Cloud Atlas Ch. 1

[Ghetta Life]

http://www.zealand.org.nz/history.htm

They established a careful working relationship with the environment, taking 
enough for food and clothing, and never any more.

For example, they maintained their seal populations largely intact, by 
limiting the extent to which rookeries could be exploited. At the time of 
the first sealers, Moriori still had a rookery within 400m of occupations, 
and a seal population estimated at 20,000, by killing only older male seals, 
and removing all carcasses which would otherwise deter further breeding.

It worked - they survived half a millenia, at least, until the Europeans 
discovered them.

The Island population, 7 tribal groups, stabilised into around 40 small 
villages, each with up to 50 people, and the central Waihora.


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In any hunter/gatherer society, life can be very tenuous, and inter-tribal 
war can threaten extinction. In fact, such wars are a luxury that can be 
tolerated by settled/farming societies only because new members can be 
raised and fed with some degree of assurance that the tribe as a whole will 
survive.

The Moriori, lacking that assurance, had abandoned warfare.

The chief Nukunuku Whenua established a precept, that disputes would be 
settled by duel using a stick called tupurari, which was a thumb's thickness 
and an arm's length - the winner would be the first to draw blood, and the 
fight would then stop -
"only fight til you draw blood, then stop".



>From: "Ghetta Life" <ghetta_outta at hotmail.com>
>They are described as true "noble savages" by their literal and  total 
>application of a prohibition against killing other humans.  I wonder about 
>the historical truth of this description.

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