New research shows Māori adapted quickly in the face of rapid climate change

https://theconversation.com/new-research-shows-ancestral-maori-adapted-quickly-in-the-face-of-rapid-climate-change-194155

by Hooke • 4 years ago

54 51 4 years ago

theconversation.com

ispo4• 4 years ago

Is there evidence of other cases where there was no such adaptive behaviour in other human groups? I study adaptation to shocks in modern societies and I am ashamed to admit we have no clue why it does not work.

TheRealPomax• 4 years ago

I mean, there's North Sentinel island...

ispo4• 4 years ago

Sorry that I don't know about this case, please can you specify what do you mean exactly?

wahern2• 4 years ago

I imagine there are important definitional aspects that come into play. When the article says,

Models developed from radiocarbon dates and the distribution of archaeological sites indicate the population shifted back to the north and grew between 1350 and 1450. In the north, soils were ideal for agriculture and temperatures were warmer.

does that mean that people literally migrated, or merely that the northern population grew predominately through, e.g., a greater reproductive rate while the southern shrank in-place according to similar dynamics? If the latter, is that actually adaptation in the sense you mean?

ispo4• 4 years ago

Not really, adaptation in my context means changes in what you do, so that you cope better with a new stressor.

Migration as adaptation is really less interesting for me, while learning new practices, tools and even management styles without migrating means higher levels of adaptive behaviour.

inreverse• 4 years ago

It feels like they're implying rapid climate change killed the moas in less than 200 years, coincidentally right after human arrival. Nothing to do with being hunted to extinction?

Strange article.

musk_micropenis• 4 years ago

As a kiwi let me tell you, there's a lot of revisionist history happening with regards to Maori in progressive circles. theconversation.com is a VERY progressive publication.

northwest65• 4 years ago

That's a polite way of putting it.

Gareth321• 4 years ago

It's absolutely bizarre. I've got a friend working in healthcare in New Zealand and she was given a mandatory class which taught that "Western science" is "imperialist" and that Maori traditional knowledge is "just as valid." For reference, Maori traditional knowledge is stuff like ghosts (taniwha) and spiritual energy (mana).

It's like they're taking the noble savage trope to the craziest ends and just running with it; public outcomes be damned. Some really unhinged ideologues are in positions of power right now.

causi3• 4 years ago

You don't even need to go into progressive circles. Check out https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/09/in-new-zealand-conse...

peterashford2• 4 years ago

There's also a lot of reactionary right wing response to anything involving Maori which isn't disparaging or outright racist - as evidenced by the apoplectic reaction from some quarters to merely hearing Maori spoken in the media. A lot of things I hear described as "revisionist" just come down to lack of knowledge of NZ history - eg: claims about "legal" Maori land sales are usually made by people woefully unaware of the actions and conduct of the Maori Land Court.

godmode2019• 4 years ago

The article doesn't say that.

It says the settlers could no longer hunt them as it was uneconomical. Its well known Moa were hunted in large numbers until their were none left. They left that out because its common knowledge to the target reader.

MichaelCollins• 4 years ago

At the time of settlement, the south had colonies of the large flightless moa. The early settlers rapidly adapted to this temperate climate, living on a diet of moa, seafood and vegetables grown in their garden plots.
But then the Little Ice Age interfered with this lifestyle. After 1350, conditions became significantly colder in the south. By around 1400-1420, moa hunting became uneconomic and put these fledgling communities under immense pressure. Once again, people had to adapt quickly.

This is plainly misleading. It implies without explicitly stating that the Little Ice Age interfered with their moa-eating lifestyle by making moa hunting uneconomical.

justinator2• 4 years ago

My thought after reading the article is that they were hunted to the brink, and then climate change did them in. Somewhat akin to what also (or may in a few more decades) happen to the American Buffalo. Rich Māori having holding pens for the last of the Moa just for curiosity sake is a funny thought.

NZ today is a tough place to stay alive. One of my closest brushes with death happened there in a rapidly rising river that trapped me on a small island for 3 days without a shelter. Once I extracted myself out, the general feeling from the rangers and locals is what happened to me wasn't so rare, except somehow I managed to survived.

EdwardDiego4• 4 years ago

The actual feeling of the rangers and locals would've been "FFS, the weather forecasts are pretty specific, everyone knows heavy rain means floods, but at least we're not searching for your body."

Source - former ranger.

RowanH• 4 years ago

NZ today is a tough place to stay alive.

This might be a low effort reply, but a bunch of us manage too :)

In all seriousness every country has it's own unique things that locals are very much familiar with and outsiders it's just foreign to.

Australia - predisposed to critters that want to kill you. Checking your shoes for spiders is a thing.

America - well I'll leave the obvious out, but there's some pretty nasty deserts you'd not want to be caught out in, or the odd cat 4 Tornado, or my favourite from last visit, walking past a tree that had head high claw marks all through it (either Cougar or Bear, wtf, that was like a 20min walk from the hotel in boulder!!)

Then there's Canada -40c anyone? That's really not meant for human survival.

RileyJames• 4 years ago

Having moved from Australia to New Zealand, I’d say the opposite.

There’s nothing here that can kill you.

No bushfires. No snakes. Very few sharks. Spiders are rare, and white tails don’t kill. It doesn’t get hot enough to kill you. There’s water everywhere, but it doesn’t seem to flood.

I’m assuming your rising river was on the South Island. Definitely plenty of opportunities to get yourself in trouble down there, but you’d have to go well out of your way.

Earthquakes are the only new danger, and they’re mostly in the south / Wellington.

No crocodiles. No camels (car accidents).

Both countries have bikie/gang violence, but I’m not sure that’s a real danger for gen pop.

Mandatum4• 4 years ago

except somehow I managed to survived.

We don't have many deaths from hikers and trampers. Most are from falls, others from drowning. I'm sure you prepared for the hike, many tourists do not and it's often national news when someone goes missing off a trail.

If you go for long tramps, you take your own food and shelter. And hopefully either an emergency beacon or check the area for cell service.

The fact you were there for 3 days, I assume you either never told anyone where you were - and they weren't aware you were stranded, and you didn't have any method for contacting emergency services.

If you did have a method for contacting them, if you have food, they'll quite happily let your suffer for up to 5 days as they know hypothermia is unlikely, you'll either be a little dehydrated or hungry - but provided you're not injured, they'll let you trek back on your own - they'll only send people out if you don't come back after a few more days. If you were injured, they'd have sent the Westpac helicopter to you within a week (when it's convenient or you're on a flight path convenient to other rescues). Most of the time that helicopter is used for immediate evacuation scenarios (strokes, heart attacks, etc) - and hikers usually aren't in that bucket.

They might be miserable, but being hungry with a shattered ankle, you're not a priority.

peterashford2• 4 years ago

That implication wasn't clear to me, from reading the article.

tux2bsd4• 4 years ago

Simply hunted to extinction. It's a shame history is being rewritten in front of our eyes.

pmontra2• 4 years ago

Migrations from too hot areas to warm or cold ones is what is going to happen. But moving to an empty area is different from moving to a heavily populated one. Moving thousands of people is different than moving maybe billions. It's not going to be easy and probably not cooperative. And that will be probably happening together with sea level rising and the resulting destruction / relocation of infrastructure. Very interesting times, much more than now.

Out_of_Characte• 4 years ago

you are overestimating the damage caused by higher sea level and severely underestimating the damage caused by moving the freshwater saltwater line. I live in the Netherlands where we're basacally set up for sea level rises and severe storms that could happen once every 10000 years. so we have plenty of margin.

But the movenement of the freshwater/saltwater line is something we cannot control and it has severe impacts on fishing and the ecosystem now.

pmontra2• 4 years ago

Agreed. Maybe my use of infrastructure is improprer. I meant it to encompass farmland. We had problems with the salt wedge underground when the Po river had not enough water this summer, the sea entered the river mouth for kilometers and farmers couldn't pump fresh water from underground because it got salty.

noobermin• 4 years ago

This is kind of surprising, I am a Palauan, and people from what anthropologists know settled Palau from Southeast Asia around 1000 BC, so I sort of assumed the pacific was settled well before the common era. I never imagined an island settlement so recent, literally within written history at least from a European perspective.

zardo• 4 years ago

Settling deep into the Pacific required pretty advanced sailing technology. Hawaii was only settled in ~1100 CE. I don't think anyone else managed to build a ship that could sail within 50 degrees of the wind direction untill the 1600's.

EdwardDiego4• 4 years ago

This is bizarre. Yes, archaic Māori population density shifted from the South Island to the North following the (close enough) extinction of the moa.

(And the people who would become the Moriori migrated from the South Island to the Chathams)

But this isn't surprising, the crops they brought with them from Hawaiki grew better in the North Island, so when the moa population collapsed (entirely due to hunting) it makes sense that population density would shift from the areas good for moa to the areas good for agriculture.

There's no evidence that I've ever seen that ties the extinction of moa to the Little Ice Age.

New research shows Māori adapted quickly in the face of rapid climate change

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