In this post we will look into the possible migration from Austronesia and Melanesia to America as proposed by Paul Rivet, but looking at an early timeline, since Polynesians reached the islands of the Pacific between 700 and 1200 AD, while America was peopled over 15,000 years ago.
This implies that there must have been an earlier group of people living in this region before the arrival of Polynesians 1300 to 800 years ago.
The First People in Polynesia
The Polynesians consiered that there was an original race of people inhabiting the islands they reached during their expansion across the Pacific Ocean, they called them Manahune. These mythical beings are very human in many ways, and suggest that they were possibly members of some previous wave that peopled Polynesia.
William Halse Rivers (1864-1922) proposed in 1914 (The History of Melanesian Society) that there had been two waves of people that populated Polynesia the first wave became the serfs, or commoners, enslaved by the second wave people, who became their overlords.
"Even with the available evidence, however, there is much which points to the two-fold nature of Polynesian culture. If the distinction between chiefs and commoners in Melanesia has been the result of the fusion of two peoples, the chiefs being the representatives of an immigrant people, it will be difficult to withhold a similar explanation of the two orders of chief and commoner in Polynesia." (p.280)
I have found references on the pre-Polynesian people that are said to have inhabited New Zealand. One of such sources states that "... This is the forbidden pre-Maori history with reports being withheld and access being denied to evidence of its first inhabitants who were annihilated by the arriving Maori. The Ngati Hotu tribe of New Zealand, described as being light-skinned, with light eyes and reddis hair, were the last surviving pre-Maori Urukehu.'They say we do not exist. They say we are an extinct race. My people still carry the red and blond hair, blue-green eyes, and fair skin of our ancestors. We are the Ngati Hotu." No reference is given for this quote, and it sounds as if it wass conspiracist, racist and pure pseudoscience.
The Urukehu, however, were real. The Encyclopedia of New Zealand - Te Ara, managed and updated by Manatu Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage in Wellington, New Zealand. Includes an entry on them, and the following image:
Uurukehu. Source
"This photograph is from "The old-time Maori" (1938), by Mākereti Papakura. She notes that the blonde, fair child and the father, Tonihi (right), are both Urukehu. While some believe that Urukehu (fair-headed, fair-skinned Māori) are the offspring of the fairy people patupaiarehe, Mākereti Papakura believed that this light-skinned strain dates back to the traditional Polynesian homeland of Hawaiki, and that albino Māori are the product of the union between Māori and patupaiarehe. She describes patupaiarehe as ‘supernatural children of the mist ... seen in indistinct form in the passing mist. ... They are fair, and are clothed in flimsy white like the web of the pūngāwerewere [spider]."
Patupaiarehe were fairy-like people, pictured below in a New Zealand stamp (source, they lived in the forests and mountains, had blue eyes, fair hair and white or red skin. They abducted women.
Finally, these Ngāti Hotu peoiple were an actual tribe that lived in the Taupō district when the first Maori poeple (priest Ngātoroirangi and explorer Tia) arrived in New Zealand, "discovering" it, and settling there: "The tribe were referred to as ‘urukehu’ (fairy people) because of their unusual red hair and fair skin" (Source).
A plausible explanation is that these fair haired people are the result of Melanesian genes. According to a paper published in Science, Melanesians "from the Solomon Islands and Equatorial Oceania have the darkest skin pigmentation outside of Africa, they also have the highest prevalence of blond hair (5 to 10%) outside of Europe." It is caused by a mutation in the TYRP1 gene, which is involved in the production of the skin and hair darkening pigment melanin. Other mutations in the TYRP1 gene can provoke albinism. This genetic trait is different to the one that causes fair hair in Europeans.
Judge W. E. Gudgeon in his work Maori migrations to New Zealand, 1892, (p. 217) mentions that "It can hardly be doubted that there were many tribes of Polynesian descent in occupation of this country when the crew of the Arawa entered the river at Maketu, Bay of Plenty... Among other well-known tribes now extinct, but who are regarded by the Maoris as Autocthones, are the following : Ngati-Eahnpungapunga, Nga-Marama, Te Elawerau, Marangaranga, Ngati-Hotu, Maruiwi, Te Baupongaoheohe, Te Tururumauka, Te Aruhetawiri, Te Aoraorn, Waitaha-Torauta, Whatumamoa, and many others ; some of whom are still tribes such as Ngati-Mahanga, NgatiUepohatu, Nga-Potiki, &c." So clearly, Gudgeon believed that the Polynesians reached New Zealand over a long period of time, and among the first arrivals, these "Authoctones" were the Ngati-Hotu.
I doubt we will find any future research on this matter, because the Maori, like the Mapuche of Chile, the U.S. and Canadian First Nations, and the Australian Aboriginals, don't like any theory that suggests that there were other people who reached "their" homeland before they did, and are willing to defend their status as "First People" by denying those theories and literally burying the evidence (Mungo man reburied and Kennewick man reburied).
Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall ©
No comments:
Post a Comment