It seems that in New Zealand there are a number of things you’re not allowed to not like. Rugby. Dave Dobbyn. And Wellington’s Te Papa museum, which my family and I had the recent misfortune to visit.

One of the exhibits was a cross between an epilepsy-inducing ride and an ‘educational’ presentation, in which we learned how the North Island of New Zealand was formed. Apparently some bloke was fishing out of his canoe (which by the way was the South Island) and using his Grandmother’s jawbone as a hook. As you do. Anyway, he hooked this big fish, which was was pretty smooth. But he fixed that up by hacking it up and the different bits became different bits of the island.

Of course, one can only surmise as to how the Maori people came by this information. Perhaps they coaxed it out of the last of the New Zealand’s original inhabitants, the Mori Ori, before killing and eating him. (At the time of our visit they hadn’t gotten around to erecting an exhibit about that particular episode of Maori history.)

Of course, a bit of indigenous culture is all well and good, but without pausing for breath the narrator mixes in stuff about tectonic plates helping to form the mountains, etc, as if it’s an inextricable part of the same story. And that is my main beef with the presentation – in introducing science into what is essentially a fairy tale, they seem to be trying to sell it to impressionable young minds as fact.

Come Te Papa? Once is enough, thanks.

I love Te Papa, a great place to visit.

Paul,
The modernisation of mythologies does lead to their confusion with fact. I understand your concerns. Many cannot tell the difference between myth and hypothesis. Then there is the issue of 'theory' and 'law'!

I have a particular interest in creation mythologies and enjoy seeing these developments. More amusing than most comic books.

By the way, I loved my visit to this museum and Rugby would be my religion if I wasn't an atheist.

Back again! Have a look at this article on Moa coprolites if you are into that sort of thing. Very interesting.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7826251.stm