers that they had seen the giant bird roam the plains and valleys of New Zealand. They believe that moa still lives deep in a forest on the west coast of New Zealand's South Island. The words of the Maori have attracted the attention of scientists, and until now, zoologists are constantly searching for traces of moas, but unfortunately there is still no result, not only have people not seen huge moas, but even their traces have not been found.
Maybe the Maori are just talking about their good intentions. Perhaps moa, like dinosaurs, have long been extinct on Earth. But maybe they've become smart enough to know how to hide from humans? Moa bequeaths to humans a mystery of the ages...
The third floor of the museum displays weapons used in World War II, among other things. In front of the museum stands a majestic memorial to the fallen soldiers, where a solemn memorial ceremony is held every year on April 25.
Later, we set out from Auckland to start an in-depth tour of the South Island, and whenever I walked into the depths of the silent dense forest, I saw the huge moa in front of me, remembering what the Maori said, is there a huge moa hiding in the dense forest?
Dong Xiuna
Look at the inscription on the masthead of China's new media General Ma Yuwei