Talk:Moriori of The Chatham Islands

I'm puzzled. As far as I am aware castration of male infants is mentioned by only one observer of the Moriori, without training in anthropology. There appears to be no evidence from any other source, and certainly not from analysis of skeletal remains of the moriori (skeletons, if available, should show the effects of castration on bone growth).

Given that the Moriori have been demonstrated from genetic studies to have come from east coast Maori people, and given that there is no evidence that castration was a common practice among New Zealand Maori, this makes the practice by Moriori in the Chathams rather more unlikely.

Further, there is a link from the "moriori castration" sentence to the wikipaedia birth control page. There is no mention on this page of castration as a means of birth control, and quite rightly so, castration of some males is not a particularly effective means of reducing population growth. This is because males, surprisingly, can inseminate multiple female partners.

It would be most unfortunate if the Moriori were identified as using a most bizarre and unlikely culturally sanctioned practice given the extremely slender evidence available.

202.36.151.252 07:42, 13 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I removed the claim, although it doesn't matter since I've now merged this article into Moriori. -- Avenue 01:01, 27 March 2007 (UTC)