168: The Moriori question (again...)

In late November 2020 a group of Moriori trustees attended a ceremony at the Auckland War Memorial Museum to receive a whalebone taonga that had been in the museum’s care for a few years, after being found on Maunganui Beach in 2010 by a couple of visitors to the island. The item is a small pendant resembling an albatross, made to wear around someone’s neck, upside down. It features notching along the lower jaw and wing edges, 'typical of Moriori artistic design'. Note that last statement. How many times have we said notching was typical of the earliest inhabitants?

If that is the case, and notching is typical of Moriori artistic design, then Moriori could have come from Northland. Yet academics say they came from Te Wai Pounamu around 1500AD. Anyone else see the problem? https://tangatawhenua16.wixsite.com/the-first-ones-blog/single-post/2016/03/12/35-The-notched-adzes https://tangatawhenua16.wixsite.com/the-first-ones-blog/single-post/2016/02/28/30-Orongotea-carving Of course notching has also been found in Kaikoura and Southland as well. Yet notching is something more common to Melanesia than Polynesia and we still maintain a lot of archaic designs were influenced by Melanesia before the Polynesians got here. Only doing a DNA test on the human bone will clarify if there is any Polynesian connection. If not.....! But what do we know? Well, hear this. Recently someone contacted us from the Chatham Islands and said they were brought up as 'Maori' and did a DNA test. Turns out they are predominantly Aboriginal and Melanesian with no Polynesian ancestry. If true, that is very interesting indeed. But here is another artifact recorded in JPS from the Chathams from 1896.... complete with notching. The trouble I have with the bird amulet in the first picture is that it is untypical in style details and seems 'too' perfect to be original, undamaged, and found on a rocky, wild, wave swept beach. It's fake, but what do we know - for them saying it isn't actually helps our case.

A NOTE ON PATU's

How many times does it need to be said that if MoriOri were from NZ, then they would have copied implement shapes and patu shapes they were used to seeing there - that they had on the mainland. There is not one single patu the Maori have like this on the mainland. The only conclusion is they left before the warlike Maori arrived. But why? And if those from the mainland did have those designs previously why has not a single one been found there? There is nothing in NZ and the Chathams that matches each other (other than Polynesian adzes of mainland stone types brought over when Maori arrived). Nothing! This all suggests that Moriori are not from the area of Polynesian the Maori were, were not in NZ, or at least only were there on a very brief stopover until Polynesians chased them out. If the Moriori are from Polynesia then they are more the true Tangata Whenua of NZ than the Polynesian fleet Maori are.