96: The Melanesian link

Who migrated here first? When we ask that we do not refer to the small number of original inhabitants who were by all intents and purposes subsistence gathers and rock carvers who had lived here for millennia (the true tangata whenua), I refer to migration by canoes or canoes. You’d say it was the Polynesians…those from the central and east Pacific. But we instead refer you to the West Pacific and those from New Guinea, The Solomon islands, and even Fiji - essentially the Melanesians.

Those on Tikopia (see below) regarded the 'giants' as those with long black brown or read hair, who would pull it back from there face with one hand to see you. They had protruding double eyebrows, bulging eyeballs, flat noses, wide mouths and an unmistakable odour. In regard to red frizzy hair ad flat noses, many of these were still evident in early European photographs of pure ‘Maori’ races before interbreeding with Europeans occurred and many of the striking features began to disappear,

If you look at the Aboriginals of Australasia, they also have these traits. We are not interested in speculating where they came from before that, some say India, some say Madagascar. Yes, we know Maori, or those from Polynesia can trace roots back to Taiwan but that is a different race to that were refer to. Maori are essentially a mix of these two types because when Polynesians arrived in small numbers they met Melanesian's already living here, who had met the ancients, already living here.

We say Polynesians arriving in small number because of the 7 canoes were only capable of carrying 350-550 people safely across a vast tract of ocean...and that was over a period of 50 years (they didn’t all depart their homeland nor arrive here in the same migration – it was likely progressive).

But back to the Melanesian link. It seems through a number of fortuitous discoveries, that the ones who carved the symbols at Matria, (who are related to the ones we seek in our cave, and that at Raglan), are actually Melanesian's. However, as the ones in our cave were reported to be tall (8’+), and Melanesia has many stories if such people, did they come from there? DNA will tell us.

Therefore the stone carvers we seek saw new craft arriving, in a style they had never seen before, and they recorded it as such. There is something on Melanesian canoes that actually isn’t on Polynesian canoes. Yet this design portion was featured in a carving from Matira. Now we can’t prove anything but it was a single hulled outrigger canoe with twin sails. But where did these designs originate? Polynesia? Nope! They came from Melanesia far to the east in a land Polynesians had left some 1000 years before.

Islands like Tikopia also have ‘reel ornaments’ such as has been discovered in NZ and dated to the early Archaic period and prior. Also nose rings and other ornaments revealing chevrons on the wedge, once gain like the 'reel artifacts' date to 1350 (officially of course) yet are older still.

Those here when Polynesian arrived were a mix of the original inhabitants and Melanesian races. The ones we seek are specifically the original inhabitants, but on the other hand Melanesia also had legends of giants (tall ones) mainly at Guadalcanal , and Tikopia - a remote and unusually shaped island where the people, (even in early European times), were large, had intricate canoes yet very poor housing. Tikopia is on the extreme western edge of Polynesia and extreme eastern edge of Melanesia. The Lapita were on this island and Fiji, Tonga and Samoa.

Compare that of Tikopia with the legend of the Maruiwi of NZ. The same description, (excluding canoes) applies. Are they of the same race? We think they might be.