Dr. Duff Tracing Polynesian Migration

Press, Volume C, Issue 29602, 26 August 1961, Page 10

Dr. Duff Tracing Polynesian Migration

(A’.Z. Press Association—Copyright)

NEW YORK. August 25. A New Zealand archaeologist. Dr Roger Duff, of the Canterbury Museum. Christchurch, is pursuing an ancient migration of the Polynesians, using a peculiar type of stone adze as a tracer. The route may have led through the north-western United States, a path suggested at the Pacific Science Congress in Honolulu by the Norwegian scientist-adven-turer. Thor Heyerdahl. Others taking part in a symposium on archaeology in the Pacific Islands as part of the Congress agreed that the route was a tantalising mystery, the “New York Times” reported from Honolulu.

The migration in question seemed to have originated in South-east Asia and ended in -Eastern Polynesia. Yet there was no evidence that the migrants passed across Western Polynesia or the many other intervening island groups. the “New York Times” reported. It was this which led Mr Heyerdahl to suggest that the travellers followed the prevailing winds and the Japan current. This would have taken them north along the coast of Asia, across the North Pacific and down the coast of North America before circling back with the equatorial current to the Central Pacific.

Dr. Duff has been studying collections of ancient adze .tools in Far Eastern museums and is now at work on the 3000-or-so specimens in the Bishop Museum, in Honolulu. He has found that they fall into well-defined types, according to workmanship, shape of the butt, the blade and other features. The form, the stepped butt of which was strikingly similar to that of Eastern Polynesia, was found in the Philippines, Formosa, and South China, he said.

Mr Heyderdahl suggested that a search for it should also be made in North-west America.

The “New York Times” reported that Dr. Duff thinks that the culture that produced such artifacts flourished from about 1500 BC to 100 A.D. It thus was well in advance of the moa-hunting period in New Zealand. The latter, from analysis of the decay of radioactive carbon in various specimens, was known to have existed from 950 A.D. to 1350 AD. and presumably led to extinction of the moas. Dr. Duff said.

Mr Heyerdahl has long argued in favour of a Polynesian migration route originating in South America and following the westward-flow-ing equatorial current. He told a press conference yesterday that he still believed there was such a movement, perhaps before the migration from South-west Asia.

Mr Frederick McCarthy, of the Australian National University, reported that, by radio-carbon dating, a skull excavated in Victoria Land, was found to be 18.000 years old. The skull, he said, showed that the present aborigines were preceded by a race with more massive bone structure.