geography, oh geography

this is another post that has to do with Guns, Germs and Steel. the chapter we just read talked about the two civilizations Maori and the Moriori and how they were both Polynesian islands but they developed so differently. The question is : "What role did 'geography' play in the developments of the Maori and the Moriori?"

I think geography had everything to do with the developments of these two civilizations. First of all, living in a smaller place compared to a bigger place is a huge difference. When your community is small and there aren't very many people (the Moriori on Chatham Island), having wars is a bad idea because eventually everyone will be terminated; the best solution to living in a small area is peace. Also, because the Chathams were so small, the island was forgotten, and isolated from all the other islands in Polynesia. They did thier own thing, the others did theirs, no one ever bothering the other. The Moriori liked their lives: food was plentiful and easy to get and their was peace, everybody knew everybody and everybody got along. In New Zealand where the Maori lived it was much bigger with ten times more people, thus wars were going on everywhere so sharper weapons were needed to survive. I never knew things could be so different based on the size and the amount of people on a piece of land.
On Chathams the tropical food that would normally grow in New Zealand (keep in mind the Moriori were originally Moari people) couldn't because of the cold climate of Chathams so the Moriori had to revert to hunter-gatherers. They didn't need heavy-duty weapons to catch the game because most were slow and some had no defense. Fishing was also an easy way to find food because the fish basically stayed still for you. In New Zealand, things were much different. It was a larger land mass with bigger game and more space for the animals to live in and hide in. The animals of New Zealand were bigger, smarter and faster thus harder to catch. The Moari had to have good weapons and hunting stradegies to get their food. So, when the two met up, one side new how to "really" hunt and fight, and the other, well, they didn't. Obviously, this caused a pretty big problem with thier "collision".
The geography of a place doesn't have some effect on the people and how they develop, it has EVERYTHING to do with that. If Chathams were bigger, well there's a whole nother story, but imagine what would happen: The Moari would have more competition, it would have been noticed more so there would have ultimatley been more violence and less food and both civilizations probably would have exterminated each other. History is an amazing thing if you really think about it, and we can learn from it...