MUSEUM OF NATURE

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31560, 23 December 1967, Page 16

MUSEUM OF NATURE

Maoris Were Students Of Astronomy

(Contributed by the Canterbury Muteum) One of the indications that the preEuropean Maoris had achieved a high level of social evolution was the fact that some people could be set aside from the dailyround of food production to specialise in abstract studies such as astronomy. It must be remembered that they saw the stars as we never see them. The night sky above the city is illuminated by street and shop lights which greatly reduce our possibility of seeing the stars as they actually are, but the Maori was not faced with this problem and viewed the heavens through a smog-free atmosphere and was able to pick up a degree of detail which is beyond the modern city dweller. Like intelligent people of all ages he must have been struck by the beauty of what he saw, and we know from the records that he noticed a great deal, on the basis of which he developed a complicated pattern of folk-lore and astrology, apart from the practical use which he made of his knowledge for the purposes of navigation. His ancestors had crossed the open Pacific to reach New Zealand, using zenith stars to mark latitude, and brought with them much astronomical knowledge including the information that the Earth was not flat, as believed in Europe at that time, but was round or at least curved. This they knew because of the new stars which appeared as they moved south, and of the northern stars which disappeared astern beneath the horizon. Children Of Light The Maoris called the collective heavenly bodies the ,r Whanau Marama,” or the Children of Light, and derived them from mythical beings, the actual myth differing considerably from tribe to tribe. The Bay of Plenty Maoris held that it was

Tangotango and Walnui, two of the chiludren of Rangi (the sky father) and Papa (the Earth mother) who produced the Sun, the Moon and the stars, and it was also Tangotango who divided time into day and night The Takitumu story has it that Tane sent Kewa, another offspring of Rangi and Papa, to ask Tangotango for the Whanau Marama to lighten the night sky for man. The stars were placed in baskets to be transported but Canopus (Aotahi), a bright star seen to the south ait this time of the year, was hung outside the basket so always remains outside of the Milky Way in the southern sky. Canopus was a particularly tapu star and always dwells alone but if he was seen far out from the Milky Way during October then a dry summer could be expected but if close, a wet season was predicted. The Maoris had a great flare for the personification of star groups and to the Ngati-Awa tribe the Milky Way (Mangoroa) was the mythical Tangotango. They told the following story: “The most numerous tribe in the heavens is the Mangoroa, the most numerous folk in the sky. Their duty is to move together and refrain from scattering. Observe how they move together—elder and younger, father and mother, grandchildren, husband, wife, child, old man, cousin, all move together. Their chief task is to foretell the coming of day. When one end of the Mangoroa swings east? wards, the other westwards, then day is at hand.” How many readers of today could tell the time of night by the position of the stars in the Milky Way? Joyous Greetings The Pleiades, a cluster of seven stars seen to the northeast in our early evening sky at this time of the year, were of particular importance to the Maoris. When it appeared to the east in the evening sky (i.e. the coming of summer) it was greeted by feasting and universal joy. Groups of women faced the cluster and marked its appearance with song and dance and with laments for those who had recently died, but it also played a most vital role later in the year. In June, the cluster

3 merged into the rising sun i and this important event ] a marked the beginning of the i- Maori year when the meeting ( i house was declared open and i o the winter cycle of activities e began. .An indication of the t accuracy of Maori vision, and r of the clarity of the t atmosphere, is shown in a e statement made by Colenso. n “I found that the Maori could e see more stars in the Pleiades s with the unaided eye than I s could, for, while I could only Q see clearly six stars, they ,f could see seven and somee times eight.” s Generations of experience a allowed for some crude fores casting of weather condir tions and the Tuhoe Maoris t claimed that there would be a a warm and plentiful summer § if the stars of the Pleiades r appeared to stand wide apart, but that the season would be cold with a scarcity of food t if they appeared close toQ gether. e The Maoris also knew of jr comets which they called e Auahi-roa (long smoke) and y in the following myth tell of how mankind obtained the

benefit of fire. Tangotango’s offspring, the Sun, derided to send an aid to man and said to Auahi-roa, “Go you and cany a boon to our offspring on Earth. Take them fire to bring benefits to man. Do not approach the elder but deal with the younger. Such is your task.” It will be noted that this theme, the divine interven- , tlon of the gods for the benefit of man, is very ancient ’ indeed and is far from being restricted to the Maori, but I appears in the mythology of [ many primitive peoples. It can be seen that the \ Maori attitude towards astronomy had a two-fold nature; first as a practical means of assisting in the everyday life of the tribe by forecasting . the seasons and as the means : of navigation, and second as - an important agent in the ' social life of the tribe where ! it enriched their living with a ' wealth of tradition and 1 mythology.—A.M.E. r i 1