MR WRAGGE’S RESEARCHES

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXXII, Issue 15620, 19 May 1911, Page 8

MR WRAGGE’S RESEARCHES

ARCHAEOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES,

[From Ocr Correspondent.] AUCKLAND, May 18.

Mr Clement Wragge, who has just returned from the Islands, where he obtained some fine photographs of tho eclipse of' the sun, was also actively engaged there in archaeological research work. He states that on the island of Tolekivavau ho found huge blocks of coralline rock, some of titanic size, that had apparently been roughly hewn, and indicating evidently the remains of an old sea wall, allied to similar ruins at Nakap Island and elsewhere in tee Carolines. Some of these he measured and photographed. He also saw most distinctly chiselled and cut deep in the hard coralline rock petroglyphs similar to' those on the rocks near Raglan, New Zealand, and to those in New Caledonia, Hawaii and elsewhere in the Pacific. These consist of a sun spiral with deeply carved rays, crude human figures (as at Raglan), circles, quaint star like emblems aud others or immense antiquity, that have withstood the ravages of vast ages. He examined sundry stone platforms in the Haapai group allied to those iu Easter Island, as well as others in Tcngatabu, and found all were erected more or less. in tho meridian (allowing for variation of the compass and undoubted secular shift of the earth’s axis). Probably the Tongans adopted these for graves, as a hermit crab will adopt a tube shell, but did not originate them. One solid block is 17ft 4in in length, Ift 3in broad, and stands 3ft Bin out of the ground, and by how much it is buried is at present unknown. It is impossible to believe that any Tongans allied to those of the present day could have manipulated such. It was giants’ work. The natives say that bones of a greater size than those of existing man have been found there. Many more monoliths and gravures doubtless are waiting to be unearthed, and that all the Friendly Islands, coupling up arclueolcgically with the remains at Samoa and the Banks group, and joining also New Zealand and New Caledonia with the Carolines, Hawaii, Tahiti, Borabowa, the Marquesas and Easter Islands, afford a unique field for further research there is no manner of doubt whatever. Furthermore, it is now abundantly evident that missing links connecting up more specifically tho carvings at the Chatham Islands and Raglan, and also the Bav of Islands monoliths with those of Eastern Asia and South and Central America have now come to light, and that a titanic and mystic race of architects and symbol carvers traversed the old land that once most surely joined up Asia and Malaya with Australia, New Zealand and America.