ABSTRACT
In the nineteenth centuary and the early years of the twentieth, great hopes were placed in recording local traditions to uncover the Polynesian past, then considered to be of no very great time-depth. So, for example, in the case of New Zealand, Aotearoa was said to have been peopled by the canoes of the Kupe, Ngahue and the ‘great fleet’ that came from Hawaiki. More recent studies, especially archaeological, have revealed a more complex reality. Although we might be tempted to conclude, along with the well-known anthropologist Murdock (1959:43), that native historical traditions ‘[form] the one type of historical information that is virtually valueless’, this would be incorrect. In the Maori case, it was originally thought that the moas recorded in their traditions were mythical. After the discovery of Dinornis, it was originally suggested that these bird fossils should be dated to a geological era well before the presence of human beings, and that they had long disappeared by the time of human settlement in New Zealand. Eventually, however, archaeological research confirmed that the Maori and the moa were contemporaries, and indeed their eggs are found associated with human burials.
