Geology and Early History
It has been suggested that the valley was formed during the ice age 10,000–20,000 years ago by glacial scouring, but considering that the Hutt Valley and the greater Wellington area have experienced major tectonic uplifting it is possible that the valley was formed through major earthquakes and erosion.
According to tradition, Māori arrived in the Hutt Valley in about 1250 AD when the two sons of Whatonga, a Hawke's Bay chief, settled in the area and named the Hutt River Heretaunga, after their old home. Although Māori had lived in the Hutt Valley for almost 600 years prior to Europeans, there has been no evidence of Māori habitation in Stokes Valley and the closest iwi (tribe), located at Waiwhetu, say they never used the valley for any significant purpose before Europeans arrived. Stokes Valley was located at the junction of the claimed territory of three major Maori tribes, the Ngāti Awa (who sold it to European settlers, but are no longer present at Wellington), Ngāti Toa, and the Ngāti Kahungunu, and for this reason it would have in all likelihood never have been inhabited. This partially explains an extreme willingness to include this land in the sale to the early settlers.
Read more about this topic: Stokes Valley
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or history:
“Today’s pressures on middle-class children to grow up fast begin in early childhood. Chief among them is the pressure for early intellectual attainment, deriving from a changed perception of precocity. Several decades ago precocity was looked upon with great suspicion. The child prodigy, it was thought, turned out to be a neurotic adult; thus the phrase “early ripe, early rot!””
—David Elkind (20th century)
“In history as in human life, regret does not bring back a lost moment and a thousand years will not recover something lost in a single hour.”
—Stefan Zweig (18811942)