(was going to be a response to another thread but thought this could be better as a new topic, You also wont come across much research done in NZ as its hush hush!!! this could be a first on here if not very rare!).
Shortstack you are correct, New Zealand does hold a lot of history, However archeology here in New Zealand is very secret, as anything that dates pre Maori, is generally destroyed. There is much politics here about our past, and any sites that have been found have either been destroyed, fenced off or hidden away or reclaimed by the Maori to be burried/hidden away for ever. The British museum recently returned a mummified head back to the state here that was of a red hair of European origin again only to be hidden away. The Auckland museum refuses to acknowledge anything pre Maori. We have stone carvings here where recently acid has been poured on them to hide there inscriptions as they were of Celtic origin and not Maori, however i have managed to find 5 pictures which are open to interpretation that are local here . The symbols have been chalk outlined so they can be seen, since this picture was taken they have been defaced. I once did some work for the tourist office here and someone came in one day inquiring about the carvings, there were 2 maori in the office at the time that overheard his inquiry and immediately turned round to give be a stare of disgust, i had to politely mentioned i knew of no such carvings, luckily enough i manage to catch up with him at a local cafe to explain the directions and the reason for having to lie to him. Below is an insert of one of the very few stories outlining the pre Maori colonization. "It should not be about politics, history is history! and should not be denied, despite personal views! Its away to piece together humanities history!?
"The new ārevisedā history of New Zealand
Weāve all seen the documentaries and visual imagery is compelling. Whole new generations grow up with a picture of this land as pristine and pure, uninhabited until Polynesian footprints placed upon our shores. Before this belief continues any longer, we owe it to ourselves, and to the original ancestors of this land, to look at the facts. There were people here before the Polynesian migrations. They left behind multiple clues as outlined in the previous two parts of this series. They also left behind their bones ā and these tell the most tragic tale of all. Far from pure and peaceful, the land now known as New Zealand was an unimaginable hell, awash in the blood of both the original peoples and Maori. Formal burials tell us about the First Peoples, but the bones of the ancient peoples can also be found under layers of charcoal, in the old cooking pits.
Up until the 1970s, that early Maori were cannibals was common knowledge, though its extent and the horrifying effects on all the people of this country could not have been imagined. New Zealandās early history was openly outlined in books available to schools. Suddenly, books were withdrawn, a new ārevisedā history appeared and the original, pre-Maori inhabitants disappeared from public view. This article allows them to speak again.
Maori have always spoken of a race of fair skinned people who preceded them. They called them "Patu-paiarehe" or Turehu, and some still trace a shared lineage. In 1867, a Ngati Whatua Tohunga (historian) stated that the Ngati Whatua came to New Zealand from the Cook Islands nine generations earlier, making landfall at a place called Hatarau (Little Barrier Island). Arriving there they encountered a race of fair haired people with fair skin and green blue eyes, whom they named PAKEHA . They took the women to breed from - the males as slaves and food.
There are Maori who speak of babies stolen long ago by a "fairy people" who hid in the bush, only coming out at night ā an understandable action of people who were being killed and eaten faster than they could breed. It is also highly possible that children taken were born to their own women captured by Maori. In savage post-Maori New Zealand, captives were eaten immediately, kept for breeding or enslaved and subsequently killed for food ā an unpalatable history to inherit, but a fact, nonetheless.
One of the last surviving sub-tribes of the Patu-paiarehe was called the Ngati Hotu, pockets of whom survived into colonial times. Hereās a description of them from Maori oral history: "Generally speaking, Ngati Hotu were of medium height and of light colouring. In the majority of cases they had reddish hair. They were referred to as urukehu. It is said that during the early stages of their occupation of Taupo they did not practice tattooing as later generations did, and were spoken of as te whanau a Rangi (the children of heaven) because of their fair skin. There were two distinct types. One had reddish skin, a round face, small eyes and thick protruding eyebrows. The other was the Turehu. They had white hair and blue green eyes. They were fair-skinned, much smaller in stature, with larger and very handsome features." ( Refer: Tuwharetoa, Chpt.7, pg.115, by rev. John Grace). Note: The cavern dwellings and stone walls of these people can still be seen at Taupo, but are unprotected and under threat from development.
These tall bones and small Turehu bones were found just last month in a cooking pit.
The bones of the first New Zealanders have been found at locations all over the country: A cache of bones was found in the Kaipara District in 2005 when a pig hunterās dog wandered into a cave. Investigations were handed over to Noel Hilliam, retired Curator of the Dargaville Maritime Museum, and his team ofresearchers. The skeletons showed that there were, at least, three distinct physical types of pre-Maori interned there, ranging from the very tall people (around 7 to 8 feet in height - 2.4 metres), to people of normal stature, to the very small pygmy people.
Noel: "The small stature āTurehu" were a particularly attractive childlike people with very fine features. We know about them because these small people once populated countries like Ireland and traditional stories relate their occupation of the Pacific range from Tahiti to New Caledonia to New Zealand. A specialist who examined some of the skeletons in the cave likened them to a race of people living in Wales 3000 years ago."
The obvious question is: Why has this discovery, which changes our commonly accepted history, not been made public? It has ā an article in the Northern Advocate reported the discovery, including a comment from an Auckland archaeologist, dismissing the antiquity of the bones, which he never viewed. Noel was unable to access facilities to undertake forensic examination of the bones, but by their size and the skull shape alone, they were clearly not Polynesian. Pre-European Maori had a distinct skull, including a ārockerā jaw, not found in Europeans.
Noel: "A number of years ago around one of the stone cairns near the Waipoua forest, an archaeologist excavated down 2.3 metres, going through two different tephra layers. Carbon datings proved there were people living in this country over five thousand years ago. We have come across a number of caves throughout New Zealand where these peoples were laid to rest. We no longer register these sites, to protect them from destruction, as anything pre-Maori is being buried or destroyed, including their dwellings. In the Waipoua Forest there are hundreds of stone walls, stone dwelling, stone fireplaces and altars - and petroglyhs carved in the stone. A large one that has fallen over had the design of an early ship carved on it.
"This country over the centuries has been visited by many peoples from many different countries - some we know of are the Greeks, Chinese, French, Portuguese and Spanish. The Chinese have an early world map showing New Zealand on it. In a museum in Naples there is a marble statue of ATLAS with a globe on his shoulders, made by the Greeks and modified by the Romans in 150 AD. The Greeks by this time had established the world was round and a time frame round the world of 360 units, which much later in time became latitudes of degrees. The globe is of the heavenly night sky over Athens at that time showing the Tropic of Cancer, the equator, the Tropic of Capricorn, the Antarctic Circle ā and New Zealand. The Polynesian Maori are at least the fourth lot of people to come here."
The Dargaville burial find is far from unique, just more recent. Eden Mill in the Auckland suburb of Onehunga was built in 1843 to grind grain. (see photo) For over a decade in the 1860s it was used to grind up the skeletal remains of countless generations of Patu-paiarehe into fertiliser. Many tens of thousands of skeletons were removed from Auckland burial caves for this purpose and sold to the mill. Maori of the time had no concerns about the fate of these "Tangata Whenua" bones and openly stated to the authorities, āDo as you wish [with these bones], for these are not our peopleā.
Ancient burial methods
One 19th century report from the fiord area of the South Island spoke of humans remains in a limestone cave that were so old that a stalactite had partially encased the petrified remains.
Skeletons of the ancient people have been observed, frequently, since the earliest colonial time, in burial caves or in a sitting (trussed position) in sand dunes, with artefacts beside them. The trussed burial is a typical type of pre-Maori burial. Around Kekerengu in the Kaikoura area of the South Island a large number of these have been found, reportedly with a moa egg with each trussed skeleton, a burial method similar to ancient burials in Costa Rica, where round stone balls accompanied the deceased into the afterlife. One such burial was found on Pigeon Mountain near Howick with a pumice ball found with the deceased.
Some bodies found in caves around the Raglan region were encased in Kauri gum, while in both Raglan and the Waima Range there are dry mummified remains in caves. Another ancient custom practiced by the pre-Maori people was to take the bodies to an open air location where the body tissues could eaten by carrion birds, like the black-backed seagull. The remains would stay there for a year or so in the elements until the relatives returned to gather the bones and stack them neatly into a bundle. These would then be carried to and deposited in a burial cave or rock fissure. Others were placed on a carved wooden tray held by a menacing looking statuette figure the purpose of which was scare anyone who wanted to come and disturb the remains. Several of these were located in the Waima Range around Waimamaku, Hokianga District.
Some burials were in stone hewn coffins, such as a number observed in different locations around the Wanganui River region. (see photo Turehu coffins)
Those found in burial caves often had red hair or other light brown and blond hues. Samples of their braided hair, taken from the Waitakere rock shelters, used to be on display at Auckland War Memorial Museum and were the subject of written commentary by Maori anthropologist, Sir Peter Buck. Our earliest maritime explorers frequently saw the, red headed, freckle-faced Maori or "waka blondes" and large pockets of them survived well into the 20th century as people who had never mixed their blood with colonial era European settlers. These days, when ancient, pre-colonial European Caucasoid skeletons are located, they are handed over to the local iwi and no scientific investigation is permitted.
An example of this happened in1995 on a Manutahi farm in Taranaki. The remains of 12 skeletons in a formal pre-European burial ground were unearthed by contractors doing earthworks. The bones were removed and reinterred, reluctantly, at Manutahi Marae where elders said they should have been left where they were. Michael Taylor, a private archaeologist from Wanganui, was called in by the NZ Historic Places Trust to assess the discovery. He said the burial site "definitely pre-dates European settlement due to the style of burial, state of the bones and the presence of what may have been woven flax. Something like this is a significant discovery because it is an unrecorded formal burial site. Iāve been in archaeology for over 20 years and this is the first time I have seen anything like this."
Since the find, more evidence has filtered through. This tells us that the bones of each skeleton unearthed were in woven bags, but the material was not flax; The burial site was a formally organised location, totally unknown to the local iwi by their own admission. Itās evident that they had no history of burials at this location and in this unique manner; The final burial had occurred in swamp or bog land and was similar to the bog burials of Britain. No photography or forensic analysis of the well preserved skeletal remains and accompanying materials to determine their age, ethnicity or physical anthropology was permitted.
Turehu coffins. These skeletons have recognisable European physiology. They were already very old when found in rugged country, far from any European churchyard and with stone hewn coffins.
A blowup of the picture positively shows a side view of a jaw (mandible) which is not Maori, but European. Maori predominantly have a "rocker jaw" with a continuous downwards curve on the lower border. Further to that, the eye sockets of these people are squarish, the nose openings pyramidal, the faces long and narrow (dolicephalic skull type) and the craniums very round with a high vault.
Ancient people lived and died nearby
South of Port Waikato stretches rugged limestone country ā an area full of caves and the last refuge of a peaceful people who were hunted, and literally, eaten to death. These early New Zealanders were not warlike. They were "easy meat" for the cannibals who came to New Zealand in successive Polynesian migrations, and driven into hiding from their homes along the coast and in the Waikato.
This is one of the skulls in the cache of skeletons featured on the recent 60 Minutesā documentary on Paul Moonās book "This Horrid Practice." The back of the skull, similar to others there but not shown on TV, shows clear evidence of cannibalism. The back of the skull has been smashed off to extract the brain. Caucasoid European bones were at this site, now buried.
The ancient peoples built an extensive network of underground homes
During the 1800s, the Rev Robert Maunsell compiled a vast dossier of information on a tribe of "Tall Ones" who had lived in the area, but it was destroyed when the old Port Waikato mission station burnt down. Much of his information was gathered by word of mouth from old Maori living in the area at the time but more striking evidence was gathered by the Reverend himself on several trips into burial caves, where there were skeletons of people over 2 metres tall. Among them, he reported there were several pieces of pottery. Maori did not make pottery.
Twelve years ago these Tall Ones "spoke from the dust" again during earthworks at Waikaretu. Contractors discovered a cave set into a limestone bluff. Inside were skeletons in stone crypts. By the length of the femurs, the bodies were 7-8ft tall (over 2 metres). Anthropologists from Auckland and Waikato universities were called in, then followed a complete shutdown of the site, with a 75 year moratorium placed upon it. Maurice Tyson of Tuakau, a contractor in the area for 50 years, recalls how this upset the men who had discovered the cave and who could not understand why such a valuable archaeological site should be kept secret. Maurice also speaks of seeing a stone village with walls near the mouth of the Waikaretu Stream. Stone from the village was crushed to use for road metal and nothing now remains.
In Franklin a young Maori man with strikingly blue eyes walks, unaware. Above him, embedded in the clay bank, lie tiny human bones - tangled with small fragments of crayfish shell and charcoal. A larger, digit bone lies with it in the partly exposed cooking pit. Are these pathetic remains Maori or pre-Maori European? As more and more bones surface, they are asking us to listen to their stories, to use the scientific testing now available to prove that long ago, other peoples walked this land. As a nation we need to acknowledge their existence, accept the horrors of New Zealandās cannibal history which decimated pre-Maori and Maori alike - and so move on.
Just to give you an outline of the area, however, where i live there are many stone carvings , odalisques some shown in the pics, ie the turtle looking one and the carved tattoo ones are a stone throw away from myself, Ill try to take some recent photos if i can if there is anything left of therm, However anyone any idea of the inscriptions?
last 5 pics are local
Shortstack you are correct, New Zealand does hold a lot of history, However archeology here in New Zealand is very secret, as anything that dates pre Maori, is generally destroyed. There is much politics here about our past, and any sites that have been found have either been destroyed, fenced off or hidden away or reclaimed by the Maori to be burried/hidden away for ever. The British museum recently returned a mummified head back to the state here that was of a red hair of European origin again only to be hidden away. The Auckland museum refuses to acknowledge anything pre Maori. We have stone carvings here where recently acid has been poured on them to hide there inscriptions as they were of Celtic origin and not Maori, however i have managed to find 5 pictures which are open to interpretation that are local here . The symbols have been chalk outlined so they can be seen, since this picture was taken they have been defaced. I once did some work for the tourist office here and someone came in one day inquiring about the carvings, there were 2 maori in the office at the time that overheard his inquiry and immediately turned round to give be a stare of disgust, i had to politely mentioned i knew of no such carvings, luckily enough i manage to catch up with him at a local cafe to explain the directions and the reason for having to lie to him. Below is an insert of one of the very few stories outlining the pre Maori colonization. "It should not be about politics, history is history! and should not be denied, despite personal views! Its away to piece together humanities history!?
"The new ārevisedā history of New Zealand
Weāve all seen the documentaries and visual imagery is compelling. Whole new generations grow up with a picture of this land as pristine and pure, uninhabited until Polynesian footprints placed upon our shores. Before this belief continues any longer, we owe it to ourselves, and to the original ancestors of this land, to look at the facts. There were people here before the Polynesian migrations. They left behind multiple clues as outlined in the previous two parts of this series. They also left behind their bones ā and these tell the most tragic tale of all. Far from pure and peaceful, the land now known as New Zealand was an unimaginable hell, awash in the blood of both the original peoples and Maori. Formal burials tell us about the First Peoples, but the bones of the ancient peoples can also be found under layers of charcoal, in the old cooking pits.
Up until the 1970s, that early Maori were cannibals was common knowledge, though its extent and the horrifying effects on all the people of this country could not have been imagined. New Zealandās early history was openly outlined in books available to schools. Suddenly, books were withdrawn, a new ārevisedā history appeared and the original, pre-Maori inhabitants disappeared from public view. This article allows them to speak again.
Maori have always spoken of a race of fair skinned people who preceded them. They called them "Patu-paiarehe" or Turehu, and some still trace a shared lineage. In 1867, a Ngati Whatua Tohunga (historian) stated that the Ngati Whatua came to New Zealand from the Cook Islands nine generations earlier, making landfall at a place called Hatarau (Little Barrier Island). Arriving there they encountered a race of fair haired people with fair skin and green blue eyes, whom they named PAKEHA . They took the women to breed from - the males as slaves and food.
There are Maori who speak of babies stolen long ago by a "fairy people" who hid in the bush, only coming out at night ā an understandable action of people who were being killed and eaten faster than they could breed. It is also highly possible that children taken were born to their own women captured by Maori. In savage post-Maori New Zealand, captives were eaten immediately, kept for breeding or enslaved and subsequently killed for food ā an unpalatable history to inherit, but a fact, nonetheless.
One of the last surviving sub-tribes of the Patu-paiarehe was called the Ngati Hotu, pockets of whom survived into colonial times. Hereās a description of them from Maori oral history: "Generally speaking, Ngati Hotu were of medium height and of light colouring. In the majority of cases they had reddish hair. They were referred to as urukehu. It is said that during the early stages of their occupation of Taupo they did not practice tattooing as later generations did, and were spoken of as te whanau a Rangi (the children of heaven) because of their fair skin. There were two distinct types. One had reddish skin, a round face, small eyes and thick protruding eyebrows. The other was the Turehu. They had white hair and blue green eyes. They were fair-skinned, much smaller in stature, with larger and very handsome features." ( Refer: Tuwharetoa, Chpt.7, pg.115, by rev. John Grace). Note: The cavern dwellings and stone walls of these people can still be seen at Taupo, but are unprotected and under threat from development.
These tall bones and small Turehu bones were found just last month in a cooking pit.
The bones of the first New Zealanders have been found at locations all over the country: A cache of bones was found in the Kaipara District in 2005 when a pig hunterās dog wandered into a cave. Investigations were handed over to Noel Hilliam, retired Curator of the Dargaville Maritime Museum, and his team ofresearchers. The skeletons showed that there were, at least, three distinct physical types of pre-Maori interned there, ranging from the very tall people (around 7 to 8 feet in height - 2.4 metres), to people of normal stature, to the very small pygmy people.
Noel: "The small stature āTurehu" were a particularly attractive childlike people with very fine features. We know about them because these small people once populated countries like Ireland and traditional stories relate their occupation of the Pacific range from Tahiti to New Caledonia to New Zealand. A specialist who examined some of the skeletons in the cave likened them to a race of people living in Wales 3000 years ago."
The obvious question is: Why has this discovery, which changes our commonly accepted history, not been made public? It has ā an article in the Northern Advocate reported the discovery, including a comment from an Auckland archaeologist, dismissing the antiquity of the bones, which he never viewed. Noel was unable to access facilities to undertake forensic examination of the bones, but by their size and the skull shape alone, they were clearly not Polynesian. Pre-European Maori had a distinct skull, including a ārockerā jaw, not found in Europeans.
Noel: "A number of years ago around one of the stone cairns near the Waipoua forest, an archaeologist excavated down 2.3 metres, going through two different tephra layers. Carbon datings proved there were people living in this country over five thousand years ago. We have come across a number of caves throughout New Zealand where these peoples were laid to rest. We no longer register these sites, to protect them from destruction, as anything pre-Maori is being buried or destroyed, including their dwellings. In the Waipoua Forest there are hundreds of stone walls, stone dwelling, stone fireplaces and altars - and petroglyhs carved in the stone. A large one that has fallen over had the design of an early ship carved on it.
"This country over the centuries has been visited by many peoples from many different countries - some we know of are the Greeks, Chinese, French, Portuguese and Spanish. The Chinese have an early world map showing New Zealand on it. In a museum in Naples there is a marble statue of ATLAS with a globe on his shoulders, made by the Greeks and modified by the Romans in 150 AD. The Greeks by this time had established the world was round and a time frame round the world of 360 units, which much later in time became latitudes of degrees. The globe is of the heavenly night sky over Athens at that time showing the Tropic of Cancer, the equator, the Tropic of Capricorn, the Antarctic Circle ā and New Zealand. The Polynesian Maori are at least the fourth lot of people to come here."
The Dargaville burial find is far from unique, just more recent. Eden Mill in the Auckland suburb of Onehunga was built in 1843 to grind grain. (see photo) For over a decade in the 1860s it was used to grind up the skeletal remains of countless generations of Patu-paiarehe into fertiliser. Many tens of thousands of skeletons were removed from Auckland burial caves for this purpose and sold to the mill. Maori of the time had no concerns about the fate of these "Tangata Whenua" bones and openly stated to the authorities, āDo as you wish [with these bones], for these are not our peopleā.
Ancient burial methods
One 19th century report from the fiord area of the South Island spoke of humans remains in a limestone cave that were so old that a stalactite had partially encased the petrified remains.
Skeletons of the ancient people have been observed, frequently, since the earliest colonial time, in burial caves or in a sitting (trussed position) in sand dunes, with artefacts beside them. The trussed burial is a typical type of pre-Maori burial. Around Kekerengu in the Kaikoura area of the South Island a large number of these have been found, reportedly with a moa egg with each trussed skeleton, a burial method similar to ancient burials in Costa Rica, where round stone balls accompanied the deceased into the afterlife. One such burial was found on Pigeon Mountain near Howick with a pumice ball found with the deceased.
Some bodies found in caves around the Raglan region were encased in Kauri gum, while in both Raglan and the Waima Range there are dry mummified remains in caves. Another ancient custom practiced by the pre-Maori people was to take the bodies to an open air location where the body tissues could eaten by carrion birds, like the black-backed seagull. The remains would stay there for a year or so in the elements until the relatives returned to gather the bones and stack them neatly into a bundle. These would then be carried to and deposited in a burial cave or rock fissure. Others were placed on a carved wooden tray held by a menacing looking statuette figure the purpose of which was scare anyone who wanted to come and disturb the remains. Several of these were located in the Waima Range around Waimamaku, Hokianga District.
Some burials were in stone hewn coffins, such as a number observed in different locations around the Wanganui River region. (see photo Turehu coffins)
Those found in burial caves often had red hair or other light brown and blond hues. Samples of their braided hair, taken from the Waitakere rock shelters, used to be on display at Auckland War Memorial Museum and were the subject of written commentary by Maori anthropologist, Sir Peter Buck. Our earliest maritime explorers frequently saw the, red headed, freckle-faced Maori or "waka blondes" and large pockets of them survived well into the 20th century as people who had never mixed their blood with colonial era European settlers. These days, when ancient, pre-colonial European Caucasoid skeletons are located, they are handed over to the local iwi and no scientific investigation is permitted.
An example of this happened in1995 on a Manutahi farm in Taranaki. The remains of 12 skeletons in a formal pre-European burial ground were unearthed by contractors doing earthworks. The bones were removed and reinterred, reluctantly, at Manutahi Marae where elders said they should have been left where they were. Michael Taylor, a private archaeologist from Wanganui, was called in by the NZ Historic Places Trust to assess the discovery. He said the burial site "definitely pre-dates European settlement due to the style of burial, state of the bones and the presence of what may have been woven flax. Something like this is a significant discovery because it is an unrecorded formal burial site. Iāve been in archaeology for over 20 years and this is the first time I have seen anything like this."
Since the find, more evidence has filtered through. This tells us that the bones of each skeleton unearthed were in woven bags, but the material was not flax; The burial site was a formally organised location, totally unknown to the local iwi by their own admission. Itās evident that they had no history of burials at this location and in this unique manner; The final burial had occurred in swamp or bog land and was similar to the bog burials of Britain. No photography or forensic analysis of the well preserved skeletal remains and accompanying materials to determine their age, ethnicity or physical anthropology was permitted.
Turehu coffins. These skeletons have recognisable European physiology. They were already very old when found in rugged country, far from any European churchyard and with stone hewn coffins.
A blowup of the picture positively shows a side view of a jaw (mandible) which is not Maori, but European. Maori predominantly have a "rocker jaw" with a continuous downwards curve on the lower border. Further to that, the eye sockets of these people are squarish, the nose openings pyramidal, the faces long and narrow (dolicephalic skull type) and the craniums very round with a high vault.
Ancient people lived and died nearby
South of Port Waikato stretches rugged limestone country ā an area full of caves and the last refuge of a peaceful people who were hunted, and literally, eaten to death. These early New Zealanders were not warlike. They were "easy meat" for the cannibals who came to New Zealand in successive Polynesian migrations, and driven into hiding from their homes along the coast and in the Waikato.
This is one of the skulls in the cache of skeletons featured on the recent 60 Minutesā documentary on Paul Moonās book "This Horrid Practice." The back of the skull, similar to others there but not shown on TV, shows clear evidence of cannibalism. The back of the skull has been smashed off to extract the brain. Caucasoid European bones were at this site, now buried.
The ancient peoples built an extensive network of underground homes
During the 1800s, the Rev Robert Maunsell compiled a vast dossier of information on a tribe of "Tall Ones" who had lived in the area, but it was destroyed when the old Port Waikato mission station burnt down. Much of his information was gathered by word of mouth from old Maori living in the area at the time but more striking evidence was gathered by the Reverend himself on several trips into burial caves, where there were skeletons of people over 2 metres tall. Among them, he reported there were several pieces of pottery. Maori did not make pottery.
Twelve years ago these Tall Ones "spoke from the dust" again during earthworks at Waikaretu. Contractors discovered a cave set into a limestone bluff. Inside were skeletons in stone crypts. By the length of the femurs, the bodies were 7-8ft tall (over 2 metres). Anthropologists from Auckland and Waikato universities were called in, then followed a complete shutdown of the site, with a 75 year moratorium placed upon it. Maurice Tyson of Tuakau, a contractor in the area for 50 years, recalls how this upset the men who had discovered the cave and who could not understand why such a valuable archaeological site should be kept secret. Maurice also speaks of seeing a stone village with walls near the mouth of the Waikaretu Stream. Stone from the village was crushed to use for road metal and nothing now remains.
In Franklin a young Maori man with strikingly blue eyes walks, unaware. Above him, embedded in the clay bank, lie tiny human bones - tangled with small fragments of crayfish shell and charcoal. A larger, digit bone lies with it in the partly exposed cooking pit. Are these pathetic remains Maori or pre-Maori European? As more and more bones surface, they are asking us to listen to their stories, to use the scientific testing now available to prove that long ago, other peoples walked this land. As a nation we need to acknowledge their existence, accept the horrors of New Zealandās cannibal history which decimated pre-Maori and Maori alike - and so move on.
Just to give you an outline of the area, however, where i live there are many stone carvings , odalisques some shown in the pics, ie the turtle looking one and the carved tattoo ones are a stone throw away from myself, Ill try to take some recent photos if i can if there is anything left of therm, However anyone any idea of the inscriptions?
last 5 pics are local
It seems that their guideline is , " if you don't know for sure, make up something to fill in the gaps." LOL
