REMARKABLE FIND

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 3752, 9 February 1928, Page 3

REMARKABLE FIND

FLINT KNIFE IN THE BUSH. .

An interesting discovery was made on Sunday on the leading ridge on Mount Waiopehu, at the back of Levin, where the Tramping Club is at present completing a mountain track.

This was the finding, on the surface of the ground in the virgin bush, only a few yards from the hut now being erected, of , a primitive flint knife or cutting instrument of a type which, it would seem, can only be ascribed to the Palaeolithic or Old Stone Age. Flint is,-a rock quite foreign to the Tararua Range A and is in fact not found in situ in the Wellington Province. Furthermore, this flint knife is almost certainly not of Maori origin. Maori stone adzes and other. artifacts being of the Neolithic or New Stone Age type. The Waiopehu flint knife is 3J inches in length, 2 inches in breadth, and J-inch in thickness, and has two keen cutting edges.

Reference to text-books on archaeology shows that chipped flint knives of almost exactly similar character from European sites have been ascribed by experts to early Palaeolithic dates and thus were used by prehistoric man from 20,000 to 40,1)00 years ago. The late Dr. Julius von Haast, one of New Zealand’s most distinguish ed geologists, always maintained that there existed in New Zealand long before the Maoris, an aboriginal race whom he designated the Moa hunters and that their people used chipped flint knives. Dr. von Haast also stated that old traditions indicated that the Maoris s (Polynesians) exterminated the earlier native race (Melanesians) in New Zealand and referred to them by names meaning “wild men of the woojds.” . Those who have seen the newlydiscovered Levin specimen are satisfied that it is a product of primitive human workmanship, though how it came to the spot where it was found, and by whom it was dropped, are questions at present not possible to answer.