- IJ & YM
Sidestep: Cannibalism revealed in the middens
Cannibalism. We know it occurred here, but when did it start in Aotearoa and why? Thousands of years ago...or more recently?
We wondered this for a long time. But we can now conclusively say that the eating of human flesh in these lands only began after the Polynesians arrived. That evidence is borne out in a report on middens in the South island.
Middens are everywhere but most are on the coast. An inspection of a midden at Shag Point in Otago revealed the bottom layer above the sand had unbroken moa bones and dog bones and flints. The few tangata whenua (indigenous) and plentiful game did not necessitate the need to glean the marrow. After all, when you eat a lamb leg, do you eat the marrow? But if you were starving and your food supply was scarce you might!
The layer on top of this midden had moa bones broken for their marrow. The third and top layer included moa necks and heads. Greenstone was only found in the lowest level - ie the period before Polynesian. This reveals the knowledge of greenstone was here long before the Polynesians saw it. These various levels show stages of occupation. At an ancient Rakaia site moa bones showed no signs of gnawing by dogs showing they were not domesticated at that time. But Maori domesticated them and Polynesian occupation areas show every bones near pa as gnawed.
Human bones were also in the layers, but only in the top layers. Only the earliest (lower) levels showed no signs of human bone. They only appear after the disappearance of the moa and the feral dog!
The Te Rapuwai era of the indigenous (pre-Polynesian) was before 850AD. When the early Polynesians before the migrations, (the Moa hunters) burned the forest of Otago and Canterbury to gain easier access to the moa the indigenous here also were exposed and they feel easy prey to the (Waitaha) invaders, who in turn were supplanted by the Polynesian invaders.
The unbroken bones of the lowest strata and the broken bones of the central strata indicate a reduction in the bountifulness of the game and as such the hunters had to go to the trouble of splitting the bones in order to add to their supplies. These stratified mounds imply many centuries, if not millenniums, in the formation, especially where they lie far inland; even if their position is not due to change of sea-level, the necessity of having to carry miles from the shore the products of the sea that are found in them would mean an enormously slower rate of increase of these shell-heaps than on the beach; and, though the palaeolithic and the neolithic implements are intermingled in all the stages of culture in New Zealand, the advance, in their polish, manifest in the mounds, implies long periods.
Human bones in the cooking pits/middens, appear only from around 1400AD.
Cannibalism then, wasn't something Maori learned from those already here (as we once believed). Unless other evidence proves otherwise, it seems it was likely brought by those who had come here from conflict in Hawaiiki and whose brutality was the result of growing up in that violent era of religious disputes and the need to find a new home for the new cult.
