HISTORY OF MOA

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 May 1941, Page 6

HISTORY OF MOA

NOT RECENTLY EXTINCT VAGUE MAORI TRADITIONS. REASONS FOR DISAPPEARANCE. The popular belief that Maoris hunted the moa until late pre-European times was discounted by Mr Gilbert Archey, director of the Auckland War Memorial Museum, in a lecture delivered in the University College Hall under the auspices of the Auckland Institute (reports the “New Zealand Herald"). The moa. said Mr Archy, was a member of a family of flightless birds, (he ratites, which included the kiwi, emu. cassowary, and ostrich, and the extinct aepyornis of Madagascar. Common characteristics of the group were a keelless breastbone and soft feathers that could not be used for purposes of flight. The lecturer gave reasons for the belief that all members of the family were descended from a common ancestor which, although primitive, had been able to fly. and that their distribution had been from, or through, the Antarctic Continent, which on the evidence of fossils had once had a climate warm enough to support plant and 'animal life. It was probable, he said, that the moa had reached New Zealand 511,000,000 years ago. The earliest fossil remains so far found dated back, only 5,000,000 years, but there were geological reasons for this. Discussing possible reasons why the moa became extinct Mr Archey said the glacial period in New Zealand was unlikely to have been detrimental, but the warm, humid period that succeeded it might have been so to birds which liked dry, open country. Moa bones had been found in the South Island in association with polished stone implements. but there was general agreement that the latter were not even relatively recent. The earliest accounts of the moa obtained from Maoris by the missionaries Colenso, Stack and Wohlers, and the old songs collected by Sir George Grey, went no further than to say that it had been extinct for a very long time. Moreover, in an immense mass of Native Land Court testimony in proof of land ownership, the late Mi - Gilbert Mair had been unable to find any reference to the moa as a living creature. There was good reason for thinking that later Maori statements on the subject had been tinged by European speculation.

The probability was that the moa had been finally exterminated within 200 or 300 years after the arrival of the first. Polynesians in New Zealand. Traditionally the earliest arrival was Kupe, in 950 A.D.. but it was not unlikely that others had preceded him. The disappearance of the moa should therefore be set back to seven or eight centuries ago at the latest. -nffifll ffiffi