15: Bones hold many secrets...
I found it mind-boggling that you could discover through the chemical signature locked in the bones what a man was eating and drinking. We know we can determine height, sex and age, but most people are not aware of the types of information that you can collect from the human skeleton. You start at the very basics with an inventory of what you have. Then the age, sex, and ancestry. From there you can get into the details of his health, his pathology.
Basically you measure the levels of chemical traces called isotopes. Biological tissues are reservoirs for elements such as carbon and oxygen, which arrive in the body through the food we eat and the environment we live in, and which have variants (isotopes) that can be measured. Tooth enamel is formed when you are young and the chemical fingerprints within it don't change during the rest of life. So whatever isotope signals the teeth contain are a result of the geographical area where individuals spent their childhood and the food and drink they consumed there.
If the old tall skeletons reported to have been dog up and stored at the Smithsonian were still there, imagine what they could learn.
So a small sample of bone is most likely needed if the physical appearance is that of someone not regarded as classical Maori. Nothing can be taken to chance that the politically controlled archeologists or political Maori can twist the find to anything other than what it is. We need to find out everything, that current science will reveal. If these people have been covered up because some don't want them exposed, what right have they to say the world shouldn't know about their existence? Just a political one? Get over the cultural embarrassment of hiding the true Tangata Whenua, even if a multi-million dollar tourism and teaching industry says otherwise.
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