The Great Hunger
From the Early Pandora Wiki Na'vi legend Wiki lore Real world
The Great Hunger (also called "the hungry time") is the event at the heart of the duck-sucker legend. In it, the Taktswìkyu ate every last tak, then starved and died out themselves. It ended the Age of the Great Swamps. Na'vi legend
Before: the long balance
For many generations the swamp was in balance. There were thousands of tak, and each Taktswìkyu needed only about one duck per full moon. The ducks laid eggs faster than the plants ate them, so their numbers stayed about the same year after year. Na'vi legend
Causes
It began with something that seemed like good news. One year the rains came early and stayed late. The swamps grew bigger, and the Taktswìkyu grew taller and wider, with new sprouts in every pond. But bigger plants are hungrier plants, and more plants mean more mouths to feed. One duck a moon was no longer enough. Na'vi legend
Wiki lore lists three things that made it worse: Wiki lore
- Too many seeds. In normal years most Taktswìkyu seeds washed out to sea. In the Long Rains the water spread so wide that seeds landed in new ponds everywhere.
- Only one big food. The grown Taktswìkyu ate mostly tak. When the tak got scarce, it had nothing else big enough.
- Nobody was counting. The early Na'vi did not hunt tak, so no one kept track of how many there were. The swamp just seemed "a little quieter."
What happened
- The plants wanted two ducks a moon, then three, then a duck every night.
- The tak could not lay eggs fast enough. Each morning the ponds were quieter.
- Ninat the Tsahik warned the plants: "You are taking too much. Eat less. Let the tak grow back." They did not listen.
- A young hunter found the very last tak, but it swam to the golden glow before he could save it.
- With no ducks left, the plants tried fish and frogs, and once even a hunter's foot (they spat out his sandal).
- Day by day the stalks turned brown, the glow faded, and the great swamps went dark.
Na'vi legend
The Great Hunger in numbers
Nobody on early Pandora counted ducks, but Na'vi elders tell the story in a way that lets us draw it. Before the rains, both kinds went up and down a little and always came back. After the rains, the plants shot up and the ducks went down, and then the plants fell too. Wiki lore
Show the numbers as a table
| Year | Tak | Taktswìkyu |
|---|---|---|
| 6 years before the Long Rains | 100% | 100% |
| 5 years before the Long Rains | 106% | 98% |
| 4 years before the Long Rains | 104% | 104% |
| 3 years before the Long Rains | 96% | 106% |
| 2 years before the Long Rains | 94% | 100% |
| 1 year before the Long Rains | 100% | 96% |
| The year the Long Rains began | 104% | 110% |
| 1 year after the rains began | 96% | 150% |
| 2 years after the rains began | 82% | 200% |
| 3 years after the rains began | 64% | 250% |
| 4 years after the rains began | 44% | 280% |
| 5 years after the rains began | 26% | 270% |
| 6 years after the rains began | 12% | 230% |
| 7 years after the rains began | 4% | 170% |
| 8 years after the rains began | 0% | 110% |
| 9 years after the rains began | 0% | 60% |
| 10 years after the rains began | 0% | 25% |
| 11 years after the rains began | 0% | 6% |
| 12 years after the rains began | 0% | 0% |
Look at the shape: the plants keep growing for a while after the ducks start to fall. That delay is what made the Great Hunger so dangerous. By the time the plants were hungry enough to notice, it was too late to stop. Wiki lore Real world
What it meant for the Na'vi
The early Na'vi did not eat tak, but the Great Hunger still changed their lives. Wiki lore
- The Stilt People lost their rope-plants forever, and had to learn to make rope from other fibres.
- Without the golden glow, the swamp nights were darker and more frightening.
- Without the ducks' calls, the swamp was silent. The songs say the silence was the hardest part.
- As the swamps dried, families had to move to new homes upriver and into the forests.
Aftermath
From the last seed came the first loreyu. Na'vi legend Wiki lore says the early Na'vi made new rules after the Great Hunger:
- "One for the mother, one for tomorrow." Hunters always leave the biggest and the youngest animals of any herd. Wiki lore
- Ninat's Three Questions. Do I need it? Is there enough? Will there be enough tomorrow? Wiki lore
- The remembering song. Sung whenever an animal grows rare, so the clan notices in time. Wiki lore
- Counting. Each clan chose a "keeper of numbers," who watched how many of each animal there were and reported to the Tsahik every season. Wiki lore
The real science: boom and bust
What happened to the Taktswìkyu has a name in real science: a boom and bust. When a population grows past what its home can feed, it is said to overshoot, and then it crashes. The most a place can feed, year after year, is called its carrying capacity. Real world
A real example: in 1944, 29 reindeer were brought to St. Matthew Island in Alaska, where nothing hunted them. With lots of food, they grew to about 6,000 by 1963. They ate the island's lichen faster than it could grow back, and after one hard winter only 42 were left. Real world
Real predators and prey also go up and down together. Fur-trading records kept in Canada for about a hundred years show that lynx and snowshoe hares rise and fall in a cycle of about ten years. Usually both survive. The Great Hunger is what happens when the predator gets so far ahead that the prey cannot come back. Real world
The lesson
The Taktswìkyu were the predators at the top of the food chain, yet by eating everything they "ate up their own future." Grandmother Ateyo sums it up in five words: "Take only what you need." Na'vi legend