A Rare Polynesian Canoe Was Found By A Fisherman And His Son In New Zealand
Around 3,000 years ago, people from Southeast Asia began sailing out into the Pacific and settling on the islands of Polynesia. They crossed the ocean in large canoes made from trees, using the stars to guide their way.
In New Zealand’s Chatham Islands, one of those boats, known as a waka, has recently been found in hundreds of pieces. The find is one of the most significant of its kind.
“No matter how old it is, we can’t overstate how incredible it is,” said Justin Maxwell, the lead archaeologist of the investigation. “It will go down as one of the most important finds of all time in Polynesia.”
Last year, the boat’s remains were discovered by a young man and his father, Nikau, and Vincent Dix, a local fisherman.
They had been loading up their boat and were taking their dogs for a run up the beach just after it had rained, when Nikau spotted pieces of wood in a creek near their home on the main island of Rēkohu.
The wood contained strange holes and appeared to be well-preserved. The father-son duo took all the timber home and started putting it together. They soon realized that it formed the shape of a boat. Later, they returned to the site, after a big storm.
That was when Nikau came across a piece of carved wood that may have been the boat’s headpiece. It confirmed that they had found an actual waka. So, they contacted authorities about the discovery, and a team of researchers began excavating in January.
In total, the researchers dug up more than 450 pieces from the waka. The findings suggest that the boat was crafted from hundreds of pieces of timber rather than carved from one big tree.
“Before we started this project, the holy grail would have been to find some of the sail, or some of the twine that held things together, or some of the rope or the corking,” said Maxwell.
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“We found all of that. It’s completely blown our minds.”
According to Maui Solomon, an Indigenous rights activist and chair of the Moriori Imi Settlement Trust, the boat is likely a Moriori ancestral waka.
The Moriori people were the first to settle the Chatham Islands. They arrived there around the year 1500 after traveling east from mainland New Zealand.
The waka’s design aligns with Moriori oral history. Its notches and long handles look similar to smaller traditional Moriori boats. The waka’s age has not been determined yet.
So far, experts know that at least three pieces of timber came from New Zealand trees. A laboratory has been set up near the dig site to work on the preservation of the wood.
Overall, the newfound canoe will give researchers a better understanding of Polynesian waka technology.
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