HUNTERS OF THE MOA.

Press, Volume LXIX, Issue 20904, 11 July 1933, Page 9

HUNTERS OF THE MOA.

RELICS FROM SUMNER CAVE. SCIENTISTS' DISAGREEMENT OF LONG AGO. The first systematic and scientific exploration of the cave at Moa-bone Point, on the Sumner road, the entrance of which will shortly be blasted away in pursuance of the Sumner Borough Council's road improvement scheme, disclosed relics of ethnological and geological importance. For many centuries successive inhabitants of the cave had deposited the remains of meals and other evidence of their life and their culture on its bed. and so far back did this evidence take the European investigators that there were discovered what experts considered to be the undoubted relics of the muchdiscussed moa-huniers, the race of presumably heroic men who lived mainly on the flesh of the gigantic moa. The cave contained obvious evidence of the daily life of these early inhabitants of New Zealand, numerous relics of the bird which they hunted, and probably assisted materially to exterminate, and, in. beds deposited at a later date, signs of the occupation by the shellfisheating, nomadic Maoris, and in theupper beds, of occasional occupation and use by Europeans. On these significant discoveries there was strong disagreement over vital ethnological and geological questions, which led actually to an open rupture between Sir Julius von Haast, under whose direction the excavaiion of the cave was carried out, and Mr Alexander McKay, who supervised and assisted in carrying out the work. Museum Exhibits. The most important relics found in the cave in the excavations of 1872 are now exhibited in the Maori room in the Canterbury Museum, and the collection is extensive enough to fill one entire specimen case. Included in the exmoit are tne following, some of wnicn, it will be seen, are of some rarity:—i< em root pounaers (.apparently of totara;; a nnely caived nsn-hook of woou, aoout a toot in lengen, witn a Daroed hook; an adze nancue, part of a canoe, portion of finely-woven whitebait netting, parts of bowls used tor eating, Dird spears, a canoe batten, several pieces of fire-light-ing apparatus, a net floater of pumice attached to part of a flax net; a long bone needle, with flax thread attached, matting for covering food in an oven, a preserving pot, part of a pair of snow sandals, canoe plugs, a dog's tooth (bored), a human jaw bone (not identified), neck ornaments, eel spears, pawa. shells for holding oil, flint knives and cores, quartzite adzes, basalt adzes and knives, flint scrapers, and pieces or moa egg-shell with membrane. A Skeleton Found. The excavators also found the j skeleton of what von Haast stat-ed was a Maori who had been buried j some considerable time. The skeleton was later articulated and placed in the museum. It belonged to a man of a height of nearly six feet The discovery of this Maori was also evidence to von Haast of the ancient occupation of the cave for, as he stated in his paper to the New Zealand Institute, judging from the character and superstitions of the modern natives, to whom any burial place was tapu, the_ cave would not have been frequented by them, or only occasionally when the necessity arose. He also concluded that the cave was not constantly, or even regularly, visited by the Maoris. Shells found in the upper beds of the cave were exactly of the same description as those in the Sumner estuary, and the sequence of the beds and the identity of species proved clearly to von Haast that a native population, living principally upon the molluscs in the estuary, had occupied every part of the cave during a very long period. The Marine Sands. ' At the bottom of the cave, which is only a short distance from tne Sumner road, and the mam portion of which is more than 100 feet long, 72 feet broad, and 24 feet high, were found the marine sand deposits, the incidence of which was alone the cause for considerable difference of opinion among geologists. Sir Julius von Haast held that the cave was a pre-existing hollow in a dolente lava stream, which had been enlarged by the enormous power of the waves beating at one time furiously on the northern foot of Banks Peninsula, during a small submergence of its base. In sands were found shells—which , to some experts settled the question whether the sand was marine or wind-blown—the human jaw-bone now with the collection in the museum, and a charred seal-bone, which von Haast held to have entered the cave by marine agency. Above this bed, in the dirt-bed, there were the remains of what are generally called the moa-hunters—-the remains of charred moa bones from which the flesh had evidently been eaten, the remains of adzes, fish-hooks, nets, and of the seal, which was taken as an indication that the moa-hunter caught and ate fish and seals as well. Over this latter bed, was another desposit, containing the remains of human, habitation, showing very slight traces of moa bones (which were considered foreign to that bed). But these remains, it was held, were ■ those of a race different from that which deposited the remains m the earlier bed, living a different kind of life from that of the moa-hunters. Identity Disputed. It was on the identity of these moa-hunters—whether they possessed tools other than those of the rudest description, and whether this constituted a distinction between them and the Maori inhabitants of later times, that the dispute between McKay and von Haast apparently arose, and also on the vexed problem of deciding when the moa became extinct. Von Haast claimed the cave to have afforded science an insight into the daily life of the moahunters, by leaving "some of their polished and unpolished stone implements, a few of their smaller tools, and a few personal ornaments, as well as fragments of canoes I. . . by which the fact is established that they had reached a certain state of civilisation, which in

many respects seems not to have been inferior to that possessed by the Maoris when New Zealand was first visited by Europeans.' Von Haast concluded that the extinction of the moa was thrown back for a considerable space of time, and found in the discoveries made at the cave, many reasons for his assertion. Speaking of the result of the excavations, he said: "Even the most ardent defender of the groundless assertion that the moas became extinct some 80 or 100 years ago, must admit that at least in this portion at the island these birds were exterminated at a period when the physical features in this part of Canterbury plains near the sea were different from what they are now . It is impossible to estimate, even approximately, the length 6f time necessary for the achievement ■« of such important alterations/ On the other hand McKay, who. published his own views on the significance of the Moa-bone Point relics, declared that no light had been thrown on the mystery of the identity of the moa-hunters by the excavations at the cave or at the out-lying encampment His conclusion was that the moa was either exterminated by another race long before the arrival of the Maoris, or that the Maoris arrived in New Zealand not 350 years before, as was then commonly accepted, but law years before, and that one of their first works was the extermination of the moa. Recent Theories.; Recent theories on the problem to; which the excavation of thtrcave gave rise are interesting. Professor R. Speight, Curator of the Canterbury Museum, has stated that since McKay carried out the excavations, his intepretations ought to be allowed due weight. The usual conclusion was that the top beds in the cave belonged to the Maoris, and the lower beds to the moa-hunters. said Professor Speight The general evidence was that the moa tinct some few hundred years ago, but any conclusion to be arrived at from the relics in the ~ Moa-bone Point cave was that they were extinct for a longer time.• - Mr H. D. Skinner, of the Otago Museum, who overhauled and revised the collection for the Canterbury Museum, considered that if tne descriptions of the excavations and the remains were correct, they offered evidence of considerable antiquity of man in New-Zealand, but he had grounds for doubting the descriptions. There was no evidence in the cave that the culture of the moa-hunter differed from that of the later occupants of the cave, nor that the cave was ever occupied by living representatives . of the Maruiwi, the rate; which is thought to have inhabited New Zealand before the nioa-hunters. Skinner's final conclusion was that further evidence was required before the contemporaneity of man and the moa could be regarded as