AN EXTINCT RACE?

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 541, 19 December 1928, Page 6

AN EXTINCT RACE?

MYSTERY CARVING FOUND PRESENTATION TO MUSEUM "When the Maoris came to .Xe\v Zealand did they encounter the people of a cultured race, now extinct? This interesting question was asked by Mr. If. E. Vuile yesterday while he explained tire circumstances surrounding the finding of a valuable . carving of mysterious origin which he has presented to the museum. The carving, which takes the form of a canoe prow, was found at a depth of sft in a swamp at Doubtless Bay near Mangonui. Tire discoverer was Mr. F. biilsson. As described by Mr. Gilbert Archey, curator of the museum, it is a carved wooden canoe prow, representing a dragon-like creature, with a bird’s beak, carrying four . teeth. The nostrils are clearly represented; the ears," in the anthropoid stvle, are slightly pointed, and the eyes are faithfully represented and set in deep sockets with a decorated rim. A curious feature is the presence of spines, or maybe tufts of feathers or hair, on the head and neck, and another interesting detail is a small cai-ved loop terminating in a subsidiary figure behind the neck of the main figure. It shares its distinctive and unusual features with a long slab discovered .in the Awanui Swamp a year ago by Mr. George Evans, of Awanui. This slab is incomplete, and has very lowrelief outlines of a couple of similar “bird dragons,” and of two human figures, both “dragons"’ and humans being armed with spines or tufts similar to those on the new carving, q'he Mangonui figure is somewhat suggestive of the Manaia, a characteristic Mew- Zealand art form also known in eastern Polynesia.