Frank Greenall: Florence of the South Pacific

APPARENTLY, we have the shortest history of any people.

In other words, New Zealand was the last land mass of any appreciable size to be settled, although I suppose one could get picky about Antarctica and the like. But, either way, not a heck of a long ago in the scheme of human history.

General consensus is that intentional voyages here were happening around about the 13th century. So only about 800 years ago, people were arriving in hollowed-out logs, along with the Pacific rat and dog, yams and kumara, a few rudimentary bone, stone, wood or shell implements, and some basic woven fibres.

Things were a bit behind the eight-ball compared to developments elsewhere. It's an intriguing "what if" if this little bunch of islands in the vastness of the South Pacific had managed to remain unnoticed by the world until the present day, especially as, for unclear reasons, Maori ceased making return journeys to the Pacific homelands not too long after arriving.

The Australian Aborigine managed to perpetuate an essentially hunter-gatherer subsistence culture for about 50,000 years before being overrun by a tidal wave of European migrants.

The first Maori generations here most surely suffered a pretty grim acclimatisation, grappling with a much cooler climate and native flora not given to sumptuous and abundant fruiting as in their tropical homelands.

By contrast, in the 13th century, a European settlement such as Florence was dealing with developments of a different order. Their Bankers' Guild had been founded in 1206, followed soon by the wool, silk, apothecaries, judges and notaries guilds. There were also 14 "minor" guilds, such as butchers, bakers, blacksmiths, and leather workers.

Defence-wise (the Florentines were an argumentative lot), they weren't slouches, either. No stick palisades here.

In 1284, the Florentine government decreed the city walls be expanded. The new walls were nine kilometres in circumference, 16 metres high and over two metres thick. There were 15 massive gates, and 17 towers averaging 25m in height.

A broad inner road circled the whole complex, parts of which are retained in city boulevards to this day. Outside the walls, another road ringed the citadel along with a broad defensive ditch.

But could Maori, if left to their own devices for another four or five centuries, have somehow cracked the subsistence cycle and headed for the industrial? Progress on the technological evolutionary scale that would have seen them engaging in the rudiments of smelting metals, firing glass and vitreous ceramics, and all those other processes now regarded as the necessities of life? It's doubtful.

Archaeological discoveries, in league with forensic science advances, keep pushing the time lines of human development farther back.

The initial breakthroughs that led to the fundamental industrial and manufacturing processes of the modern age (for better or worse) came about through critical-mass population numbers, incrementally accumulating skills, and numerous accidents of history over many thousands of years.

The odds against a small, isolated, homogenous population stumbling across a similar set of technological tenets in such a relatively short time-frame would be huge.

The buoyant Florentine economy of the time was based on banking and international trade in luxury items.

By the late 1250s, four substantial bridges spanned the river Arno, meandering through the city. By 1280, Florence's population was around 80,000, not far short of the estimated entire Maori population at the time of first European incursions. It was a different ball game, if not a different universe.

All in all, there was a bit of catching up to do.

But hang on ... we've got a fair load of heritage stuff here now as well. Plus bridges, four of them, come to think of it. I can see the new marketing campaign as we speak: "Come to flourishing Whanganui - the Florence of the South Pacific!"