RATS & MORE RATS

"We are not saying that Maori arrived at any different time than we believed, but we are confirming that Maori were the first people to settle New Zealand. There wasn't this other group that arrived in 200BC.” –Dr Janet Wilmshurst. Christchurch Press, June 4, 08.

The meaning of the latest rat bone dating on the question of ancient settlement
By Dr. K. R. Bolton

Academe has triumphantly announced that the time period for human settlement of New Zealand has been definitively established – on the basis of some rat bone radiocarbon dating.

Orthodox scientists have been in a flap since the publication in 1996 of research indicating that there must have been some kind of human contact with New Zealand as far back as several thousand years ago, on the basis of rat bone dating. Although Dr Richard Holdaway, Palaecol Research Ltd., and Canterbury University, who headed the research into the initial testing, did not hold that human contact was anything but transient, and that human settlement had not occurred until the 13th C. AD – the time now heralded by the newest results – orthodox academe had nonetheless felt insecure.

There has been a lot of speculation particularly among heretical researchers, about settlement from sources other than Maori. This has captured the public imagination, and the recent book of Prof. Kerry Howe, The Quest for Origins, was written specifically to provide a “devastating critique”, as the publisher terms it, of these heretical views. Howe is particularly vicious in his less than scholarly attacks on Thor Heyerdahl, whose Kon Tiki adventures caught the public imagination, much to the chagrin of orthodox academia, for it was Heyerdahl’s contention that Polynesia had been settled from South America by Caucasians (1). Other theories on settlement of Polynesia have included Egypto-Libyans (Dr Barry Fell) and proto-Celts (Martin Doutré) (2).

The radiocarbon dating of the rat bones was undertaken by an international research team headed by Dr Janet Wilmshurst of Landcare Research, over the course of four years. Of the rat bones that had been dug up, none preceded 1280AD.

Dr David Lowe, Waikato University earth scientist senior lecturer, was quoted as stating ‘that the theory of earlier settlement was now quashed…. Flaws in the testing [by Holdaway] may have produced the results’ (3).

It is of note that Dr Holdaway himself had never stated that his results proved that there had been long-term human settlement at the time. He believed, and still does, that the rat bone dating showed that there had been a transient human presence, and that actual settlement had indeed taken place during the 13th C. AD.
Dr Holdaway in a communication to this writer mentions that Landcare Research has typically distorted his research (5).

Dr Wilmshurst herself jubilantly proclaimed on a TV News item that her results show that the Maoris are indeed the ‘tangata whenua’. Hence, one detects a certain ideological agenda. She was followed by Maori academic Ranginui Walker, stating that the dating disproves the theories on the ‘Moriori’.

In my naiveté I wondered how the latest results ‘proved’ anything other than that some rats, along with humans, were in New Zealand during the 13thC. AD.
Dr Holdaway straight away questioned the validity of the results. Replying to a question from this writer, Dr Holdaway states:

“As usual, Landcare misrepresented my research and results: I have never advocated a 200 BC colonization or even visitation. In fact, I was advocating an AD 1290 settlement before they were. That of course leaves open the question of TRANSIENT visits (think of Lieutenant James Cook). My data indicate some kind of visit by transients about AD 200… during which Pacific rats were introduced. The persistent miscitation of my data and views is rather annoying.
“She [Wilmshurst] cannot have been referring to the SAME rat remains (the term “re-dating” is completely misleading because the rat bones are totally consumed in the dating process: dating another rat bone does NOT re-date the first one. That would seem to be common logic…). [Emphasis added].

It is equally uncertain however how Dr Holdaway can maintain that the rat introducing visit was "TRANSIENT".

For the very comprehensive scientific report covering Holdaway's dating of Rattus Exulans to circa 200 AD, see: Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand, Volume 32, Number 3, September 2002, pp. 463-505. This can be downloaded from the Internet at: http://www.rsnz.org/publish/jrsnz/2002/024.php

I also put the following to Dr Wilmshurst:

“Dear Dr Wilmshurst
“I have read and seen media reports on your latest research regarding the dating of the oldest rat bones in New Zealand to the 13th C. Obviously reliance on media reports is not particularly valuable.
“Since my academic background is not in the biological sciences, I am confused. You are quoted as saying that the dating of the oldest bones to ca. 13th C. ‘proves’ that this is the date for the earliest possible human settlement.
“Disregarding for the moment the dissent by Dr Holdaway, I was wondering how the dating of the bones ‘proves’ anything beyond the obvious: that some rat remains you examined were here at a certain time? Can conclusions with such certainty really be drawn beyond that?”

Academia was not always in accord with the timing of New Zealand settlement. It was once held that the “Great Fleet” of Maoris settled NZ en mass ca. 1350AD. However Dr Roger Duff put the date back to 950AD on the basis of dating moa hunter sites. This was pushed back further to at least 750AD by Prof. Keith Cumberland in his book The Moa Hunter (1965), and a date of 300AD was even suggested. However he asserted:

“Let’s admit it, no one knows when men first reached the islands we call today New Zealand.”

Such a scientific approach from earlier scholars seems to have been replaced in recent years by a PC driven approach*, as indicated by the comments of Dr Wilmshurst herself regarding the “Maori tangata whenua.”

*Note: Wilmhurst's PC driven strategy, using Rattus Exulans to provide the basis of the argument, is part of a wider, PacifiC ... PolitiCally-expedient "indigenous" campaign that was first initiated by Dr. Terry Hunt of the University of Hawaii in 2006. Hunt & Lipo tried to use the same ratty arguments to prove that there was no-one at Easter Island prior to the late arriving Polynesians and that they and they alone built the huge complex of moai statues, ahu platforms or other of the thousands of cumbersome, anomalous, surveying related structures found on the island. For insights into the ongoing archaeological problems Hunt & Lipo failed miserably to address CLICK HERE

As recently as 1988 N. J. Enright and N. M. Osborne could still write:

“We do not dispute that Polynesian arrival in NZ may substantially pre-date the oldest known archaeological sites.” (5).

Auckland University archaeologist Doug Sutton suggested a habitation of up to 2000 years ago.

On the dates of human settlement Martin Doutré comments of the findings of Russell Price:

“Then there's the work of Russell Price who worked at Hawkes Bay and found the remains of cooked, scraped, and broken moa bones (where the meat had been cut from the bones, leaving scratch marks on the surface and the bones broken to suck out the marrow) ... found under tephra ash layers from known eruptions (one grouping from beneath a known explosion from the Waimihia explosion of 1320 BC or so.
“As Price pointed out at the time to naysayers, the activity was clearly human, "unless ancient moas spent their time breaking themselves up and cooking each other".

Price was discounted and dismissed by archaeologist Mc Fadgen for his research showing such an early date for habitation. The treatment of Price’s evidence is instructive. Doutré comments on this:

“…the crumpled and crestfallen man [Price] tried to respond and will, ultimately, be vindicated. Price's career and life's work was ruined by Bruce McFadgen's gloss over of many years of hard, careful analysis. It's a long, sad and sordid tale of woe,…”

SUMMARY OF PRICE'S WORK ... For more comprehensive coverage see: Chain of Evidence, by John Tasker, pp. 138 - 155.

As the result of the 1931 Hawkes Bay earthquake the valley floor had been lifted up, the water drained away and the valley began drying out. In 1964, Excavators digging drainage channels discovered many moa remains on Price’s land from the old lake beds. The excavations also exposed two strata of pumice ash separated by a layer of peat, the ash falls being deposited from Taupo eruptions. Excavations uncovered thousands of bones of long extinct birds: the giant swan, notornis, goose, heron and moa; most found beneath the lower ash stratum. At the lowest levels were found wood that had been worked by man, wooden, sandstone and greywacke tools, an obsidian cutter, oven stones, soapstone foreign to the area and a pumice disc worked by hand. Bones also showed the marks of tools.
Leading Pedologist Alan Pullar joined the dig on 30 December 1964.

Pullar turned his attention to volcanic ash strata in the ground. The three strata that he singled out for study were the Kaharoa ash-fall of ca 1100 AD, the principle Taupo shower of ca 186 AD and the Waimihia fall of ca 1320 BC. Each showed up in the ground with their own distinctive colours and textures, and each had at one time been ejected by a volcano as an ash shower. They were dated by retrieving charcoal or peat samples from immediately above and below each stratum, dating them by the C14 method.

Left: Very careful archaeologist, Russell Price, who did everything by the book and whose research proved ancient human occupation at Poukawa, Hawkes Bay, for an epoch before the Waimihia ash fall of 1320 BC. Right: Pedologist Alan Pullar, an expert on tephra ash band deposits, who fully verified Price's conclusions. Russell Price's papers are now buried somewhere in the vaults of Te Papa Museum, along with about 22,000 bird bones or other artefacts. Many of these bones were cooked, scraped and marked by human tools or broken open to extract the marrow. This indicated human activity, unless, as Price so eloquently observed, 'ANCIENT MOAS SPENT THEIR TIME BREAKING THEMSELVES UP AND COOKING EACH OTHER'.

Pullar’s evidence showed that man had been in New Zealand at least 3,300 years, but of course he realised that he had to be careful when writing his report for the NZ Archaeological Association, stating:

'If the lower layer is indeed Waimihia lapilli the discovery by Price of items related to man found below the pumice band raises implications almost too daring to be true'.

Predictably, the findings were challenged on the basis that they could not be right because they did not accord with the prevailing orthodoxy.

Listen up Galileo, you just CANNOT be right; now go away and have a long rethink, so that you might avoid some unwise career choices…

It was assumed the pumice strata must have been water-borne centuries after the volcanic eruptions and that Pullar had misread them. But Pullar was well aware of the difference between 'water-borne' and 'air-laid'. Under the microscope the air-laid particles were sharp and angular at the base of the band. The water-laid particles above were rounded and worn. The lower band was Waimihia, air-laid 3,300 years ago. This meant that any human cultural material found beneath it had to be at least that age'.

Pullar’s conclusions received independent confirmation by three geologists who visited the site. They had come to determine whether the ash layers as found 'may have been artificially re-deposited centuries after the Taupo and Waimihia eruptions'...Wellman, Kohn and Vucetich independently identified the ash showers and agreed with Pullar that they were air-borne deposits from the Taupo eruptions, and that their original placement was as seen today.

Orthodoxy replied that material recovered below the Waimihia ash “might have fallen through the ash showers from above”. Price replied that, “The showers of ash have been undisturbed above the earliest artefacts, and in places a concrete-like matrix lies above them, deposited by later inhabitants'...thus making it impossible for objects from an upper layer to seep down and lodge themselves in a lower layer'.

Richard Holdaway mentioned the nature of such ash deposits in 1996 in connection with his rat date findings of the time:

“Most archaeologists have never actually excavated through two feet of ash. It seals everything underneath it. You can see every last wormhole in it and you can see where there is damage to it. So if something is underneath you know it was there before the ash fell...”

In recent years one has come to expect self-defined “skeptics” to come out with supposedly ‘rational’ explanations that sound more bizarre than what they’re trying to debunk. In similar manner, those resistant to the findings of Price et al thought that moa bones showing evidence of human work at the lowest levels of the site “might have been deposited naturally”.. Most of the bones had been broken open to extract marrow, most had been burned in a fire and some had cut marks on them made by a sharp stone implement.

The scientists who had visited the Poukawa site endorsed the conclusions of Price and Pullar. However, they could not jeopardise their careers by challenging orthodoxy, so they put their names to a secret 'Statement of Belief', marked 'RESTRICTED - NOT FOR PUBLICATION'.

“The data Mr Price has slowly accumulated...has demonstrated that the results have to be taken seriously', the Statement began.'

“W A Pullar of Soil Bureau, Whakatane, visited the site earlier this year, examined ash layers contained within peat and collected radiocarbon samples from above and below the ash layers. The dates from these confirm his identification of the Taupo and Wamihia pumice ashes'.

“…Occupation of this site has continued over a long period. The older occupation appears to have commenced prior to the commencement of the peat formation and hence also before the water level of ancient Lake Poukawa had reached its highest level. If the rate of peat formation has been substantially uniform peats commenced forming at about 'post'-glacial sea level maximum, say 4,500 years ago. The stratigraphically lowest discoveries lie below this peat and may conceivably pre-date ca 4,500 years ago'. 'The site demonstrates human occupation of this area of much greater antiquity than anything previously anticipated.

“It does not yet, however, demonstrate anything about the ethnological relationships of the earlier inhabitants and the later Maoris. Although the stratigraphically lowest material is all of a flaked nature, artefacts of this type are cosmopolitan and persisted in the Neolithic cultures, so do not necessarily indicate a Paleaeolithic culture...' [Emphasis added].

A ‘secret’ report had affirmed human habitation going back thousands of years, and of no known relationship to the Maoris. Orthodoxy therefore had to make a move.

Dr. Bruce McFadgen and his team from Victoria University Geological Society and the Wellington Archaeological Society, dug in an area already dealt with by Price and in his report McFadgen sought to repudiate all Price's findings.

Post holes, identified definitively as such in the ‘secret’ ‘statement of belief’ by the onsite scientists were discounted as 'root channels of old trees'. Disking of the area in the past mixed introduced snails and pig bones with extinct heron and notornis remains. Tree roots made the 'file marks' noted on some old bones. After the land was raised by the 1931 earthquake and the peat began to dry out, it cracked, and allowed surface material to fall down to sub-ash levels - in every case. The shrinking ground was also responsible for all broken bird bones.

McFadgen conclude that:

'because the peat is cracked, and things have fallen down the cracks, and because the site has been bulldozed and disked, and artefacts have been disturbed, the Poukawa site does not provide evidence for the antiquity of man in New Zealand, and is extremely misleading'. The site 'was probably occupied between 150 and 300 years ago' and 'there is no evidence for human occupation before the Taupo pumice eruption'.

Doutré comments of the dismissive and simplistic conclusions of McFadgen:

“Personally, I wonder how McFadgen can sleep nights in consideration of the gross disservice he's rendered to the New Zealand public and the worldwide research community. History, in the final analysis, isn't going to be kind to McFadgen, but Price will, ultimately, be vindicated and receive his much deserved recognition. There seems to have been a plague of suppression in that era of McFadgen's unfortunate intervention into the Poukawa developments…
The very comprehensive work of another, earlier archaeologist, Leslie Adkin, extended over a period of 50 years. His conclusion, based upon regional digs, was that New Zealand had been occupied since about 300 BC. Mc Fadgen intervened there also to cast doubt upon such an untenable concept.”

Leslie Adkin had undertaken research into the Waitaha of the Horowhenua region. The Waitaha’s own legends, only related in recent years via Dr Barry Brailsford, confirms a presence in New Zealand going back at least to 300BC, thereby providing a ‘convergence of evidence.’ Moreover, the Waitaha state that they are a pre-Maori ‘Nation’ that included in one of three components a “Urukehu” race, that of the red and blond haired and white skinned people that according to Maori legend were the first inhabitants of New Zealand, and whose descent could still be seen until recent times among Maori families with blond hair and pale skin.

Early British colonists or many of the first maritime visitors to New Zealand observed that, there were large groups of "Maori" who had red or blond hair, very pale skin (often with freckles) and to all appearances looked like typical Continental or Mediterranean Europeans. These were the pure blooded or mixed blood remnants of the earlier Tangata Whenua people, also called Patupaiarehe, Turehu and many other regional names by Maori. When very light complexioned children were born to otherwise full blooded Maori people, Maori midwives would traditionally exclaim, "Ah, Turehu", relating to the much earlier people whose bloodlines had been absorbed into Maori. Even New Zealand's Waitangi Tribunal acknowledges the existence of the late surviving white tribes of the central volcanic plateau, called the Ngati Hotu and Ngati Ruakopiri.

J. M. McEwen researched the Ngati-Hotu for over 15-years and used for reference the writings of Hawkes Bay chiefs Raniera Te Ahiko and Paramena Te Naonao. Other researchers gleaned information from genealogical tables related by tribes bordering Lake Taupo and by interviews with the learned elders there. One quotation about the Ngati-Hotu, derived from these Maori sources, states:

Generally speaking, Ngati Hotu were of medium height and of light colouring. In the majority of cases they had reddish hair. They were referred to as urukehu. It is said that during the early stages of their occupation of Taupo they did not practice tattooing as later generations did, and were spoken of as te whanau a rangi (the children of heaven) because of their fair skin.
There were two distinct types. One had a kiri wherowhero or reddish skin, a round face, small eyes and thick protruding eyebrows. The other was fair-skinned, much smaller in stature, with larger and very handsome features. The latter were the true urukehu and te whanau a rangi. In some cases not only did they have reddish hair, but also light coloured eyes.
(See Tuwharetoa, chapter 7, page 115, by Rev. John Grace).

Our older New Zealand history books are replete with references and descriptions of these earlier people. In most cases the descriptions were gained from direct interviews by European historians and anthropologists with Maori Tohunga's and learned elders who had memorised the "oral traditions and histories" of their people. Anomalous skeletons with red hair or other light hues have been seen in New Zealand burial caves since early colonial times and braided samples of this multicoloured hair, taken from the Waitakere rock shelters, was, for many years, on display at Auckland War Memorial Museum.

Finally, Dr Wilmshurst, with her triumphant proclamation that her rat bones ‘prove’ (sic) the Maoris really are the ‘tangata whenua’, and that there can be no other, states that it fits in with a convergence of evidence. Yet that is only so when archaeological anomalies are discounted, when the “Kaimanawa wall” is turned into a ‘natural rock formation’ (shades of McFadgen’s retort that post-holes were really ‘root channels of old trees’), when all cultural anomalies are relegated to being ‘within the Maori range’, when divergences in the morphology of skulls are number crunched to ‘fit within the Maori range’, when astronomically aligned standing stones of Old World type are said to be coincidental, when genetic research proves the orthodox view of Maori settlement because the anomalies are dismissed as being from European colonial times. Dr Wilmshurst, Rangi Walker et al are so pleased with the result, ... but we smell a rat!

Acknowledgements and thanks to: Ross Baker, One NZ Foundation, G Graham, Martin Doutré, Ian Brougham.

(1) More specifically Caucasians form S. America and Indians form the NW Coast of America. Orthodox scientists such as Howe notwithstanding, genetic research has shown that genetic markers from these two regions are present in Polynesia.

(2) For a refutation of Howe’s major contentions see this writer’s Caucasian bloodlines in Old Polynesian, Renaissance Press, NZ, 2008. See Doutré’s Ancient Celtic New Zealand, and Barry Fell’s Bronze Age America, America BC and publications of the Epigraphic Society. Fell was a NZ born Harvard biologist who became an expert in the deciphering of ancient inscriptions, and identified many Libyan scripts from ancient Polynesian, including NZ.

(3) Humans in NZ by late 13th century, Dominion Post, June 4, 08.

(4) Holdaway e-mail, June 5.

(5) NZ Journal of Archaeology (Vol. 10, 1988).