'New' Research???

'New' research has 'discovered' Maori had a plant based diet as a central component of their existence prior to 'colonisation'. I despair a little when reading academic findings as if they are something new and unobvious to the average person in NZ. Too much of the vaccines maybe...?

The only 'meat' Maori could eat were birds (not enough meat on birds once Maori had exterminated the Moa and the giant goose), seafood, dogs (but eat them all and they are exterminated), rats and washed up whales etc. There are examples of massive gardening areas all over the land, including by the coast. When Maori arrived here to find small groups of existing peoples they didn't follow the food sources of the original inhabitants, instead they took to the moa, both because of their size and food value and that these new Polynesian arrivals were from an expelled cult from Raiatea and therefore fierce and brave enough to tackle even the biggest moa before wiping out all trace of them within 100 years of arriving here. Ironically, and hypocritically, they now regard the moa as taonga (a treasured species). Only when the 'evil colonisers' arrived and settled did Maori once again eat land based meat.

You can read it in minor detail here...

https://phys.org/news/2026-04-ancient-mori-largely-based-diets.html