STRANGE CARVING

Gisborne Times, Volume LXV, Issue 10376, 6 April 1927, Page 5

STRANGE CARVING

DISCOVERED AT AWANUI DID IT COME FROM BORNEO? MAORI ORIGIN RAISED (Special to the Times.) V AUCKLAND, April 5. Lying on a chair in the Curator’s office at. Auckland Museum to-day, there was a dirty slab of wood, about , six feet long, fifteep inches wide and a couple of inches thick. The man in the street would readily chop it up for 'kindling wood, bujb Mi- Gilbert Arcliey, the curator, regards it with a fond eye, and gets quite enthusiastic about- it. Under bis guidance the uninitiated can discover traces of queer shallow carvings; mostly ’representing human*’ form with “trimmings.” “That”, says Mr Arcliey “is another problem It seems that, there is some affinity between this unronVantic looking slab. and the very beautiful bit of carving that was dug up in a swamp at Kaitaia about five years ago, and which set all the cognoscenti agog. For it was so like a Maori carving, and yet so unlike it, they could not make it out. The carving must have been in New Zealand for many generations to be buried so deep, but what the experts could not decide, was whether it was a bit of native work, or whether it was brought here.

MAORIS’ BIRTHPLACE?

Investigations have since shown, said Mr Arcliey, that this carving is related to Borneo carvings. It was thought that the Kaitaia carving was some sort of a door ornamentation but similar carvings were used in Borneo as ridge , soles fon tombs. The relationship with Borneo may open up a field for speculation as to the origin of the Maori. Mr Spencer, Professor of Anthropology at the Otago University, holds that the Maori came from Southern Eastern Asia and Borneo. The latest find which has points of resemblance to the Kaitaia carving, which has just been dug up, driving the excavation for the diversion of W the Awanui river, in order to drain the swamp, was found several feec below the surface, like the Kaitaia carving, which came from the same district. This slab is well preserved. The figures are unlike the usual Maori type, though they have the characteristic three fingers. They liave peculiar spines sticking out from the edge of the Body. There is also at one end of the slab, an odd figure that may lie the head of a swordfish, or anything else that has spikes and spines. The slab was given to the museum by Mr George Evans of Awapuni.