# Australia and New Zealand
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/australia-and-new-zealand/368927
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [August 16, 2006, 11:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/australia-and-new-zealand/368927 "2006-08-16T11:08:37Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Jinx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jinx)
#### Post date: [August 16, 2006, 11:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/australia-and-new-zealand/368927/1 "2006-08-16T11:08:37Z")
Did the Aborigines of these two countries ever go to war with each other?
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### Author:  [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)
#### Post date: [August 16, 2006, 11:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/australia-and-new-zealand/368927/2 "2006-08-16T11:11:50Z")
There were no aboriginal inhabitants of NZ. So, no.
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### Author:  [@Jinx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jinx)
#### Post date: [August 16, 2006, 11:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/australia-and-new-zealand/368927/3 "2006-08-16T11:15:35Z")
> [@jjimm](#):
>
> There were no aboriginal inhabitants of NZ. So, no.
So, was NZ simply an uninhabited island? Interesting!
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### Author:  [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)
#### Post date: [August 16, 2006, 11:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/australia-and-new-zealand/368927/4 "2006-08-16T11:20:28Z")
IIRC, the Maoris arrived ~800 years ago, by legend at least in canoes from the Cook Islands. There’s a persistent myth that the Maoris massacred the indigenous inhabitants of NZ, but there’s absolutely no evidence for this, or any human habitation - hence all the cool flightless birds wandering around - that are now extinct.
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### Author:  [@Jinx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jinx)
#### Post date: [August 16, 2006, 11:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/australia-and-new-zealand/368927/5 "2006-08-16T11:27:12Z")
> [@jjimm](#):
>
> IIRC, the Maoris arrived ~800 years ago, by legend at least in canoes from the Cook Islands. There’s a persistent myth that the Maoris massacred the indigenous inhabitants of NZ, but there’s absolutely no evidence for this, or any human habitation - hence all the cool flightless birds wandering around - that are now extinct.
And, is the Kiwi the last of the flightless birds still surviving Down Under?
Fascinating! :dubious:
- Jinx
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### Author:  [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)
#### Post date: [August 16, 2006, 11:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/australia-and-new-zealand/368927/6 "2006-08-16T11:32:10Z")
No, there’s also the kakapo (green, highly intelligent flightless parrot) and some other ones. [All you could need to know](http://www.terranature.org/extinctBirds.htm) - that page has the big extinct ones on it, but the rest of the site has the living ones too.
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### Author:  [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)
#### Post date: [August 16, 2006, 11:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/australia-and-new-zealand/368927/7 "2006-08-16T11:40:16Z")
The Maori slaughtered or enslaved the original inhabitants of the [Chatham Islands](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatham_Islands) in the 1860s… AFTER the Europeans had introduced sailing ships and firearms.
I’m not aware of any contact between Pre-European NZ and Australia, however… the Maori were competent seafarers, the Aboriginals not so much, AFAIK.
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### Author:  [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)
#### Post date: [August 16, 2006, 11:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/australia-and-new-zealand/368927/8 "2006-08-16T11:57:46Z")
The Maori claim to have fought and slaughtered the Moriori, who preceded them to New Zealand. How much truth underlies this claim appears to be up in the air, based on earlier comments in this thread.
I cannot locate my reference on bird taxonomy, so this is from possibly erroneous memory, but if I’m not mistaken, both the moas and the kiwi belong to Order Apterygiformes. The moas constituted a family of larger birds within that order, now extinct. ( **Colibri?** Others? Can you validate or correct this?)
There’s a tongue in cheek line about NZ that it’s “where most of the birds can’t fly, and all of the mammals **can** ” – a reference to the only non-human-import mammals there being a couple of species of bat.
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### Author:  [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)
#### Post date: [August 16, 2006, 12:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/australia-and-new-zealand/368927/9 "2006-08-16T12:12:28Z")
[About the Moriori](http://history-nz.org/moriori.html) - not sure how definitive that site is, mind, but it is clear that they weren’t aboriginal, and were also Poynesian migrants, though their date of arrival is disputed.
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### Author:  [@manx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/manx)
#### Post date: [August 16, 2006, 12:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/australia-and-new-zealand/368927/10 "2006-08-16T12:18:52Z")
> [@jjimm](#):
>
> [About the Moriori](http://history-nz.org/moriori.html) - not sure how definitive that site is, mind, but it is clear that they weren’t aboriginal, and were also Poynesian migrants, though their date of arrival is disputed.
The had also mostly migrated to the Chathams by the time Europeans settlers were coming through - most of the distinctively Moriori artwork can be found there.
There’s not a lot of evidence of pacific migration west of New Zealand, as far as I know, so I don’t think there ever would have been contact between the cultures, let alone warfare.
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### Author:  [@Otara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Otara)
#### Post date: [August 16, 2006, 12:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/australia-and-new-zealand/368927/11 "2006-08-16T12:39:26Z")
Maori are though to have arrived in NZ between 800 and 1300AD. So compared to Australian Indigenous people of 40-50k years in Australia, they’re very new on the block. Where Maori originally came from is still debated.
The way the ocean currents and the like work in this region, a direct connection with Australia was pretty unlikely though, there wasnt even much travel back to where they originally came from, it was pretty much a one way trip to get there with the technology they had.
Otara
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### Author:  [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)
#### Post date: [August 16, 2006, 12:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/australia-and-new-zealand/368927/12 "2006-08-16T12:59:25Z")
> [@jjimm](#):
>
> [About the Moriori](http://history-nz.org/moriori.html) - not sure how definitive that site is, mind, but it is clear that they weren’t aboriginal, and were also Poynesian migrants, though their date of arrival is disputed.
Thanks for the clarification, **jjimm**. It didn’t _seem_ like the Moriori were the total-myth ancestral-enemies type of story, so I wondered about the comments here. Glad to have it cleared up in my mind.
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### Author:  [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)
#### Post date: [August 16, 2006, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/australia-and-new-zealand/368927/13 "2006-08-16T13:03:08Z")
> [@Otara](#):
>
> Where Maori originally came from is still debated.
I was under the impression that it was quite clear that they came from “Havaiki” – just that what the modern term for where that was, was totally up in the air, with the Tonga/Fiji region a first-cut best guess – and definitely not meaning the island chain with Pearl Harbor, Diamond Head, Mauna Loa, etc.
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### Author:  [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)
#### Post date: [August 16, 2006, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/australia-and-new-zealand/368927/14 "2006-08-16T13:18:44Z")
When I was in the Cooks last year, I visited Avana on the main island of Rarotonga, which, in the legend of the local Maori (same name) is where most of the outriggers left for New Zealand. But it’s an aural history, so unreliable per se.
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### Author:  [@Otara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Otara)
#### Post date: [August 16, 2006, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/australia-and-new-zealand/368927/15 "2006-08-16T13:37:47Z")
Maori legend calls it Hawaiki, theres no V in Maori, but thats more a mythical homeland than historical ‘fact’. The maori have a story of a ‘grand fleet’ of Waka (canoes) that came from there, but that whole story got disproven a while back, so it cant be taken too literally.
A lot of the legends about it seemed to be actually stories about the exploration of NZ rather than the journey to NZ for instance.
Otara
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### Author:  [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)
#### Post date: [August 16, 2006, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/australia-and-new-zealand/368927/16 "2006-08-16T13:47:02Z")
> [@Otara](#):
>
> Maori legend calls it Hawaiki, theres no V in Maori, but thats more a mythical homeland than historical ‘fact’. The maori have a story of a ‘grand fleet’ of Waka (canoes) that came from there, but that whole story got disproven a while back, so it cant be taken too literally.
>
> A lot of the legends about it seemed to be actually stories about the exploration of NZ rather than the journey to NZ for instance.
I always found it interesting that there are no Maori myths regarding the arrival of Abel Tasman or James Cook, at least as far as I’m aware…
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### Author:  [@Otara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Otara)
#### Post date: [August 16, 2006, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/australia-and-new-zealand/368927/17 "2006-08-16T14:04:36Z")
> [@Martini Enfield](#):
>
> I always found it interesting that there are no Maori myths regarding the arrival of Abel Tasman or James Cook, at least as far as I’m aware…
Well there were several other ships turning up not too long after Cook, so hes less surprising, I doubt they saw him as all that special really.
Tasman I dont know how many tribes he had contact with, it might have been ones that got wiped out in some of the later wars for instance, it was all pretty turbulent back then.
Otara
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### Author:  [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)
#### Post date: [August 16, 2006, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/australia-and-new-zealand/368927/18 "2006-08-16T14:37:39Z")
> [@Otara](#):
>
> Well there were several other ships turning up not too long after Cook, so hes less surprising, I doubt they saw him as all that special really.
>
> Tasman I dont know how many tribes he had contact with, it might have been ones that got wiped out in some of the later wars for instance, it was all pretty turbulent back then.
>
> Otara
Tasman sailed into [Golden Bay](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Bay) in 1642, and apparently decided the best way to greet the Natives was by firing a Cannon salvo! When some of the crew tried to go ashore, there was a skirmish, and members on both sides were killed.
Tasman named the bay “Murderer’s Bay” but Captain Cook renamed in “Golden Bay” when he showed up in 1769.
The point is, a European sailing ship- which none of the Maori had ever seen- showed up, with cannon- something the Maori had not only never seen, but had no concept of- and got into a fight witht he Europeans- resulting in people on both sides being killed- you think it would be a pretty big part of the region’s oral history- almost as if a UFO landed in a small English Village, blew up a building or two, killed some of the locals with a heat-ray, and then left. 😉
People would still be talking about it for a very long time afterwards, I’d daresay…
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### Author:  [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)
#### Post date: [August 16, 2006, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/australia-and-new-zealand/368927/19 "2006-08-16T15:26:12Z")
> [@Polycarp](#):
>
> The Maori claim to have fought and slaughtered the Moriori, who preceded them to New Zealand. How much truth underlies this claim appears to be up in the air, based on earlier comments in this thread.
Well, there were several waves of Polynesian immigration to Aotearoa (NZ), so it’s quite possible that some of the early settlers were “slaughtered” by later arrivals.
> [@](#):
>
> I cannot locate my reference on bird taxonomy, so this is from possibly erroneous memory, but if I’m not mistaken, both the moas and the kiwi belong to Order Apterygiformes. The moas constituted a family of larger birds within that order, now extinct. ( **Colibri?** Others? Can you validate or correct this?)
Moas belong to the order _Struthioniformes_, which includes ostriches and also kiwis. You may be thinking of the family _Apterygidae_ to which the kiwi belongs, but the moa is in the family _Dinornithidae_.
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### Author:  [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)
#### Post date: [August 16, 2006, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/australia-and-new-zealand/368927/20 "2006-08-16T23:00:38Z")
This question is just like asking whether the people of stone-age Ireland ever declared war on Africa.
Seriously, those are the sorts of distances we are dealing with here. There are a lot of people in this world who don’t seem to appreciate just how far apart New Zealand and Australia are. Yes, both landmasses are in the South Pacific/Southern Ocean, but they are separated by over _one and a half thousand kilometres_ of open ocean.
The Polynesians were impressive seafarers but even they were not capable of projecting military power across thousands of miles of ocean. Even with the use of metal the Europeans couldn’t manage that until the late middle ages.
So no, of course the aboriginal people of New Zealand and Australia didn’t go to war. They weren’t even aware of one another’s existence.
> [@Martini Enfield](#):
>
> The point is, a European sailing ship- which none of the Maori had ever seen- showed up, with cannon- something the Maori had not only never seen, but had no concept of- and got into a fight witht he Europeans- resulting in people on both sides being killed- you think it would be a pretty big part of the region’s oral history- almost as if a UFO landed in a small English Village, blew up a building or two, killed some of the locals with a heat-ray, and then left. 😉
Really it was nothing like that impressive.
The first thing to realise is that the Polynesians at this time actually had sea-craft _larger_ than Tasman’s own vessels and capable of taking half as many crewmen. Craft this large appear not to have been built in NZ at this exact point in time, but the Maori themselves had craft half that size and were certainly capable of building much larger if they wished. The vessels that attacked Tasman’s boats were double-hulled, high-prowed sea-going canoes with a crew of 20-odd men. Tasman’s own ships only had a crew of 50 each so each Maori vessel was almost half the size of Tasman’s. And the Maori vessels were far more manoeuvrable and faster than the European ships.
Just as importantly Tasman never greeted anyone using cannons. You can read Tasman’s journal [here.](http://www.grinnell.edu/sandb/archives/volume_121/number_23/features/article01.html). The aggression was entirely initiated by the Maori and Tasman only utilised cannon _after_ several of his men had been killed. And only a single Maori was killed.
So rather than being the equivalent of a UFO it was more like a zeppelin armed with flamethrowers landing in an Edwardian era village. Certainly an unusual design of craft, but not much different from the technology that the natives already possessed and in many ways entirely inferior. When the villagers decided to attack the intruders they killed several of them and when the zeppelin retaliated it succeeded in killing only one villager. The zeppelin then retreated, having been driven off.
Looked a in that way the story is far less impressive. People probably wouldn’t be talking about such an event for very long at all, it was certainly just one of numerous sea-borne invasion attempts that village had driven off that year, and a fairly minor attack. To the Maori Europeans weren’t Gods with inconceivable technology. They were just strangers with technology that was different and in many way inferior. The Maori knew very well they were just men, and not very impressive men either.
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