WI: Aboriginal New Zealand

If you find it insulting that I said You should read and study before posting authoritatively about something you don't know about then that's you're own ego. I posted books above, read into them.

You're still not telling me why my analysis is wrong. You're just unproductively commenting on this matter instead of posting anything useful. I know when I see incorrect information on this site, I comment on it with the facts instead of just criticising the poster's lack of knowledge. Please, by all means, show me where I'm wrong, since I'd love to find out.
 
OMG everything I wrote didn't go through and I fucking lost it, so here is a more terse response

Montane southern China, Japan, Pacific Northwest nations. If we extend to tree ferns we have Tasmanians (who didn't use fires and with much slower dicksonia in forests), Maori yet again and Eastern Polynesians as a whole.

In montane china 55lb of roots (daily single person harvest) in denuded and stripped/leached soils can be processed down into 4.4lb of starch (which using potato starch is about 6783 calories). In all likelihood well drained and deep fertile soils could almost double it but looking only at this 4.4lb average its actually quiet high if you take into account there being no labor usage involved in preparing soils, no active application of fertilizers, no livestock necessary. Its quiet efficient for a broadscale managed food.

Bracken roots can have as much as 27,280 lbs per acre in the wild, this is rhizomes alone not fronds. My math got 852,375 calories, much less than the 6 million food calories per acre of potato grown irrigated and heavily fertilized in the west but certainly this can be altered with better clones and superior environments conducive to plant root growth.

I'd say that selecting for ferns as productive as Chinese ones seems to be within the realm of plausibility. And from what you've said it seems that the New Zealand Aboriginal population would be concentrated in well-watered valleys, but we all new that was happening. We might see seasonal movement from seashore to gather to forest to grow to mountains to hunt in more fringe environments, with the more productive areas seeing permanently settled horticulturalists/aquaculturalists.

TBH Homo Florenesis is believed to have arrived on the island as an accidental migrant on natural rafts, I think of a ceremonial event combined with a feasting of sorts being washed away then the idea of large tree trunks and palm trunks in "islands" could sustain some people out at sea. Eating any animals that are floating with you like potential rates, sea turtles (which have kept many, many sea drifters alive) floating around, seagulls and other sea birds etc... could reduce the likelihood of introducing other animals.


Homo florienses crossed a narrow straight, quite different than the Tasman sea. The gap could be narrower during an Ice Age though. Any accidental crossing then will result in an extremely isolated population, and give tens of thousands of years of development-which would be quite interesting!


I don't think you know enough about population and societal development, nor the processes of horticultural societies to speak broadly. Personally I suggest reading more before speaking.

This is an unnecessary and rude attitude to take. @metalinvader665 is often involved productively in discussions about alternate domesticates and their potential effect on decentralized society's resistance against colonialism. Whether you agree or disagree with him, he has certainly read about population, societal development and the history of horticulture and agriculture. Since PhD's tend to have better things to do than get into debates about their field in sci-fi web forums, it's safe to assume that we are all amateurs with large gaps of knowledge here-including you. If you think there's some information he's missing, back up your arguments with a source instead of outright dismissal.
 
I'd say that selecting for ferns as productive as Chinese ones seems to be within the realm of plausibility. And from what you've said it seems that the New Zealand Aboriginal population would be concentrated in well-watered valleys, but we all new that was happening. We might see seasonal movement from seashore to gather to forest to grow to mountains to hunt in more fringe environments, with the more productive areas seeing permanently settled horticulturalists/aquaculturalists.




Homo florienses crossed a narrow straight, quite different than the Tasman sea. The gap could be narrower during an Ice Age though. Any accidental crossing then will result in an extremely isolated population, and give tens of thousands of years of development-which would be quite interesting!




This is an unnecessary and rude attitude to take. @metalinvader665 is often involved productively in discussions about alternate domesticates and their potential effect on decentralized society's resistance against colonialism. Whether you agree or disagree with him, he has certainly read about population, societal development and the history of horticulture and agriculture. Since PhD's tend to have better things to do than get into debates about their field in sci-fi web forums, it's safe to assume that we are all amateurs with large gaps of knowledge here-including you. If you think there's some information he's missing, back up your arguments with a source instead of outright dismissal.
The statistic of root to starch ration is specific to one particular region in China. The bracken fern root rate is specific to global averages in undisturbed wilderness.

Time frame I put here was 40-10kya, it would be fascinating for sure.

Also I posted to another person, the one that spoke of "Our Aboriginals" in a paternalistic and determinist way who asked the same thing as Metalinvader which in essence was "How could Aboriginals become anything more than Aboriginals regardless of where they go."

You can consider it rude but I answered why the limitations that exist within precontact aboriginal society on a religious level as well as the characteristics of Aboriginal society shaped by the ecology and faunal/floral arrangements of Tasmania compared to the ecology of New Zealand.

I'm here to talk about Aboriginal New Zealand and it's limits as OP asked not the supposed universal limitations of Aboriginal people regardless of where they go. That is off topic and derailing to me.
 
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The statistic of root to starch ration is specific to one particular region in China. The bracken fern root rate is specific to global averages in undisturbed wilderness.

Time frame I put here was 40-10kya, it would be fascinating for sure.

Also I posted to another person, the one that spoke of "Our Aboriginals" in a paternalistic and determinist way who asked the same thing as Metalinvader which in essence was "How could Aboriginals become anything more than Aboriginals regardless of where they go."

You can consider it rude but I answered why the limitations that exist within precontact aboriginal society on a cultural level as well as the characteristics of Aboriginal society in Tasmania compared to the ecology of New Zealand.

I'm here to talk about Aboriginal New Zealand and it's limits as OP asked not the supposed universal limitations of Aboriginal people regardless of where they go. That is off topic and derailing to me.

I never once implied any sort of universal limitations on Aboriginal people, by the way. But the environment their culture evolves in produces limitations which effect the end result.

Agriculture/horticulture aside, I'm saying is that the societies in New Zealand could easily be complex enough that signing treaties with them is a must rather than simply treating them as wildlife. It's plausible (though not inevitable) as well that the Polynesians can carve out settlement in the northernmost parts where they can outcompete them. And they will still be wrecked by disease and be facing Europeans with guns, dogs, horses, etc., although like the Maori, will be able to purchase modern weaponry from passing traders.
 
the one that spoke of "Our Aboriginals

That would be me.

in a paternalistic and determinist way

Try to avoid projecting your own paranoias, prejudices and biases onto other people, it's uncool.

"How could Aboriginals become anything more than Aboriginals regardless of where they go."

Please explain to me how, in the absence of sustained agriculture and livestock ranching, Australian Aborigines somehow getting to New Zealand will develop military power superior to OTL Maoris? Further, why they didn't develop it to an equal level here? Because talk of eating ferns isn't bridging that gap.
 
That would be me.



Try to avoid projecting your own paranoias, prejudices and biases onto other people, it's uncool.



Please explain to me how, in the absence of sustained agriculture and livestock ranching, Australian Aborigines somehow getting to New Zealand will develop military power superior to OTL Maoris? Further, why they didn't develop it to an equal level here? Because talk of eating ferns isn't bridging that gap.
The prejudice is you believing aboriginal were not capable of complex socio-cultural institutions capable of forming mutual relationships with plants and animals in spite of the evidence.

Regardless the formation of agriculture in climates similar to New Zealand has occurred in Oceania, namely Highland Papua New Guinea.

The divergence of these proposed aboriginals is deep, the dynamics of these supposed castaways could be dramatically altered from their mother culture. However the knowledge is already there in aboriginal cultures.


Dry heaps of this grass, that had been pulled expressly for the
purpose of gathering the seed, lay along our path for many
miles. I counted nine miles along the [Narran] river, in which
we rode through this grass only... it was what supplied the bread
of the natives...

In 1870 Christopher Giles wrote
discovered a native granary. This was a rude platform built in a
tree, about 7 or 8 feet from the ground, on this were placed in a
heap a number of bags made of close netting. Dismounting, I
climbed the tree to examine the bags, and was astonished to
find that they contained different kinds of grain, stored up for
the winter, or rather the dry season

In 1823 Queensland by a castaway
in a short time we arrived at a number of huts, which had
been erected for the occasion. They were so numerous I
could hardly count them; and each tribe (for there were
many assembled to see the fight) appeared to have their huts distinct from the other .… The women of our party [eight or nine women, 12 men and 14 children] then immediately commenced building, and in less that two hours had finished five or six commodious huts, in which we all rested that night.

The formation of what we now see as hallmarks of Maori society only took shape the end of a rather loose and intense period of Moa hunting. With the collapse of the moa came the evolution of Pa fortifications in the Classical Maori Period that includes among other things storage pits for holding kumara and other roots.

But the thing is a prerequisite very narrow definition of Agriculture is not necessary to develop a form of long term storage.

Prestige foods can in and of themselves facilitate and dictate the direction of people-plant relationships.

A foundational connection to bracken starch can after the collapse of lowland moa and seal create a chain reaction of intense fortications, strong gift ceremonies were displays of wealth are shown to neighbors and even enemies in spiritual ordained times of peace. What was once "pounded wooden sticks sucked of starch" can turn into bowls of puddings, "cakes" and sweets that provides social clout.

The environment facilitates and bracken provides storage foods for fall and winter. As does the dwarf cabbage palm.

Mass gatherings, villages and rival groups etc... we see already in the PNW from Haida Gwaii down to Washington this, we know aboriginals did, we have a strong idea that prestige and social capital influencing energy expenditure to certain foods. This can manifest itself in a greater reliance to more consistent and higher yields that come with domesticated plants.

"if they didn't do that here why can they do that there".

It's a different place with different constraints and dynamics. Earlier humans are effected by the limits of their environments, their environments are not limited by them.
 
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