[This is completely off-topic, but I thought I'd add a few comments]
"R. A. Hettinga" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>about a society of mostly pacifist, egalitarian hunter-gatherer (the kind you
>get in resource poor areas, like the Australian outback or the Kalihari)
>polynesians,
The Moriori.
>from roughly the same cohort (the were from New Zealand even) on a fairly
>barren island to New Zealand's, um, east, I think.
The Chatham Islands.
>Said hunter gatherers had an egalitarian society because everyone had to do
>the roughly same thing to eat: gather birds eggs, rodents, whatever.
Actually they had mostly wiped themselves out in infighting, so they decided by
mutual consent that there was to be no more fighting except for minimal, mostly
ritualised combat. The lack of need to beat each other to death every few
years lead to a general slowdown in development of technology because there was
no need for it.
>Anyway, as part of the Maori's feudalism, of course, was the idea of conquest
>and slavery. One day the Maoris jumped in their big war canoes, sailed out to
>these islands in the middle of nowhere,
The Moriori had been severely weakened by Europeans plundering the place,
destroying their food supplies, and using their women for recreational
purposes. The Maori had been displaced from the mainland and were brought
there by Europeans with the intent of taking over the place.
>and proceeded to conquer and enslave the hunter/gatherers. Game over.
The Moriori wouldn't engage in combat with the Maori, which the Maori with
their warlike culture saw as the behaviour of cowards. "Conquer and enslave"
was closer to "enslave and exterminate", the Moriori have effectively vanished
as a people. I haven't read the book which is referred to, but a lot of the
problem was due to the mixing of very incompatible cultures, I don't know how
well this was presented in the book.
Peter.
