Sounding out the ‘Hawaiki zone’: What musical instruments reveal about the immediate geographical origins of the peoples who became Māori in Aotearoa

Abstract

A range of linguistic, genetic and archaeological evidence supports the immediate ancestors of Māori having come from central Eastern Polynesia, and this is borne out through a comparative study of central Eastern Polynesian and Māori musical instruments. An examination of Māori musical instruments also shows, however, that a few instrument names, types and usages may be adoptions or adaptations from elsewhere in Oceania – from Hawai‘i, or from Western Polynesia or Eastern Melanesia. While the possibility of convergent evolution cannot be ruled out, these similarities are quite striking and raise some intriguing questions. Are these similarities the result of cultural transmission to central Eastern Polynesia from Hawai‘i and Western Polynesia (and/or Eastern Melanesia) prior to the departure of the ancestors of Māori to Aotearoa? Could they be the result of a limited amount of direct voyaging from Western Polynesia and/or Eastern Melanesia to Aotearoa prior to the Little Ice Age (c.1400), or from later cultural transmission? Are they the vestiges of practices that, in historical times, had been discontinued in central Eastern Polynesia but preserved in marginal Polynesia (as per the ‘stone in the pond’ model of cultural diffusion)? These questions are discussed in this article, which aims to shed further light on the possible origins of Māori musical instruments and, in so doing, the immediate geographical origins of Māori ancestors.