AHC- Kingdom of Aoteroa

I don't think that it's all that unlikely that pigs and chickens would or could have made it. That's a very small push indeed.

On that subject, how would the sweet potato have adapted to New Zealand climate?

On the subject of Moa, sadly no. Moa apparently spent most of their time with their head down, grazing. Ostriches are only looker uppers because they have to be perpetually on the lookout for predators. Also, Moa were very long lived, very slow growing, and slow reproducing animals, so this makes them poor candidates for domestication. Finally, Moa were neither migratory nor inclined to travel through large territories, they occupied basically local territories, so their young didn't have to work particularly hard to keep up with the adults, and they never developed the extra muscle and endurance that in an adult would make for a good draft animal.

Rideable sloths would have been extinct by the time of Polynesian expansion, so that's also a sad no. There would have been a near miss, perhaps a mere thousand years on Gomphotheres.

Merry Christmas, and Happy New Years.
 
Would it have been better if they island hopped in smaller shorter steps with its migrating/travelling host peoples instead of coming in one fell swoop(and I'm referring to chooks, pigs, potatoes and not sloths, Moa and Jaguars or whatever) to NZ. The Islanders would certainly have been aware of the benefits such stock would offer and certainly would have taken some effort to keep their treasures in good shape. And they did manage to bring dogs and edible pet rats with them.
 
I don't think that it's all that unlikely that pigs and chickens would or could have made it. That's a very small push indeed.

On that subject, how would the sweet potato have adapted to New Zealand climate?

Well, for better or worse, here's what the wiki has to say...

"Before European contact, the Māori used the small, yellow-skin, finger-sized kūmara known as taputini,[39] hutihuti and rekamaroa[40] they had brought with them from east Polynesia. Modern trials have shown that the taputini was capable of producing well,[41] but in the early 19th century, when American whalers, sealers and trading vessels introduced larger varieties, they quickly predominated.[42][43][44][45]
In New Zealand, Māori traditionally cooked the kūmara in a hāngi earth oven. This is still a common practice when there are large gatherings on marae. Now there are three main varieties (red, orange and gold) grown in the subtropical northern part of the North Island near Dargaville[46] and widely available throughout New Zealand year-round, where they are a popular alternative to potatoes.[47] The red variety has dull red skin and purple-streaked white flesh, and is the most popular. The orange variety is the same as the American "Beauregard" variety. The gold kumara has pale, yellowish skin and flesh. Trials in New Zealand by Foss Leach between 2000 and 2009 in the Cook Strait area show that the old Maori Taputini variety is capable of producing between 9.8 and 19.5 kg of kumara per 5 x 5m plot, depending on rainfall. No fertilizer was used in these trials.[citation needed]"
 
My father used to grow a few varieties of sweet potatoes and yams on his land near OTL Christchurch which is the earthquake damaged city in the South Island, which inspires me to the believe that with more suitable crops the South Island Iwis would be stronger and larger than in OTL. They were some huge massacres of Southern Maori back in the pre European days by stronger Northern Tribes.

One reason was the bulk of the population were obliged to cling to the coast for the accessibility to food sources in centralised villages. Now if they had potatoes and a few other crops they would not only be larger in population but stronger individually and collectively and wider spread though the ability to grow crops in more places and less susceptable to illness and disease.

In that vein the Canterbury region, Otago plains, Southland and other areas of the South Island were all booming agricultural regions with the introduction of suitable crops and agriculture and until the arrival of the C20 hosted the bulk of NZs population.
 
Would it have been better if they island hopped in smaller shorter steps with its migrating/travelling host peoples instead of coming in one fell swoop(and I'm referring to chooks, pigs, potatoes and not sloths, Moa and Jaguars or whatever) to NZ. The Islanders would certainly have been aware of the benefits such stock would offer and certainly would have taken some effort to keep their treasures in good shape. And they did manage to bring dogs and edible pet rats with them.

Almost certainly transmission would have been indirect. It's about 5000 miles from New Zealand to the coast of South America. That's an impossible voyage, even for the Polynesians.

So best chance would be for the Polynesian age of long distance sailing to have lasted longer, with more chance of more cultural exchanges. Difficult, but not impossible.

Chickens and Pigs are actually pretty likely - they were part of the Polynesian package, so it may have been as simple a thing as a little bit more patience and planning on one or more of the colonizing expeditions, or an extra expedition.

Sweet potatoes came into Polynesia from the Andes, and made their way westward. Contact with the Andean cultures probably came late in the Polynesian expansion, it would have been one of their last ventures. Of course, New Zealand colonization was also very late. After that, everywhere was settled, the sea voyages declined. Sweet Potatoes did not even make it all the way back to all of Polynesia.

So if the sailing tradition had some reason to last a few decades or a century longer, Sweet Potatoes might have spread further through Polynesia, and even to New Zealand. Again, I'm not sure how they'd have adapted to New Zealand climate.

Of course, with a longer and greater sailing period, there may have been more cultural exchange with the Andeans, including possibly quinoa or varieties of potatoes and perhaps more stuff making its way back possibly as far as New Zealand.
 
So why did the Great age of sailing slow down after the land masses were all occupied? Sorry I'm not that well read up on that. I would have though it would have continued with trading opportunities increasing. Mind you I have read that the island groups of the Pacific were very territorial and there is a certain passion in the Pacific Cup Rugby games that's a reminder of that. Could not some middle man trader class or race not have popped up.
 
And is there any truth in the rumour that West Coast -South American chickens are related to Asian poultry and not so much to the European varieties? Apparently the South America-Asian variety go cick cick cick and not cock a doodley dooo.

Put it down to a guy I met in a pub somewhere.
 
Didn't the migration start in India/Asia and move to the islands Fiji and such. Island hopping until you get to Hawaii, Rapa Nui and the America's before coming back to New Zealand.

Oh and just one annoying thing for me, Aotearoa not Aoteroa
 
Yay, I can come in handy here!

Hey guys,

As a New Zealander, I might be able to contribute somewhat to this. I think the only feasible place for an "empire" to be established in New Zealand is in the North/Central part of the North Island (the Waikato, Auckland region, Northland etc.), for geographical reasons.

But the biggest obstacle to the establishment of a Maori empire in New Zealand is Maori culture's traditional extreme decentralisation. Even within tribes, there are multiple iwi and whanau that can (and did) feud with each other. Its virtually impossible for a leader to accumulate enough "mana" (there's not really an English equivalent for this, but I guess "prestige" will do) to unify disaparate tribes.

What may work is if chickens, pigs etc was introduced after the Maori settlement of New Zealand, they would most likely fall into the hands of the Nga Puhi, one of the largest Maori tribes and the most warlike, which were centered in Northland.

Alternatively, if Maori identity was based around the "waka" (semi-mythical great canoes) that the Maori arrived in, there would be less splintering of the tribes and a more unified identity. For example, if the Tainui waka peoples considered themselves one, you swap 9 small(ish) tribes for one big one. Also, you could somewhat increase population pressure by preventing the sinking of the Te Ririno waka, which originally landed in Nelson, but later sank in the Tasman Sea.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a6/IwiMap.png

this map shows iwi (tribes). I'm pretty sure it's colour-coded based on waka origin, but I may be wrong.
 
So why did the Great age of sailing slow down after the land masses were all occupied? Sorry I'm not that well read up on that. I would have though it would have continued with trading opportunities increasing. Mind you I have read that the island groups of the Pacific were very territorial and there is a certain passion in the Pacific Cup Rugby games that's a reminder of that. Could not some middle man trader class or race not have popped up.

I think a number of reasons. One of these might have been resource depletion - the timber to build the big deep sea boats was cut down. This certainly happened on Rapa Nui, but not other places.

The other part was all the good settlement territories had been taken up. There was no new lands, populations were getting full, and visitors weren't wanted. There was a story of an expedition pulling up to an Island, and all the members were killed but one woman.

The resource package for each Island was more or less identical. That's not a foundation for trade. Basically, each island had the same suite of things, so there was nothing to bring that they didn't already have, nothing anybody wanted that wasn't already at home. There was no real economic reason for any continuing trading network.
 
Your not one to let the facts get in the way of a (potentially) good story are .

I thought there were inter-island group movements right past the arrival of the European though wasn't there? I've heard of the invasion fleets between our southern Pacific neighbours and was't there one such big fleet being assembled just when Cook or someone turned up and thought the gathering was for his benefit.

And would over population be an incentive for some at least to head out and see what was out there as a means of escape.
 
Your not one to let the facts get in the way of a (potentially) good story are .

Facts are what makes a potentially good story. It's all about researching and thinking hard. Most times, you can get through something if you work hard enough.

I thought there were inter-island group movements right past the arrival of the European though wasn't there? I've heard of the invasion fleets between our southern Pacific neighbours and was't there one such big fleet being assembled just when Cook or someone turned up and thought the gathering was for his benefit.

True enough. And Cook did find a group of Polynesians at sea, who were able to provide him with a rough map of the Islands.

But saying that the great age of Polynesian Sailing or Exploration is over or in decline doesn't mean that they weren't sailing at all. Something I find significant is that both New Zealand and Rapa Nui had fallen out of the network. It would have taken one voyage to get chickens to New Zealand and possibly made a huge change, but it never happened. There had been contact with South America, and some exchange, but it was largely lost.

And would over population be an incentive for some at least to head out and see what was out there as a means of escape.

I thin that's why some expeditions were slaughtered on arrival.

But don't let me stop you. Start reading, researching, exploring. Read up on how the Polynesians leapfrogged across the ocean, when and where. Read up on their Boats, their Sails, the Navigators. Read. Research. Synthesize. Develop. Go for it!
 
They didn't have any, so it's almost impossible to say. They'd almost certainly adopt the script of any civilisation with writing they encountered, although in a modified form, as was the case with the Latin script. If the Rapa Nui script wasn't wiped out, I assume it would be suitable, being a (THE) Polynesian script.
 
They didn't have any, so it's almost impossible to say. They'd almost certainly adopt the script of any civilisation with writing they encountered, although in a modified form, as was the case with the Latin script. If the Rapa Nui script wasn't wiped out, I assume it would be suitable, being a (THE) Polynesian script.
Adopting the Rapa Nui script is actually good, although I was thinking of the Tamil Bell (which is really impossible)
 
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