SOUTH SEA ARCHÆOLOGY.

Otago Witness, Issue 2985, 31 May 1911, Page 3

SOUTH SEA ARCHÆOLOGY.

MR WRAGGE'S RESEARCHES. Mr Clement Wragge, -who Las just returned from the Islands, where "he obtained some fine photographs of the eclipse of the sun, was " also actively engaged there in archaeological research work. Ha states that on the island of Telekicavan he found huge blocks of coralline rock, some of titanic size, that had apparency been roughly hewn, and indicating evidently the remains of an old sea wall, allied to similar rudne at Nakop Island and elsewhere in the Carolines. Soma of these he measured and photographed. He also saw meet distinctly chiselled and cut deep in the hard coralline rock petroglyphs similar to those on Uie 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 &t Raglan), circles, ovoids, cross, quaint etar-hke 'emblems, and others of immense antiquitv that have withstood the ravages of vast ages. He examined sundry stone platforms in the Haapai group * allied to those in Easter Island, as well as others in Tongatabu and found all were erected more or less in the meridian (allowing for variation of the compass and undoubted secular shift of the earth's axis). Probably the Tuitongans adopted these for graves, a 3 a hermit crab v/ill adopt a tube shell, but did not originate them. One solid block ie 17ft 4in in length, lit 3in broad, and stands 3ft Sin out of tho ground, and by how much it is buried is at pre-, sent unknown. It is impossible to believe that any Tongans allied to those of the_ present day could have manipulated such. It was giants' work. Tha natives say that bones of greater eizo than those of existing man have been found there. Many more monoliths and gravures, doubtless, aro waiting to be unearthed, and that all the Friendly Islands, coupling up archreoiogically with the remains at Samoa, and the Banks groups, and ioining also New Zealand and New Caledonia with the Carolines, Hawaii, Tahiti, Borabo Wa, the Marquesas, and Easter Island, afford a unique field for farther research, theio is no manner of doubt, whatever. Furthermore, it is . new * abundantly evident that missing links connecting up more specifically the carvings at the Chatham Islands and Raglan, and also the Bay 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 rncst surely joined up Asia and Malay with Australia, New Zealand, and America.