Pa Mai: Expert sailors navigated the ocean

Pita Sharples at Taiwan indigenous tourism promotion in Auckland. Photo / Supplied

When Māori left China and Taiwan it was the same time that the Stonehenge was being built and the Egyptian pyramids and hieroglyphics were being developed as one of the first written languages in the world.

Our expertise was in sailing, cultivations, astronomical and environmental scholars and students as we made our way from island to island while the Phoenicians, the greatest European sailors, were still sailing inside of their coastlines lest they fall off the edge of the earth.

At this time as well, it is said that Māui and his four brothers had sailed from Taiwan up to Egypt back down into the South West Pacific Oceans and circumnavigated the Pacific.

Māui is a much told story in South East Asia as well as up in the Middle East. We call our tipuna Māui an Ātua or a Demi God of a folk lore figure but in fact he was the epitome of our quest for knowledge and the separation of time, space and peoples.

From Taiwan we sailed to northern Philippines where the native tribes of Taiwan and the Philippines are still able to move from country to country on one passport, as they are the same people who have kept Austronesian traditions over hundreds and thousands of years.

The first GPS or CCS - the Crab-claw sail - invented by the Austronesians over 3500 years ago. Photo / Supplied

These are our people, these are our ancestors, these are our whanaunga. As in Taiwan, they have evolved into highly efficient technological leaders in the world. So too in the Philippines, they have also evolved all the way into Malaysia and Sabah who still hold on to their language and traditions but have their own parliament, universities and economical development projects.

In Taiwan, they still cherish their history of being head hunters, using bow and arrows but they prefer hand to hand combat which we seem to have carried all the way to Aotearoa, leaving the bow and arrow and drum further north.

When we were welcomed onto a traditional Taiwanese whenua, the women did the tohi or opening prayer, rather than a karanga.

They carried leaves ahead of them where they chanted while slapping rocks, slapping the ground, slapping the building and slapping all of us who walked onto the marae, to clear us of any ill effects of this ancient marae site.

They then gave whaikorero to the mountains, to the clouds, to the sky, to the trees, to the river and to their ancestors who had passed on, which resonates with what we do today, but brought home to bear the similarity of language, colour and culture.

Our September report will look at some of Māui's travels into the South East Asia and some of the legacies of language. For example, Java, in Indonesia is their form of Hawaaiki, as is Sabah in Malaysia and Sarawak in Borneo.