- IJ & MD
121: Dig Update (with unexpected bonus)
Our latest dig inside Kūwaha Tāwhetaana allowed us to enlarge a huge area as a safety zone. From here is where we push forward with intent. This double corner is now opened up and the four metre straight we intend digging forward in, is still only 30cm dug out. We only intend to enlarge to a full crawl space and then work enlarge the next corner as yet another 'way station' before pushing down another 7 metre stretch. We cannot see beyond that even with spotlights.
A huge lump of solidified clay (shown in the last dig update) took a long time to remove as only small chips came off at a time and they shattered with the pick showering you in the eyes and hair. That one lump took an hour to finally remove and behind it we found some more bones. Below this was a loose layer of river rocks and clay that came away easily which also shows this is not wash-down as fill seems to change from metre to metre in how its placed within the layers of rock clay and quarry dust.
So this new enlargement allows us to progress forward safely with more people helping as we now have room to do so. Below is a composite photo of that area. To the right you can see the moisture absorber bucket and this time it was full after five weeks of sitting there. From the left wall to the clay wall is about 1.5 metres. The distance from the wall in front to behind where I took the photo is 2.2 metres so it's a good sized cavity to sit in. All we need now is some carpet, wallpaper and a few pictures hanging on the wall!
As we alluded to above, more bones appeared in this excavated area. Some were moa, as broken pieces revealed the honeycomb interior typical of birds. One large piece was a portion of the hip area and there was a rib or two. This portion allows the femur we already have to fit inside nicely, so it is the same type of bird (Little Bush Moa) at least.
Then the unexpected occurred...
We unearthed some bones that were not supposed to be there. They were very old and petrified (or similar), but even more interesting was they were segments of long bones, completely black (when damp) and solid; (by that we mean the bone is rock solid but the interior was perfectly hollow). They were calcified or petrified and probably lay in damp earth for a long time. They are mammalian but are old… or appear very old - as old (at least) as the time of when the moa was still alive in the Waikato which was when the one we have died naturally to be buried by natural deposits in the bush; deep underground. That means 1000AD and as far back as maybe 3000BC or more - at a time well before man ever got here. Yet these mammal bones that were black and solidified and were transported inside our tube along with the moa bones (which were found very close to it in the tube) and therefore from the same area as excavated outside; ie - dug up underground in natural from, not in a burial area. When dried, the bone thickness reveals a dark grey colour. Two other joint portions of mammal bone are also petrified to stone but show a pinkish colour in the bone thickness and have been broken a long time as the earth fully fills the cavity. They are not bone shafts as with the black portions, but bone necks or heads (joints).
There are two things here we noticed about these two types of these mammalian bones. (1) The colour (2) The hardening to stone.
(1) For soil staining, Manganese Dioxide in the soil can cause a black colour in bones and Manganese Carbonate in the soil can cause a pink colour. For organic staining, plant material can cause black colour in buried bones, but nothing organic changes them to pink. Thorough burning and then being buried in wet earth can have a similar result.
(2a) Petrification requires time - lots and lots of time along with the right conditions. The most common method of fossilization is permineralization. After an organism's soft tissues decay in sediment, the hard parts - particularly the bones - are left behind. These crystallized minerals cause the remains to harden along with the encasing sedimentary rock. The trouble is, these bones we found didn't come from rock but soft ground, yet they are mineral hardened.
(2b) Silicification most often occurs in two environments-either the specimen is buried in sediments of deltas and floodplains or organisms are buried in volcanic ash. Water must be present for silicification to occur because it reduces the amount of oxygen present and therefore reduces the deterioration of the organism by fungi, maintains organism shape, and allows for the transportation and deposition of silica. West Waikato had volcanic activity but that was a very long time ago.
(2c) Calcination is usually associated with burning and is unlikely in bones simply buried.
There is no definitive answer as to what they really are or belong to and we don't want to jump to definite conclusions or even over eager assumptions... what we need now is a jaw bone or a tooth to be conclusive as to what they belong to. What caused the hardening is difficult to ascertain. But regardless of how they became to look like that, lets look at the evidence of when...
The clay fill they came in with was from outside and in the same place the moa bones once were because the digger would pick up everything in it's bucket in a specific area, if it wasn't first seen by the operator. Digger blades run down a bank when picking up material. And even if bone material was noticed in the excavated bank, they would probably still have been instructed to bury it in the tube as no was was ever going to dig it out again - were they!
These bones were black when damp, and quite literally have turned to stone, and are very fragile. See the photo on the left below. We checked how long fossilization takes to turn bone to stone and it does depend on the location the bone rests within. Generally they say 10,000 years but it can take as little as 1200 years in the most absolute perfect of circumstances. As no other bones are similar to their composition and in fact, we have now observed three distinct types of presentation of old bones... there are no ideal perfect circumstances for petrification in the vicinity or are there? And why just these ones? We think it's because they were deeper and in a damper portion of what held the moa bones where that animal died of old age or similar. Those too were buried under leaf litter and humus over a long period of time. Some bones of the moa show deep-root markings. These 'mammal' bones were buried somewhere or fell and died and has been covered over either over time or deliberately, and then the local forest has grown whereas the bones have absorbed organic material into the structure and then hardened. But what do they belong to?
Time alone proves it's not a cow or any introduced European animal is it! And they are too thin in circumference to be anyway. And it's not a Kuri dog, nor a moa. They are 100% mammalian but much older than the moa bones found close by... much much older! Firstly we know this due to the lack of calcification of the moa bones, Secondly, we know that the little bush moa was hunted to extinction around 700 years ago. Our little moa bones were not from a Maori feast, but from the natural death of the bird which eventually was covered over until buried deep underground - this makes our little moa likely to be at least 800 years old and maybe as much as 3000 years or even more. Yet these mammalian bones shown below 'appear' older - much older! They feel older. They are as solid stone.
Could they have been burned before being buried? Quite possibly as Maori burned and buried much they regarded as tapu made by those that came before them - and we have evidenced this with wooden artifacts in a previous article which showed designs and forms not recognized as Polynesian. There is a hill far to the south-west that refers to a great burning and great sorrow. If Maori named everything in these islands that would mean these bones turned to stone within 700 years or less and that cannot happen. Besides, alongside these fragments were two other 'mammalian' bone joints that might belong to the same set of bones. But these were not black when damp, but petrified into pink/orange stone with the interior full of clay. We will show some closeups later in another post.
Once again, read into what we are suggesting -
They are from the same source location as the moa bones, as the fill was transported directly from one place to the cave at one time.
Both sets of bones were found within centimeters of each other.
They are mammalian.
There are and only three known types of mammal here before the European came. The bat, the kuri dog and the human.
They are fossilized.
That process takes more than 1200 years even in the most perfect of circumstances in normal soils
There were only two types of mammal here before the Polynesians arrived. One was the native bat...
Fossilized bone from the fill in our cave 135,000 year old fossilized Mastedon bones
So we know what they are not and we do know they were dug up deeper than the 2000 year old moa was dug up from as the action of a digger would be top to bottom of a hillside. They are not from a Kuri as they are too large, so these bones surely must belong to those (we have been saying 'pre-existed' for the last three years) to whom the the evidence of artifacts and stories show were here before the Polynesians arrived. These bones then, could easily predate even the Melanesian arrivals of 750AD.
If in fact these bones are of the original tangata whenua that the old Maori stories said over and over were already here; pre-Polynesian arrival...(these bones cannot be dated in their fossilized state), we may have found the only known human bones that are older than 734 years, ever found (or acknowledged) here in NZ. The oldest acknowledged date was between 1285-1300AD with skeletons on the Wairau Bar. These are not just older, they are much older... These bones could be 300-800AD or even older? But we cannot prove that either. All we have is evidence of fossilization which takes a very long time to occur.
They appear to belong to a humerus as the segments even have a radial groove. The size and composition also suggest what it is. But that is not conclusive either.
The other possibility (although unlikely) is that if these bones are thousands of years old or many thousands of years old, they may belong to an unknown mammal no one knew existed here and died out before the time of the moa even? That is extremely unlikely but regardless of what you think it might belong to there is one important fact - they are of a far greater age than anything that came with the Polynesian arrivals regardless whether it be man or beast!
Summary:
So are they human? Most likely! If that is the case we have proven Polynesians were not here first. Few would accept that though because of what they have been taught to believe.
However, these human bones are, as yet, of little consequence to us compared to what lies hidden inside our cave beyond the filled tube. Not only are the ones we seek reported to be very much older than the Polynesian arrivals, the ones we seek are different skeletally. They are also fully complete and still lying where gently placed by those still living before the others of their race were reportedly exterminated (also undetermined). The bones you see in the shot on the left above are even older than the ones we seek considering the depth the sat at before being brought in with the fill for the tube, but too fragmented to ascertain stature, or origin, and too fossilized to be carbon dated. However, in our cave beyond the fill, lies fourteen fully complete skeletons reported to measure up to a tribe of humans at an average of 8' (2.43m) in stature. They won't be fossilized as they reportedly lie in dry conditions. That is good as it means they can be dated.
In regard to the new bones found in the fill we have just shown you, we don't like making such definitive assertions like others do in other sites with less evidence than we have. We are, and want to be seen as, pragmatic in our approach to everything we do. However, we do have suggestive evidence and are convinced of what they are not, and of what they are, and that they predate Polynesian arrivals by a very long time.
The intrigue and mystery deepens and the digging is now no longer as boring as it was at first!
