In 2006, New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters said at the ASEAN Summit: "Māori are Chinese!" New Zealand's first inhabitants are descendants of Chinese! "What the hell is going on here?
From Madagascar to Easter Island
As an indigenous people of New Zealand, the Maori language belongs to the Malay-Polynesian (Austronesian) language family, which was the most widely distributed language family before the Age of Discovery. It is also the only language in the world that is predominantly distributed on islands, including islands of all sizes in the Pacific Ocean and some islands in the Indochina Peninsula and the Indian Ocean in the southeastern part of the Asian continent. It ranges east to Easter Island in Chile, South America, Madagascar off the coast of East Africa, New Zealand in the south, Taiwan (a high mountain/indigenous language) and Hawaii Island in the north. It extends from east to west, more than half of the earth's circumference.
Austronesian language distribution
When Magellan set out from the Iberian Peninsula for his unprecedented circumnavigation of the globe, he was accompanied by a slave bought from Sumatra, Henry the Malay. The fleet sailed across the Pacific Ocean for many days, one day they were anchored on a small island in today's Philippine Archipelago. Faced with the large number of natives gathered on the shore, Magellan ordered Henry to go ashore first to inquire about the situation, and Henry went to the natives, which was the most exciting moment in the history of marine exploration: Henry understood the words of the islanders, because it was a relative language belonging to the Malay-Polynesian language family, these natives were his compatriots, and Magellan became the first European to enter the Malay-speaking world from the east.
Magellan was killed in clashes with native Filipinos
But the explorer's interests were only in spices, wealth, and the territories promised to him by the king. It was not until 200 years later that the Dutch navigator, the legendary Captain Cook, noticed the similarity between polynesian in the Pacific and Indonesian in Southeast Asia and Madagascar in Africa, thus unveiling the mystery of the Austronesian language family.
Exactly where the Austronesian languages originated was once a controversial topic. Some scholars once believed that the Austronesian language peoples originated in the areas where they are distributed today, and that they have lived there since ancient times, such as the Melanesian islands in the Pacific Ocean. This kind of thinking is really young, too simple. Although the language itself can no longer be traced, the spread of ancient languages is directly related to the migration of people. Therefore, archaeological discoveries can help us solve the mystery of the origin of language. As with much of the world, much of today's Austronesian language range —Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, and many Pacific islands—was originally occupied by hunter-gatherer groups with no pottery, no polished stone tools, no livestock, and no crops.
Within the range of today's Austronesian language, Taiwan's Neolithic period began roughly 6,000 years ago. The earliest known artifacts are of the South China type, which were probably brought by a small group of peasants who crossed the Taiwan Strait from Fujian. Artifacts with the characteristics of this period found extensively on the island include Jomon pottery, polished stone hammers and stone sickles, slate spearheads and baked earth spinning wheels;
The making of Taiwanese Jomon pottery
Between 5,000 and 4,500 years ago, archaeological artifacts with clear links to these types spread to the Philippines, Sulawesi and North Borneo, and (along with pigs) as far south-east as the coast of Timor Island and into suitable inland areas. Studies of pollen history in western Java and the Sumatra Plateau region show that at least 3,000 years ago or earlier, considerable deforestation was carried out in these areas for agriculture. Thus, after about 1,000 years, and by 4,000 years ago, agricultural colonization had expanded from Taiwan to the western border of Melanesia. Finally, and perhaps most surprisingly, between 2500 and 1000 years ago, agricultural colonists completed the conquest of the vast polynesia beyond Samoa. In other words, Austronesian agricultural colonists traveled from the agricultural heartland through about 10,000 kilometers of sea and coastline over a period of about 1500 years, through southeast Asian islands to the western edge of Polynesia. This is much more rapid and vast than any colonization process in prehistoric times. The two sides of the Taiwan Strait may be the starting point of this prehistoric expansion of the Austronesian language family.
Expansion of the Austronesian language family
Epic of the Polynesians
It was indeed a magnificent epic. In the absence of nautical instruments such as compass needles and sextants, the Malay-Polynesian ancestors relied only on their unique navigational techniques, relying on astrological signs, ocean currents, the location of islands and the flight routes of migratory birds to judge the direction, fought heroically against the wind and waves at sea, and finally conquered the entire Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean. They were truly great navigators, brave explorers. We can't help but ask, how exactly did they do it?
First of all, they had excellent techniques for building canoes and developed from building canoes to building ships for ocean voyages. They juxtaposeed two canoes 20-30 meters long, with planks in the middle as decks, and huts built on the decks. It can carry dozens of people, and can also load pigs, chickens, dogs and other livestock. The capacity of such a ship to carry people and livestock is sufficient to ensure that they can start a new life on other islands. At the same time, such a ship can remain stable in the waves, which is very suitable for ocean navigation. The longest voyage in Polynesian waters takes about a month. During this period, they can carry several foods that are easy to preserve, such as potatoes, bananas, coconut fruits, etc., and drinking water is stored in containers such as coconut scoops, bamboo pipes, gourds, etc., and they are trained to drink as little water as possible before sailing to the ocean.
Polynesian catamaran
Today, the ancestors of Taiwan's mountain tribes spread out in simple canoes in prehistoric times, heading to the Philippine Archipelago, the Malay Peninsula, the Indonesian Archipelago... The population of the South Island (Malay-Polynesian) language family expanded westward to the African island of Madagascar and eastward along the Pacific island chain, ending with the discovery of New Zealand.
It is said that in 950 AD, a young navigator named Kupe discovered New Zealand by a canoe from Samoa (in the heart of the Polynesian archipelago in the southern Pacific Ocean) by a canoe. When he approached the island, the first thing he saw was the white clouds in the blue sky, and the island was so deserted that Kupu called the island "the land of long white clouds (Aotearoa)." Soon, a large number of Polynesians formed a fleet of canoes and came to New Zealand. They soon discovered that the land they had moved to was very different from the other Polynesian islands in their memory, and that it was a "big" land, and they went deep inland from different landing points to form different tribes that would later form. Some Māori elders still remember the names of the ships their ancestors took when they moved east, as well as the names of their ship chiefs, priests and helmsmen, whose genealogical lineage dates back more than 20 generations. But the word "maori" did not appear at this time. Because the south and north islands of New Zealand were almost isolated from the outside world, the early Polynesian immigrants did not deliberately find a word to name themselves, and at that time, in their language, the word "Maori" meant "ordinary". It was only after europeans arrived that they referred to themselves as Maori and referred to white Europeans as "pakeha", a term now generically referring to white New Zealanders. In appearance, Maori look like Asians; physically, they look like Europeans and Americans. Even in the accounts of early European immigrants, Māori were generally taller than them.
Contemporary Maori (Sir Jerry Matt Palay, former Governor-General of New Zealand, who is reviewing soldiers)
It took these Maori less than 100 years to discover valuable stone resources, and it took just a few hundred years to kill all the giant plant-eating moa in some of the most rugged parts of the world— flightless birds, so large and legs as thick as a cow's leg, even relatively small bush moa, the size of a turkey, so it is extremely easy to catch and can provide a large amount of fresh meat. Early settlers also lived in areas where moa were frequent and used moa as their main source of food until mass hunting led to the extinction of moa (and led to the extinction of the world's largest bird of prey, the Haster eagle), and then spent only a few hundred years dividing into a variety of societies, from coastal hunter-gatherer societies to new types of grain storage farmer societies. The most important food they brought from their legendary homeland of "Shawicky" was sweet potatoes. Sweet potatoes are still cherished by Maori people today. Where sweet potatoes are grown, Māori are multiplied. The reason why the northern part of the North Island is more populous is due to the mild climate and abundant sweet potato production. Of course, from the perspective of modern people, the life expectancy of Maori people at that time was very short, the average life expectancy was only about 30 years, few people could live to 40 years old, and it was even more rare to live to 50 years old. Due to widespread malnutrition, they may suffer from various ailments in their 20s, such as arthritis, and their teeth will come loose and fall out. As a result, people in their 40s probably look frosted.
Moa that once lived in New Zealand
Conquer the Maori at the end of the world
By the 18th century, New Zealand's Maori population had reached around 100,000 to 110,000 people. In traditional Maori society, boys were taught from an early age to be good warriors like legendary heroes and heroic tribal ancestors. They have honed their fighting skills in games since childhood; as teenagers, they are taught the use of various weapons and the qualifications necessary for the sacred duty of a warrior by the male elders of the tribe. Before the arrival of the Europeans, the most commonly used weapons of the Maori were stick-like weapons made of natural materials such as stone, wood, and bone. Imagine how frequent and inevitable disputes and fights between neighboring clans or tribes can be in the North Island (New Zealand), crowded with hundreds of Maori tribes.
Maori war scenes
And the militant Maori continued their last expansion even after Europeans came to New Zealand.
The Chatham Islands, 800 kilometres east of New Zealand, are the furthest corner of the civilized world. Before the 19th century, the Moriori people lived here. The hardships of life made human resources precious, so the Moriorians really created a "Garden of Eden" without war, and all disputes were resolved peacefully. Unfortunately, a seal hunting boat had been to the Chatham Islands on its way to New Zealand, and it brought news about the archipelago to the "land of long white clouds", where "there are a large number of marine fish and shelled aquatic animals; the lake is full of eels; it is the home of Karaka berry... There were many inhabitants there, but they didn't know how to fight, so they didn't have weapons. ”
New Zealand scenery
The news was enough to lure Maori people on the island of New Zealand to take a boat to the Chatham Islands. On 19 November 1835, 500 Maori arrived in a boat with guns, sticks and axes. Then on 5 December, another ship brought in 400 Maori. Groups of Maori walked past the Moriori settlements, declaring that the Moriori were now their slaves and killing those who objected. In the days that followed, they killed hundreds of Moriori, boiled many of their corpses to eat, and enslaved all the rest, and in the years that followed they killed most of them as they pleased. One Moriorie survivor recalled, "[The Maori] started killing us like sheep... Frightened, [we] fled into the bushes, into burrows, to wherever we could hide from our enemies. But it didn't work; we were found and killed—men, women, and children, all hell of a brain. ”
The Garden of Eden was destroyed. In fact, the conquerors and the conquered are close relatives of the race – both are the final chapters of the legendary epic of the Polynesian conquest of the seas. The Moriori may have been a Maori group that migrated to the Chatham Islands around 1300 AD. However, Maori tropical crops could not have grown here in the cold climate, so the immigrants had no choice but to return to hunter-gatherer life. The Moriorians forgot about farming, and they forgot about war—which ultimately led to their own demise. Purebred Moriolis have become extinct, while Maori have lived in modern times, Maori culture has become an important feature of New Zealand culture, the New Zealand rugby team composed of whites will perform Maori war dances when they enter; through the unremitting efforts of the Aboriginal people, today's Maori has become another official language of New Zealand in addition to English – although the New Zealand government requires immigrants to have only English (IELTS) scores.
Street view of Auckland, New Zealand
(Some of the photos in this article are provided by Mr. Zhang Feiran, who lives in Auckland in Shanghai)
bibliography:
Zhao Xiaohuan and Qiao Xueying, New Zealand: History, Nationalities and Culture, Fudan University Press, 2009
Diamond, J., translated by Xie Yanguang, Guns, Germs and Steel, Shanghai Translation Publishing House, 2000