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Re: NZ Strange Wall etc.
Suzanne Doig (misc3518@csc.canterbury.ac.nz)
Wed, 13 Nov 1996 12:06:28 +1200
drc@antnov1.auckland.ac.nz wrote:
> I haven't heard that any definitive answer has been found. From the
> photos published in the papers, it looks a bit like a vertical version
> of those rock formations off the Bahamas that Berlitz & co. think are
> the ruins of Atlantis. But not nearly so big. The only Maori group that
> claimed to know anything about it was Waitaha, a South Island group.
> A guy named Barry Brailsford has written a number of books claiming that
> the esoteric traditions of Waitaha show they were here centuries before
> the Maori.
I'm not sure whether Waitaha themselves claimed to know anything about
the wall, or whether it was simply Barry Brailsford airing his theories.
I think it was shown fairly definitively that the wall is volcanic, and
probably the result of the AD 186 Taupo eruption.
Waitaha didn't so much *predate* the Maori, rather they were the first
East Polynesians to settle in the South Island of NZ. They were
absorbed by the later Ngati Mamoe and Ngai Tahu migrants from the North
Island, rather than exterminated by them. Ngai Tahu acknowledge their
Waitaha descent and have incorporated many of their traditions.
Suzanne
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