GUNS, GERMS AND STEEL - Cloverport Independent Schools

60 • GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
predators, New Zealand's moas and Hawaii's flightless geese being the
best-known examples. While those birds were important food sources for
the initial colonists, especially on New Zealand's South Island, most of
them were soon exterminated on all islands, because they were easy to
hunt down. Breeding seabirds were also quickly reduced in number but
continued to be important food sources on some islands. Marine resources
were significant on most islands but least so on Easter, Pitcairn, and the
Marquesas, where people as a result were especially dependent on food
that they themselves produced.
Ancestral Polynesians brought with them three domesticated animals
(the pig, chicken, and dog) and domesticated no other animals within
Polynesia. Many islands retained all three of those species, but the more
isolated Polynesian islands lacked one or more of them, either because
livestock brought in canoes failed to survive the colonists' long overwater
journey or because livestock that died out could not be readily obtained
again from the outside. For instance, isolated New Zealand ended up with
only dogs; Easter and Tikopia, with only chickens. Without access to coral
reefs or productive shallow waters, and with their terrestrial birds quickly
exterminated, Easter Islanders turned to constructing chicken houses for
intensive poultry farming.
At best, however, these three domesticated animal species provided only
occasional meals. Polynesian food production depended mainly on agriculture,
which was impossible at subantarctic latitudes because all Polynesian
crops were tropical ones initially domesticated outside Polynesia and
brought in by colonists. The settlers of the Chathams and the cold southern
part of New Zealand's South Island were thus forced to abandon the
farming legacy developed by their ancestors over the previous thousands
of years, and to become hunter-gatherers again.
People on the remaining Polynesian islands did practice agriculture
based on dryland crops (especially taro, yams, and sweet potatoes), irrigated
crops (mainly taro), and tree crops (such as breadfruit, bananas, and
coconuts). The productivity and relative importance of those crop types
varied considerably on different islands, depending on their environments.
Human population densities were lowest on Henderson, Rennell, and the
atolls because of their poor soil and limited fresh water. Densities were
also low on temperate New Zealand, which was too cool for some Polynesian
crops. Polynesians on these and some other islands practiced a nonin¬
tensive type of shifting, slash-and-burn agriculture.