Known as a mauri, this stone effigy is named after the founding ancestor Marutuahu. A mauri was a vessel holding a particular kind of energy, and was used by Maori priests in rituals for securing rights and relationship to land.

'New' research has 'discovered' Maori had a plant based diet as a central component of their existence prior to 'colonisation'. I despair a little when reading academic findings as if they are something new and unobvious to the average person in NZ. Too much of the vaccines maybe...? The only 'meat' Maori could eat were birds (not enough meat on birds once Maori had exterminated the Moa and the giant goose), seafood, dogs (but eat them all and they are exterminated), rats an

Here is a link to a NatGeo article. A very good one on the history of this 'lost tribe'. It is a true tale, too much has been discovered and observed for it to be fiction. For all we know, a handful of individulas may still out there, as elusive as the Fiordland moose. https://www.nzgeo.com/stories/the-lost-tribe-of-fiordland/ And here is a book I discovered written just about this tribe which seems to have a lot of genuine history all blended into a novel of the history of t

They seem to be coming out the woodwork with the institutions closed....

A ' giant '. There are many legends in which giants are mentioned as having lived in New Zealand; some of these relating to historical or...

Sometimes I've wondered about legends... like the Korotangi, where no such legend was ever recorded until an old Maori woman declared the...

In the search to find the rumoured skeletons of a tall race that existed here long before Maori were ejected from their homeland for...

This bowl was found 1.5m underground in Tauranga in the 1890's on a slope of Maungatawa. Yes, 1.5m underground in fern country....

At the centre of maori culture and religion were the gods; the Atua. In Māori belief the natural and supernatural worlds were one – there...

King Kamehameha 1 was a chief who took control of all the islands of Hawaii by conquest. Let's make this clear, the unification of Hawaii...