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In this article a résumé is given of papers published in New Zealand science journals from the time of Haast onwards, that describe the geological evidence of the antiquity of man in the New Zealand area. With the exception of one which indicates a date for human occupa­tion of a mere hundred years prior to the arrival of the Fleet in 1350, none of these papers submits geological evidence readily amenable to translation into terms of years, though considerable antiquity is clearly demonstrated. In the Horowhenua district, on the conception of diastrophic, history adopted, a chronology has been obtained on the basis of consistent progradation by secular uplift and sedimentation. The earliest date for human occupation of that area works out at 300 B.c., which may be reducible by 200-300 years by reason of the unknown factor of possible muta­tion in the rate of progradation. A deposit of coarse massed pumice on the Wanganui-Wellington coast, the transported product from a late pumice eruption, is shown to post-date the early human occupation. A scheme of successive immigrations is set out and illustrated by a map, and evidence is given for its validity in comparison with an alternative scheme recently published.

G. L. Adkin has been on the staff of the New Zealand Geological Survey for the last six years. His earlier studies in the Levin district on local archeology and place names resulted in. the publication in 1948 of the book mentioned in the article.

A CONSIDERATION of the geological evidence of the antiquity of man in New Zealand at once reveals how meagre is the body of recorded data relating to the problem. The observers who have placed on record such data number less than half a dozen. The problem is bound up to some extent with the antiquity of the survival of the moa, that is, of those species of the moa the bones of which are associated with the arti­facts of primitive man. At one stage a considerable number of influential and accredited New Zealand scien­tists denied that the associated arti­facts were other than relics of the Fleet Maori and strenuously opposed any suggestion that they represented earlier peoples or cultures. A minority held the opposite view and this attitude can be attributed, at least in part, to some appreciation of the geological evidence.

Apparently the earliest research into the antiquity of man in New Zealand in which geological evidence was given due consideration was that conducted by Julius Haast, Provincial Geologist and Director of Canterbury. Museum, 1861-1887. In 1869 he ex­cavated his first "moa-hunter" site and in 1871 announced his views on the evidence disclosed, in three papers (1) addressed to the Philo­sophical Institute of Canterbury. He then declared his belief that the arti­facts of man associated with moa remains long antedated the Maori tribes of the Fleet of 1350. His geo­logical evidence for this conclusion appears to have been based, at this stage, more on the general strati-graphic occurrence of moa remains than on that of moa-bones and human artifacts in primary associa­tion. Also, he rather prematurely maintained that the ancient people were of inferior culture, did not pos­sess polished stone implements, only rudely chipped articles, indicat­ing a Paleolithic cultural stage and antiquity.

These conclusions, it should be conceded, belong to a time only a decade or two later than the tardy admission in Europe of the Pleisto­cene age of man—discoveries that obviously influenced Haast's earlier views.
However, by 1879, the date of the publication of his "Geology of Canterbury and Westland," his final conclusions and a more relevant summary of the geological evidence of the antiquity of man in Canterbury and Otago had been formulated.

* Haast separated the earliest people into "Moa - hunters" and "Shellfish - eaters," with a considerable time interval between their respective periods of occupation, but later writers (e.g. Chapman) treated them as being of a single culture, which is probably the correct view.

He showed that stratigraphically the moa-hunting people and the later Maori belonged to separate horizons though subsequent erosion had frequently caused a secondary intermingling of the remains. Ancient ovens and middens along the banks that were related to an earlier shoreline or shorelines (op. cit., 1879, pp. 412 and 419) at a time when Banks Peninsula had not become so completely tied to the mainland as now, belonged to the earlier people and indicated an antiquity much greater than the date of the Hawaiki-Maori of the Fleet.

** influenced by Stack (see "Geology of Canterbury and Westland," pp. 425 et seq.), von Haast accepted the ancient Waitaha instead of recognizing them as identical peoples, as is now evident.

He also recorded that similar ovens and middens along the banks of and clearly related to an ancient channel of the Waimakariri River (op. cit., 1879, p. 419) leading south-east to the head of a former great extension of Lake Ellesmere (then perhaps a bay) at a time when the channel must have carried a large flow of water (though now dry and at a relatively high level), furnish corroborative evidence. Other geological evidence in the Canterbury-Otago area was slight land subsidence which, according to von Haast, had carried the earlier human deposits several feet below highwater mark, whereas those of the Fleet-Maori have never been found more than two feet below that datum. A slight subsidence of the land since the time of the "moa-hunter" occupation is confirmed by Skinner (2, pp. 14 and 24).
The Bruce Bay adzes, referred to by von Haast (op cit., 1879, pp. 408 and 410), found at a depth of 14 ft. in auriferous iron-sand below a complex series of other detrital layers, give undoubted evidence of great human antiquity from the New Zealand standpoint, but the overlying sequence of beds furnished no criterion of the time-scale involved.
In 1874, John Goodall submitted geological evidence (3) of the pre-sence of man in the Auckland City area prior To the final phases of activity of the Auckland volcanic field. This evidence took the form of a tree stump, the upper end cut off by human agency, in situ beneath 25 ft. of undisturbed volcanic ejecta and ooze deposits disposed in well-defined layers. The site was in Coburg Street between Albert Bar-racks and Wellesley Street East and about a quarter of a mile from a probable former volcanic vent. The thickness of strata is considerablebut the time involved in their de-position is undoubtedly open to diverse estimates, and the significant point is that the evidence appears to show human occupation of the disrict before the cessation of volcanic activity in that area. Goodall, following the then vague ideas of semi-mythical inhabitants, mentions the Maero of the North Island and theNgatimamoe of the South, and remarks (in view of the discovery of the cut stump of obvious great antiquity) that these, people "may yet be found to be real aborigines, and not degenerate or wild Maoris and not degenerate or wild Maoris [of the Fleet immigration], as has been supposed by many." (3, p. 144).
In this occurrence also, there appears to be no sound basis for the computation of the time-period in terms of years to date the human occupation here evidenced.
Another record of early human occupation indicated by evidence of volcanic activity subsequent to local man-made works is given in a paper by Oliver (4). On the eastern slopes of Mount Egmont, a cone to all appearance long-since dormant, the deposits of a late eruption, or more probably, a series of small eruptions, enclose and cover "an ancient Maori oven." This was discovered in 1929 during the cutting of a roadway near Stratford Mountain House. The section disclosed alternating layers of pumice and volcanic ash, the level of the oven being 15 in. below the present surface and beneath a 12 in. pumice layer and the uppermost three inches of a 15 in. bed of volcanic ash.
The boles of some of the nearby trees penetrate the layers above the oven level and are rooted in the layer below it. Volcanic material similar to that overlying the oven was found to occur in the forks of many of the larger trees of the vicinity. The evidence summarized shows that, after Mount Egmont had reached its present form and had become, clothed in heavy forest, a series, of small pumice and ash eruptions took place, destroying much of the forest cover (only a proportionof the larger trees surviving) and covering up such products and accessories of human occupation as had become established in the quiescent interval. Tree-ring counts and Maori tradition were found to be in sufficient harmony to suggest a date of a mere 100 years before the arriva lof the Fleet tribes, and a possible connection with earlier immigrants who came in Kurahaupo canoe (4, p. 78).
The Wairau Bar site, in Marlborough, despite the comprehensive treatment it has received (Duff, 5; 6), has furnished no suitable geological evidence on which to estimate its antiquity. The presence there, however, of the bones of a number of species of birds now extinct - the moa (Euryapteryx and Emeus), the swan (Chenopis sumnerensis), the eagle (Harpagornis nioorei), the crow (Corvus maoriorurn), and others (6, pp. 29 and 31). constituting a normal and major portion of the food-supply of the inhabitants indicates, as pointed out by Falla (7), an antiquity greatly exceeding that of the arrival of the Hawaiki-Maori of the Fleet of 1350.
My own contribution to the geological evidence of the antiquity of man in the North Island has had the advantage of being amenable to a tentative computation in years of the date of arrival and period of sojourn in the Horowhenua district of Wellington of the earliest immigrants to the New Zealand region. In the Horowhenua area the geological pro-cesses, on the conception of local diastrophic history adopted, have apparently been more uniform in their effects over a longer period of geological time than in any of the other areas furnishing, geological evidence of ,the antiquity of man in New Zealand. It appears likely, however, that even in the Horowhenua area complete uniformity, in the results of the natural processes has not actually taken place and that some variation, in this case in the rate of progradation, has produced an unknown amount of distortion (especially in the earlier part of the period involved) in the values arrived a tby computation at a constant figure. The evidence from the Horowhenua area is as follows: The terrain consists of a dune-covered emerging coastal plain, the advancing shoreline being the result of secular orogenic uplift with progradation maintained by an abundant supply of fine sediment. An ancient shoreline of human occupation, marked by a belt of the older of two series of shell-middens, lies inland at a progressively varying distance from the present shoreline. Between the Otaki and Manawatu rivers, where the line of this ancient shoreline can be rather exactly determined, the distance inland pro-gressively increases from about 15 chains between the Otaki and Waikawa rivers to 200 chains (21 miles) at the Manawatu. The downstream limb of the great U-shaped meander of the Manawatu River at Foxton is taken, on the evidence of relation to the oldest middens and of its unique form and general alignment, to represent the position, at this point, of the shoreline at the earliest time of human occupation (Fig. 1).
The place where the evidence is clearest is between Lake Horowhenua and the sea. There, at the time of study, the two midden belts—an older inner belt and a more recent material can he dated at least as definitely as "pre-pumice," "post-pumice," or as "Taupo pumice" in age. The pumice horizon has already been traced to and identified at Paekakariki, at Porirua Harbour, at Titahi Bay, etc., and there is a likelihood that it will ultimately be recognized even farther afield, perhaps even on the shores of the South Island. According to Grange (minutes of meeting of Geological Section, Wellington Branch of Royal Society of New Zealand, October 8, 1930), the great Taupo pumice shower of the great Taupo pumice shower of the central North Island occurred not less than 1,000 years ago but perhaps not greatly earlier than the date thus indicated, though he was unable to fix the higher limit. The figure given (namely, 900 A.D.) 'expresses a time that could post-date the advent of man in the New Zealand area, and it has been shown above that a derived pumice deposit does post-date the earliest inhabitants of Horowhenua, though the pumice deposit in Horowhenua appears to be of even later date. The Horowhenua pumice comes in, on physiographic evidence, at the interval (on local dating) between the departure of the Waitaha (c.1,000 A.D.) and the incoming of the Muaupoko (c.1,200-1,300 A.D.).
The latest information, however (not yet published, the matter being under investigation by I. L. Baumgart, of the Soil Bureau, D.S.I.R.), discloses the occurrence of a pumice deposit in the central plateau region of less magnitude and later date than the better-known widespread deposit. This later pumice, apparently ejected less than 1,000 years ago (being of later date than Grange's minimum estimate of the age of the main pumice shower), was thus acceptable as the correlative of the transported pumice of the Wanganui-Wellington coast. Baumgart, however, in a paper read at the New Zealand Royal Society Science Congress, Christchurch, May, 1951, stated that he was unable, on the evidence of time esti-mates for soil formation and forest establishment and growth on the pumice soils of the central plateau region, to accept Grange's minimum estimate of the probable age of the main Taupo shower; he considered both the main shower and the later smaller shower to be of rather greater antiquity, and that even the last pumice eruption could not be of the late date as determined, on good local evidence, for the transported coastline pumice noted by Fleming at Wanganui and by Adkin in Horowhenua. In view of an appreciable time gap created by this apparent difference in the evidence of inland and coastal environments, the question of the source and place of origin of the coastal pumice requires solution. The coastal pumice is undoubtedly the short-term massed product of volcanic eruption, of origin of the coastal pumice re-quires solution. The coastal pumice is undoubtedly the short-term massed product of volcanic eruption, not anaccumulation derived by normal erosion from inland pumice beds; the mode of occurrence in the lower Wanganui valley and along the coast southwards from that place fully indicates this distinction.
The findings of archeology and tradition supplementary to the geo-logical evidence and suggesting a scheme of successive migrations to the New Zealand region may now be considered. In the writer's view, there is evidence of three separate and variant native cultures having been brought to and spread through these islands. The peoples possessing these cultures were, respectively:

(1) The Waitaha ( = Moahunters, of several South Island writers, and a name recently explicity used by Duff for the earliest inhabitants) a people of superior material culture, Polynesian, culturally archaic, and having affinities with the dolichocephalic Mangarevan stock (Emory, 9, p. 127).

(2)The Ngatimamoe ( = the Maruiwi or tangata-whenua of Best and S. P. Smith, but traditionally usually referred to as Ngatimamoe) , a people apparently largely Polynesian but with a possible Melanesian quality, though whether this was physiological or merely an acquired cultural accretion has not yet been elucidated.

(3)The Fleet- or Hawaiki-Maori, a people predominantly Polynesian, but also possessing traits of culture and practice said to be unknown in oceanic Polynesia.

These three peoples appear to have entered the New Zealand area at rather widely-spaced intervals. The present writer postulates four main separate immigrations, the first and second being branches of the same people, the Waitaha. Of the second Waitaha migration traditional knowledge had survived among the native inhabitants of the South Island of last century. The South Island Waitaha recall their ancestor, Rakaihautu, as arriving in the Uruao canoe, and, finding the North Island inhabited, settling in the South Island. It has been shown by the present writer (8, pp. 59, 115-22, and Fig. 117; 10, pp. 14-22, and Figs. 6, 7, etc.) that a wide range of articles of Waitaha material culture, including many of archaic types, occur throughout the North Island, furnishing good evidence of a prior migration to and occupation of the North Island by a section of this people.

. . . outer one—could be readily distinguished (8, pp. 39-40). In detail, the older series is a multiple feature, the successive portions being related to successive shorelines as the progradation proceeded. The innermost shoreline has been put hereabouts at 65 chains inland and the outermost (of the series) at about 25 chains* inland from the present shoreline.
These ancient middens are regarded, on several lines of evidence, as the accumulation of the ancient Waitaha inhabitants, commonly but loosely referred to, especially in the South Island, as the "moa-hunters.** The outer later midden belt lies behind the foredune and extends back from it for a distance of 80 to 100 yards. This midden belt is attributed to past generations of the local Muaupoko people of Horowhenua.
The advance of the modern shoreline by secular uplift and progradation has been shown by recent surveys to have taken place at Waitarere and Waikawa (see Fig. 1), but no precise figures are available. At Waitarere an accretion of the order of 20 yards has

* These distances (at the selected locality) have been checked and an endeavour made to determine more precise figures than those given in earlier papers.

** These, the earliest inhabitants of New Zealand, are not always to be recognized on the residual evidence as hunters of the moa; they may be recognized, as in the Horowhenua area, by other criteria. Thus it seems hardly scientific to formally designate them by the rather ambiguous and at times barely applicable name "moa-hunter." "Waitaha" has been suggested as a suitable generic term for this people and culture (9, footnote p. 8).

taken place during the last 30 years, and this place being close to the "standard locality," the assumption of an advance of about two feet per annum has been adopted as a conjectural approximation for that locality over a much greater earlier period.

The date of the final Waitaha shoreline of about 25 chains inland, with progradation at the rate of two feet per annum, works out at about 800 years prior to 1800 A.D. For the antiquity of the earliest Waitaha shoreline, 65 chains inland, a calculation on the same basis gives a date of 2,100 years ago, which may be deemed excessive. The date of 1,000 A.D. (see Fig. 2) for the termination of the Waitaha occupation of Horowhenua—i.e., about 300 years prior to the advent there of the Muaupoko (a partly pre-Fleet people)—appears to fit into the pattern of known occupations of the area fairly well, since it allows the period of 300 years for the intervening Ngatimamoe occupation. On the other hand the incoming date of the Waitaha (put at 1,300 years earlier = 300 B.C., see Fig. 2) is open to the objection that this seems too lengthy a period for their sojourn in Horowhenua, but apart from this a very much earlier date for them than has hitherto been attached to human immigrants to this country has much to warrant it. The period of their occupation of Horowhenua in terms of years as submitted above, possibly. has been unduly lengthened (though probably not more than by 200-300 years) by the omission from the calculations of an unknown factor, such as a possible acceleration, in the earlier part of the period, of the rate of shoreline advance owing to a temporary speed-ing up in the process of progradation by an increased supply of sediment and/or an increase in the rate of orogenic uplift.

An important feature of the two series of midden-defined shorelines of Horowhenua is the presence in one of them of coarse transported pumice and the complete absence of it in the other. No trace of pumice, either in the form of natural fragments or of manufactured artifacts, occurs in the ancient Waitaha middens. The Muaupoko midden belt, on the other hand, lies upon a band, parallel to the present beach, of a sand formation heavily charged with water-worn lumps of pumice of all sizes from small pebbles to boulders a foot or more in diameter. Pumice artifacts also occur: disc-shaped net floats, and rubstones.
The significance of this pumice deposit, confined as it is to a band parallel to and not far inland from the present shoreline (Fig. 3) was indicated by the outcome of fieldwork by C. A. Fleming in the Wanganui district. There he noted a late terrace pumice deposit which he ascribed to material derived from the great Taupo shower deposit of the central plateau of the North Island.
The transport of coarse pumice debris in enormous quantities, far exceeding in amount material derived from inland deposits by current stream erosion, is considered good evidence of the distribution of the material by the larger rivers draining from the interior during the progress of the Taupo pumice eruptions. The Wanganui River, for example, was at that time so choked with floating pumice that masses of it became stranded on the low ground on its lower course. Immense quantities reached the sea and were cast up on, or became waterlogged and were buried in, the sea beaches washed by the southward-flowing littoral marine current.
The spreading of the drifted pumice and its incorporation in shore and in inshore deposits provides a valuable "marker" or horizon of fixed position, by means of which other gcological deposits as well as both buried and surface ethnological ...
After the two Waitaha migrations, the proto-Ngatimamoe landed on the north-eastern part of the North Island, and later the canoes of the Fleet made landfall at various points in the same region and to the westward. In succession, all moved or spread southward, the North Island Waitaha keeping aloof from their supplanters, moving on and amalgamating with their kinsmen in the South Island, the Ngatimamoe occupying the North Island and encroach-ing on the South. Later, the Fleet tribes took possession of the North Island, conquering the Ngatirnamoe who were in part assimilated, in part driven into the mountain fastnesses or expelled to the South Island. Finally, when the Ngai-Tahu section of Ngati-Kahungunu invaded the South Island, the remnants of the earlier peoples were pushed to the extreme south where, as a mixed community, they retained until recently many simplified elements of their original characteristic material culture. The accompanying map (Fig. 4) gives a generalized diagrammatic scheme of the incoming and order of spreading through both islands of New Zealand of the four main immigrations recognized. At present there is insufficient data (more especially relating to the eastern portion of the North Island) to furnish a complete and fully authenticated pattern of the principal lines of dispersion.
It may be of interest, for purposes of comparison, to give a similar diagram (Fig. 5) showing an alternative scheme of immigrations and expansion of native populations, as interpreted from an account in a recent publication (Duff, 6, pp. 8-9. 20). In summarizing the cultural and traditional records of early peoples within the New Zealand area, Duff accepts the migrations under Kupe and Rakaihautu as representing the earliest advent of man ("moa-hunters") , dismisses the tangata-whenua or Maruiwi as doubtful or fictitious, and ascribes to the Fleet-Maori the displacing of the then moa-hunter occupants of both islands to the marginal areas of North Auckland and Southland. It is true that distinctive articles of Waitaha (or "moa-hunter") material culture occur in both the Auckland-North Auckland and the South Island-Southland regions, but intrinsically the artifacts of these widely-separated areas cannot be regarded as of exactly equal age and development of craftsmanship as the theory of marginal distribution demands. Many items of material culture from the Auckland area—carvings, pendants, one-piece coffins, art motifs, etc.—are of more exotic and archaic character than any of similar kind found in (or are absent from) the South Island. This is regarded as decisive evidence of the priority of the North Island Waitaha migration and occupation, a conclusion supported by a significant lack of tradition regarding it

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