CLUE TO POLYNESIAN MOVES

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31097, 28 June 1966, Page 1

CLUE TO POLYNESIAN MOVES

Dr. Yosihiko Sinoto, the Japanese archaeologist at the Bernice P. Bishop Museum, Honolulu, who says that the Polynesians dispersed from the Marquesas to Hawaii, Easter Island, Tahiti and New Zealand, acknowledged in Christchurch last evening that he knew he had “hit the jackpot” because of things he had seen in the Canterbury Museum.

Dr. Sinoto said he would have to tell the story backwards to show how It began in Christchurch. In 1960 he saw in the Canterbury Museum a type of whale-tooth pendant, fish-hooks, and adzes recovered from the burial ground on the Wairau bar. The pendants had peculiar characteristics which could only be shown by examples or drawings; the fish-hooks had a “minnow” shank and a peculiar type of hook; the stone adzes were also distinctive.

In 1960, also, on Mauplti Island in western Tahiti he was “prospecting” and told a French-Tahiti male nurse that he was interested in artifacts.

When he returned there In 1962 he met the nurse at a picture show, was taken home, and was shown one adze and two pendants of the type found only in the Canterbury Museum. These had been discovered when Maupitians dug holes in which soil from the main island was poured to grow water-melons.

Dr. Sinoto returned in 1963; determined to excavate; widely and found 15 burial; sites, 20 pendants, plus adzes j and hooks characteristic of the Wairau bar findings. Carbon dating placed the Maupiti burials at 850 A.D. fitting well with the Wairau datings of 1050 A.D. “Just perfect.” said Dr. Sinoto. In 1963, 1964, and 1965 he searched the Marquesas “on spec” and on Uahuku Island found a whale-tooth necklet and adzes of the same design. Carbon dating of the fifth layer gave 850 A.D. There were two more lower layers with no charcoal for carbon dating but he was having shells dated. “I believe these lower layers are earlier than anything we have dated yet,” said Dr. Sinoto. Confirmed dates showed that the Polynesians moved first from the Marquesas in a general simultaneous dispersal to Hawaii, Easter Island, Tahiti and then to New Zealand, he said. Dr. Sinoto thinks a direct trip of 3000 miles was made from the Marquesas to New Zealand in the second wave. Dr. Sinoto is in New Zealand to confer with archaeologists and anthropologists who have made expeditions to the Cook Islands (Canterbury Museum). Pitcairn (Otago

University), and Tonga and Western Samoa (Auckland University) in surveys being sponsored by the Bishop Museum.