ORIGIN OF THE POLYNESIANS

Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 27989, 8 June 1956, Page 13

ORIGIN OF THE POLYNESIANS

CHINESE THEORY OF DR. DUFF PROTOTYPE ADZES FOUND When Dr. Roger Duff. Director of the Canterbury Museum, went to China with the New Zealand cultural party in April, one of his main objects was to see whether the prototype of the Polynesian adze, previously reported from the Philippines, Formosa, and Hong Kong, was widespread along the southern coast of China. “I found perfect examples of this type spread along the whole coast from the mouth of the Yangtse river to Hong Kong,” he said on his return to Christchurch yesterday afternoon. “This presents an entirely new conception of the original homeland of the ancestors of the Polynesians. *

“Every facility was given me to make notes and drawings and my Chinese colleagues were most interested in the news that this type of adze was the first to reach New Zealand,” Dr. Duff continued. “In Southern China these adzes appear to date frdtn the beginning of the Bronze Age (about 500 8.C.) and it is by no means certain that the inhabitants of China at that time were the same race as the modern Chinese.” Dr. Duff said he would elaborate his theory when he had had time to study the material he had gathered.