Chooks
Do you have chooks? Chooks are one of the primary foods that enable civilisations to survive. Their ability to produce nearly an egg a day is quite remarkable. These can be hatched to reproduce chooks in large numbers and both the eggs and the chooks are an ideal source of food for humans.

In African villages chooks are considered essential. No-one would have to try to live without their chooks.

What about us? I wonder how many of you have chooks. Have you thought about what remarkable birds they are as a source of protein supply? And so easy to keep domestically. They are a real pleasure to have around.

I was interested to read that in Cuba they have a monument in the central square to the chook. When Russian oil stopped flowing to Cuba and they faced an immediate oil crisis which totally brought their economy to a halt and confronted them with immediate food crises they learned that the chook is one of the most valuable food sources imaginable.

Here is an extract from Tim Flannery’s The Future Eaters (p55) on New Zealand. ‘Perhaps the most extraordinary – and certainly the most striking – of New Zealand’s birds were the moas. Moa is a Polynesian word meaning chicken. Curiously it seems that when the Maori arrived in New Zealand they carried domestic chickens with them and probably also pigs. But who in their right mind would go to the trouble of tending chickens and pigs in that extraordinary land of birds for in New Zealand the largest ‘moa’ towered over three metres high and weighed up to 250 kilograms. The domestic ‘moa’ were probably quickly eaten or neglected once the Maori saw what a ‘real’ moa looked like.

Unfortunately we will never know the intimate details of the lives of the moa for all 12 species are now extinct. From mummified remains it appears likely that moa tended only one or two eggs at a time. The last of the moas became extinct some 400 years ago. They weighed between 20 and 250 kilograms and were New Zealand’s equivalents of antelopes rhinoceros and kangaroos. Before the arrival of the Maori sometime between 1000 and 1200 AD they were abundant. A remarkably large body of evidence exists concerning the fate of the moa. Maori cooking sites are literally packed with moa remains. Some cover tens of hectares and are the final resting place for tens of thousands of moa. Analysis of the site suggests the wastage of meat was astounding. Typically about a third of the meat available on moa carcasses was never used. At Wairau Bar it has been estimated that nearly 9000 moa were killed and almost 2400 eggs destroyed. At Waitaki Mouth is is estimated that between 30000 and 90000 moa were killed. It is also clear the sites were occupied by very large numbers of people. Following the extinctions of the moa such dense aggragations of people were never to inhabit these areas again until after the arrival of Europeans with their chickens. New Zealand must have been able to support about 70000 moa at any one time. Some researchers have suggested that moa became extinct within a century of hunting in any one area. In any case all moa appear to have become extinct within 300-400 years of the arrival of the Maori.

The first Maori the moa hunters were lucky people. However eating all the domestic chickens and pigs soon after arrival and then relying on the moa was to have a major impact on future generations for the only surviving domesticated species possessed by the Maori was the dog. If they had still had chickens their subsequent history might have been very different. Instead they faced starvation and intergroup warfare became the norm fighting over scarce food resources.

With the extinction of the moa the Maori were forced to rely on other more difficult-to-obtain resources all of which became overexploited for as more desirable food vanished people turned increasingly to less desirable food sources. When the resources were eaten out there were frighteningly few resources. The loss of chickens and pigs left them without suitable domesticates upon which to base an economy centred upon animal husbandry. Throughout much of the country people were forced to live in small communities for that was all that the land could support. Predation by other hungry humans became a real problem. Because of the lack of resources the sweet potato a humble staple elsewhere became an exalted food in the north of New Zealand. For want of alternatives people were forced to survive upon the root of the bracken fern reckoned inedible or a famine food elsewhere but prized in New Zealand. By the time Europeans first sighted New Zealand the resource crisis was in full swing and had assumed disastrous proportions. Cannibalism was occurring and the bodies of those killed in war were a prized source of food. Cook’s accounts of his first contact show that everywhere he saw the effects of war and everywhere people were always on their guard weapons at ready and their pas where food was stored was such that the best engineer in Europe could not have choose’d a better for a small number of men to defend themselves against a greater. He witnessed cannibalism. It was only when the superiority of the European armoury was conclusively demonstrated that the aggression ceased. Once friendly relations were established however one of the first things requested by the Maori was help in destroying their neighbours. They were willing to trade almost anything for such help! Cook commented: I might have extirpated the whole race for the people of each hamlet or village by turns applied to me to destroy the other a very striking proof of the divided state in which they live. Human bodies were certainly the principal food source during long and strenuous raids undertaken up and down the coast by Maori chiefs. This included eating children.

In Easter Island of all the domestic animals owned by the Polynesians only the chicken survived to become a major part of the Easter Island economy. Easter Island was the site of a truly dramatic destruction of forests. Easter Island’s forests had been completely destroyed by 1400AD as part of their process of building and erecting huge stone monuments. At the height of Rapanui culture Easter Island supported 6000-8000 people. In 1722 only about 2000 people survived there. [Without the chooks they may not have survived at all!] Cut off from the world without even the means of escape that a canoe might afford a dwindling resource base slowly strangled the Rapanui.

In some islands of the Pacific a balance was struck between people and their ecosystems that allowed a more peaceful lifestyle to develop. New Caledonia was settled with friendly honest and peaceful people. It also has its extinct animal species but after a very long time on the island (4 times as long as the Maori) stability has been found. People cooperate to survive. And they have chickens and pigs.