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49: Rapanui and the Pouto Peninsula
Around 1992 Maxine Stringer found an unusual carving in the sand hills of Pouto at the Kaipara-Hokianga coast. Noel Hilliam recovered the item and it now sits in the Dargaville Museum. He has said, as many believe that it is of Waitaha origin (200AD+) and not Maori who came 1000 years later from Polynesia. We know Maori did not come from the east so that is important to note.
Now here are some pictures of that artefact and a close up supplied from the museum of the upper body detail. Click each photo and examine the detail of the carving style and position.
Now, Noel believes, as I do, that this item is not of Maori origin (ie - carved after their arrival). This belief flies in the face of certain experts which include Maps blogger, Scott Hamilton. They may be right - after all they are the experts behind the desks while we are just amateurs in the field. But you will have to admit the Pou is a very strange and one of a kind artifact (although more unusual items still lie hidden in the sand still). Dargaville Museum were forced to remove the signage referring to the Pou as being from the Waitaha. Therefore the Pou no longer has any such claims attached to it (and no tribal claims yet either!). The Dargaville and District News published an article about the item along with Professor Moon's comments that there was no archaeological evidence. So some say it is, and some say it isn't. Yet who has had it carbon dated? I cannot find a reference to that yet. Look, it may indeed be an early form of archaic Maori carving totally unlike anything they were used to.
In other words, a Polynesian arrived in NZ and experimented with a new form unlike anything he had ever seen before? That's bit like taking a Sioux from 1725 and placing him in the Amazon and having him make something that is not a bow to hunt with. Highly unlikely isn't it because he'd make what he has always used to hunt with. Sometimes logic is never discussed and sometimes things just never make sense. So the upshot from the experts is that Polynesian arrivals instantly changed all they knew...shapes, tools, customs, language, housing, craft and art. Remember that these Polynesians brought almost nothing with them on those double canoes. There was no 40' shipping container from Danzas Polynesie following them and the stories that accompany the craft reveal very, very, cramped conditions just for people and food alone. So what did they do? We maintain they copied what they saw those already here doing, using and making. But I'm not an expert so I know my wild idea is wrong while the wild ideas of experts are right. Who cares. If we reveal what we indend to reveal, no amount of 'experts' will be able to explain what we find away.
Here is my point. We know that those we now call Maori came from Polynesia and that Polynesians did not use spirals except in Fiji. Spirals are almost unique to NZ as far as Pacific Islands go. They are also prevalent in Melanesia - Sorry Scott, you'll have to explain that sometime. Spirals only appeared in NZ on Maori artifacts dated from about 1450's. Yet they arrived mostly between 1250 - 1350 according to the experts. Yet the above artifact in the Dargaville Museum has spirals and therefore must be of Maori origin some say. Really?
First let's look at Rapanui (Easter Island). Few spirals appear on Rapanui but those that do are small, at extremities of artefacts as with the Rapa (paddles) as shown below. Now you would take paddles on an ocean voyage wouldn't you? (click pictures to enlarge)
If you research Easter Island you will find the original inhabitants probably arrived around 500AD and deforestation would have been extensive by around 1000AD. All these dates are in dispute. Below is a comparison of the last of the wood carvings from Rapanui and carved in a more intricate manner than what we show below. Alongside is a Maori carving of the same era as a comparison.
What you may not know is the those found on Rapanui by the Europeans were not the original inhabitants. They were kicked out by those who made the Moai. That's when the wood ran out. Meantime the legend of some riding off on icebergs represents some leaving and drift voyaging across the Pacific, with at least one group reaching and settling here about 750AD. They made the figure below.
The spirals are on the head rather than the cheeks, as Maori would have it done, but admittedly is not on the shoulders as Maori would have done. However, it is quite similar in form and intention to that found at the Poutu sandhills which is most unlike any Maori Pou found elsewhere - is it not? The above carving is made from the wood of a toromiro tree and is from Rapanui (Easter Island), over 4000 nautical miles away from where the Poutu peninsula carving was found buried in the sand of the upper Kaipara coast. Is this a remnant of the few that sailed here escaping the confusion of their homeland of Rapanui? We will never know for sure, but the Poutu Pou is still un-Maori-like and closer to this carving from Rapanui which did use spirals in a small way.
Proof? Not in the slightest, but very intriguing none-the-less.
