ORIGIN OF MAORI

Southland Times, Issue 20146, 5 April 1927, Page 8

ORIGIN OF MAORI

MISS ROUT’S LEGENDS. EASTER ISLAND STATUES. In The Spectator of December 25 Miss E. A. Rout put forward a theory that the gigantic statues on Easter Island may have been modelled from plastic lava not hewn from hardened rock. Lieut.-Col. H. J. Kelsall, who visited Easter Island in May, 1924, replies to this suggestion in the current number of the Spectator. He says he saw a large number of the images and the quarries where they were hewn out.

“These quarries,” he continues, “are on the slopes of the very much weather-worn volcanic cone of Rana Roraka—both on the inside and the outside. The rock is not lava but volcanic tufa (consolidated cinders and ash), and was therefore probably never in a molten state. There are many images partly hewn out in various stages of completion, and in the soil round about there are numbers of the stone hammers and chisels which were evidently used in sculpturing them. I have several of these. There is, therefore, no question, in my opinion, as to how they were made. The chief problem is how they were moved to the sites in other parts of the island where they were erected.

“With regard to the obsidian implements found on the island, they as well as all others that I have seen, bear distinct marks of having been chipped and flaked in a similar manner to that in which the flint implements* of Europe were fashioned. Obsidian flakes quite easily and shows a characteristic conchoidal fracture, quite distinct from a moulded surface.

“Miss Rout is in error in stating that the rock carvings are in the quarries on Rano Roraka; they are on the lip of another volcano, Rana Kao, at the other end of the island—some on boulders and some—shallow incised drawings—on the slabs of stone used in the construction of the inverted boat-shaped hats which were connected with the ‘bird cult.’ All of these were evidently cut —in all probability with stone implements—on the solid stone.” THE ASSYRIAN THEORY.

In a return letter, Miss Rout says that all she is doing is “reporting Maori legends, as dictated by a member of the House of Arawa.”

“According to these,” she says, “the Maori left Assyria (Ihiria) some six thousand years ago, crossed Europe to Portugal, crossed the Atlantic to Mexico (Hawaikinui) ; thence migrated through Central America to Peru (Maori, Eperu, and they have the legends of Titikaka) ; crossed to Easter Island; then westward to New Zealand (some parties breaking off at Tahiti reached Hawaii). Many halts and settlements and minor migrations were made en route, but that generally is alleged to be the course of the great, migration as recorded on the sacred memory tablets.

“In these sacred legends it Is claimed that the ancestors of the New Zealand Maori erected the Easter Island statues, fashioning them in situ out of cooling volcanic material, and those claims I have reported accurately. Simultaneously the British Museum is exhibiting specimens from British Honduras of mould-made ornaments, figures, etc., and pottery with ‘impressed ornament,’ also a fragment, of a mould. Clearly we may have to revise our present conceptions of hard-carving compared with soft working. We are not at the end of knowledge. As a working hypothesis it would be at least interesting to take the Maori migration route, and see what similarities there were in the fashioning of the Chaldean bulls, the Spanish bulls, the Maya carvings, the Easter Island statues, and the Maori ‘stone’ statues.

“In the Easier Island literature, Lieuten-ant-Colonel Kelsall will find various references to the heads and faces carved on the walls and ceilings (volcanic material) of the so-called ‘quarries.’ ”

MARK OF THE TOOL CLEAR. Mr Sc ores by Routledge, M.A., F.R.G.S., F.S.A., F.G.S., lhe noted explorer and ethnologist, who spent some time on Easter Island before the war, enters the controversy to tell Miss Rout that “the images of and from Rana Roraka are sculptured from an aerial deposit consolidated by pressure. The material has never been plastic. All carving in stone on Easter Island has been done with tools of basalt, samples of which may now be seen in the British Museum. Where wrought surfaces have been inhumed, excavation shows the bite of the tool still sharp and clear.”