On New Zealand’s Chatham Islands, the complete remains of a wooden boat used by the islands’ indigenous Polynesians—perhaps even to arrive there, have been found.
This monumental and unprecedented discovery will yield fascinating insights about the settlement of the island, the dates it would have occurred, and maybe even about other islands in the Pacific.
Starting 3,000 years ago, but particularly in the 13th century CE, Polynesians struck out across the Pacific and settled a huge number of the islands in the vast ocean. They sailed by the stars and other open ocean indicators like birds on large boats called ‘wakas.’
The Chatham Islands’ original inhabitants are the Moriori, and it was a father and son who first found the splinters of wood on the main island of Rekohu that led to the discovery, which one archaeologist said will go down as one of the most important finds in Polynesian history.
“My son and I were just loading the boat up and taking the dogs for a run up the beach… just after a big rain,” Vincent Dix, a local fisherman, tells Radio New Zealand. Then, he says, his son Nikau saw pieces of timber in the river. The wood sported strange holes, and it appeared to be well preserved. Taking some of the pieces home, they began to see if they could fit some of them together.
A waka is a rare but not unheard of discovery in Polynesian archaeology, however they tend to be found in fragments, with no other material from the sails or rigging left over.
Another storm came and went, and the two men returned to the site where the remains of the whole boat had been unearthed. They immediately called the relevant authorities who came and secured the site.
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“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,” Justin Maxwell, the archaeologist leading the investigation, told the Guardian. “We found all of that. It’s completely blown our minds.”
In a statement, the Ministry for Culture and Heritage of New Zealand explained that pieces were individually recovered and placed into holding units to preserve the old wood.
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“The local community were instrumental in leading the on-island support during the excavation,” the statement read. “Community interns and volunteers travelled across the island to the site, providing precious cultural advice, supplying meals and taking up the opportunity to add new skills to their impressive resumes.”
At the time of publishing, no estimated dating of the wood has been carried out, but the Smithsonian Magazine reports that some pieces clearly came from mainland New Zealand, suggesting a journey was made between the two, a distance of hundreds of miles.
One major aspect of this waka is that it was built with individual boards rather than out of a single tree, as others found in the past have suggested was the norm. Maxwell said this is going to help them learn so much about Polynesian waka technology.
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