Diversity In Polynesia

The diversity of human societies can be attributed to the evolution of human abilities and sophistication. Once humans switched from being wandering nomads to living in small villages, they were able to concentrate on bettering their living conditions and survival rates. Now they were able to explore lands further away and covet both the land and its possessions. The more sophisticated the minds of the human race became, the more they yearned to obtain materialistic things, such as wealth. This creates a divide among people that causes some groups or specific people to be wealthier than others, this separation of class can even be seen today. The desire for power and wealth created the perfect circumstance for differing cultures to encounter
The benefit is the creation of a new culture when two or more cultures assimilate to one another. This new culture will keep certain aspects of the older cultures, but usually with a new spin to it. The consequence is when the cultures clash and only one’s traditions and religions will survive. The genocide and destruction of one cultures reduces the diversity of an area. Within the culture on the islands of Polynesia, Jared Diamond explores the interactions and lives between two groups. The first group of the Chatham Islands were called the Maori people. They were far more dominant than the second group, the Moriori people. The Maori people were able to become the more dominant force because their population was roughly fifty times that of the Moriori people. The Moriori people had “a total population of only about 2,000 hunter-gatherers,” but, “Those Maori who remained in New Zealand increased in numbers until there were more than 100,000 of them” (Diamond 56). The greater a population the more man power they have to conquer surrounding areas. The Maori people engaged in vicious wars with their neighbors that simply added to their massive population and wealth. The Moriori people lacked all this, as well as a strong leadership which resulted in a small and nonviolent population that lacked immense
The accessible natural resources is based primarily on location. The Maori people moved to northern New Zealand which allowed them access to new natural resources and enabled them to increase their population almost ten-fold. It also meant they had to create an army to both defend their new land and attack their rival neighbors. The Moriori people, on the other hand, remained static in the Chatham Islands. This meant that they had no need to develop any type of army for protection or to attack because there were no other surrounding islands. The inequality in wealth grows deeper in the case of the people on the Polynesian islands when you take for account the Maori’s ability to store food. Diamond explains that, “With the crop surpluses that they could grow and store, they fed craft specialists, chiefs and part-time soldiers” (56). The surplus in food allowed their population to grow which in turn led to their expansion, which lead to an increase in wealth. The Moriori people, once again being the exact opposite, went to extreme measures to ensure their population remained small. They did not have the ability to cultivate and store surpluses of food. Causing their population and wealth to grow