Hawaiians Possibly Early New Zealanders

Rendition of ancient New Zealand war canoe.

Researchers are saying Polynesian canoe design suggests New Zealand was at least partially settled from Hawaii.

New data suggests a course of Polynesian settlement that started in the far western islands and jumped to the far eastern islands before then working backwards towards the original point of origin. According to the New Zealand Herald:

Archaeologists have said the Lapita peoples ~ probably from China and Southeast Asia ~ who colonized Pacific islands between about 1400 BC and 900 BC became the Polynesians who settled several island groups outwards out of Tonga and Samoa beginning about 500 BC, arriving in the Marquesas about 300 AD, the Hawaiian islands by 800 AD to 900 AD, and finally in New Zealand about 1200.

Stanford University researchers Marcus Feldman and Paul Ehrlich and biologist Deborah Rogers analyzed a 1930s study of traditional canoe design by A.C Haddon and James Hornell.

"This is not a paper about canoes," Ehrlich said. "It's a paper about whether or not there are discernable, explicable patterns in history."

They tracked functional characteristics such as outrigger attachments, construction technique, keel shape as well as painting, designs and figureheads of pre-European canoes from different island groups.

Canoe construction techniques persisted. The Polynesians brought traditional techniques, but changed decorative features as they colonized new island groups.

Click here for the New Zealand Herald article.

Tongan Petroglyphs Resemble Hawaiian Ones

Photo shows carved figure on one of the Tonga petroglyphs.

Beach erosion on a remote island in Tonga have revealed petroglyphs archaeologists say are similar to those found in Hawaii ~ 3,000 treacherous ocean miles away.

More than 50 petroglyphs were buried for centuries under several feet of sand until heavy seas exposed them late last year. The carvings were spotted by two Australian visitors who notified Tonga artist and amateur archaeologist Shane Egan, who in turn contacted archaeologist and ethnohistorian David Burley, a professor at Simon Fraser University in Canada. Burley has conducted a number of field surveys and excavations in Tonga, which is about 3,000 miles southwest of Hawaii.

"Initially I was a bit stunned, knowing the distance and difficulty of travel between the two groups of islands," Burley says. "The evidence, however, is visual and difficult to ignore or explain in ways other than direct contact."

The stick figures have open body forms, but one has a closed triangular body not identified anywhere outside of Hawaii, according to Burley. One human form appears with a headdress that is also similar to a Hawaiian form. Another image resembles a kapu stick, a tapa-covered ball on a stick carried as a sign of approaching royalty, indicating it was created by someone knowledgeable in Hawaiian cultural protocols, he said.

Because the Tonga images are carved in beach rock within a tidal zone, any sheen typical of rock art is gone, making it impossible to radiocarbon-date the petroglyphs. However, the style corresponds to Hawaiian petroglyphs dating from A.D. 1200 to A.D. 1500.

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