Before we go into the physical evidence on the existence of pre-Maori peoples, let us take a quick look at what we know:

We know that there was at least one race of people in New Zealand before the arrival of the Maori because of what they left behind. The antiquity of the Bombay and Silverdale standing stones and their ancient incised markings can be dated as pre the Taupo eruption in 186AD, which covered the stones in tephra ash – over 1000 years before the arrival of Maori. The intricate, hand carved bas relief incising and the bullauns (hand hewn ‘wells’ in the stones) are identical to those found all over Europe. The cultural origin of these many types of Proto-Celtic, purpose-built structures can be traced back to even more remote sites like those found in Egypt and Babylon, Here is what painstaking field research by surveyor and antiquarian Martin Doutré, assisted by evidence from archaeologists, historians and anthropologists has revealed:

Martin: "A long time ago there was a very enlightened civilisation that occupied the entire Auckland Isthmus, outer gulf islands and surrounding ranges. They were avid astronomers and surveyors who worked in both stone and wood. Over a period of a few thousand years they prepared the 36+ volcanic cones of Auckland to act as astronomical and surveying observatories. Around most of the hills they dug sighting pits and trenches for the purpose of establishing clear directional alignments onto the other hills or to distant mountain targets of the region. These shallow excavations were later called ‘kumara pits’ or ‘defensive trenches’ by historians, who erroneously attributed them to Maori. In order to prove the true purpose of these features, I and others have carried out careful and precise surveys of sighting pits, using a handheld GPS unit or Google Earth for coordinate fixes, in conjunction with computer programs like AutoCAD for analysing angle results. After that, it is only the tedious activity of "joining the dots" to test the angle codes or surveying attributes contained in the alignments hill to hill.

"Military experts, analysing the defensive capabilities of the Auckland hillside and hilltop excavations, have quashed the theory that these could have served the purpose of Maori defences. The many small, disconnected, elliptical terraces on the sides of One Tree Hill, Mangere Mountain, etc., were built to act as shadow clefts and provide seasonal information by the shadow signal that they cast with the rising or setting sun. They enabled farmers in the valley fields to know when it was time to plant or harvest particular crops by the shadow signals seen on their local hillsides. The people also set up individual solar observatories, marked by an obelisk or rock cairns for getting a fix on where the sun rose or set on the horizon at the time of the equinoxes or solstices. These ancient New Zealanders had a very functional lunisolar calendar system, which told them when to plant or when to harvest. They used the Sumerian-Babylonian 360-degree angle system and encoded profound aspects of ancient cyclic or navigational science into the landscape by use of marked distances and angles running from a hubstone to outer marker stones. The smaller or more localized standing stone circle systems acted as schools where tutorials were taught to students of the astronomical and navigational arts. The hard-won scientific information encoded into them, and passed down religiously generation by generation, could be extracted at any time by use of a measuring rod or rope and a simple surveying tool, a theodolite, which gave accurate degree angle readings around from north."

Throughout the 200-year long colonial history of New Zealand hikers, hunters and surveyors alike have encountered and been bewildered by the presence of what appeared to be purpose placed marker stones atop high hills or mountains across the length and breadth of New Zealand. One Aucklander remembers reading commentary in a diary of his great-great grandfather, who was a New Zealand government surveyor in the nineteenth century. He had written words to the effect that wherever he went to set up trigs or complete surveys, he could see the handiwork of much earlier surveyors who had preceded him.

"For anyone conversant with millenniums old, standard surveying methodologies, the ancient marker systems of New Zealand are easily detected. These structures include: substantial tor mounds, smaller mound humps, obelisks, standing stone arrangements including circle trigs, boulder cairns, smaller component rock cairns, alignment trenches, sighting pits, sea-cliff benchmark excavations for elevation work and determining overland mountain heights above sea level, surveyor’s baselines and the clever use of the natural landscape or sea horizon. Beyond these purely surveying related structures there are standing stone circles for astronomy and solar observatories that can also use an equinox or solstice fix for land-based navigation."

Furthermore, eminent British Archaeologist, Aileen Fox remarked on the distinct similarities between Maori Pa (forts) and the ancient, palisade encompassed, pre-Celtic hill forts of Britain. Leading historian Elsdon Best said: "The Maori did not live in this manner in his former home in eastern Polynesia. Did he evolve the pa system after he settled here, or did he borrow it from former inhabitants?" Another pertinent question asked is: If the Polynesian Maori brought their artefacts and cultural symbols and motifs here, then why are they not found in their lands of origin? Professor Thor Heyerdahl wrote: ‘Irrespective of how and when the Maori began to cover their carvings with spirals, the habit is absent in their Polynesian homeland."

To understand our ancient New Zealanders, we need to look further. Using the well-known, ratio-related measurement standards of the ancient cousin civilisations of the Mediterranean and Europe, Martin is able to demonstrate that many archaeological sites, scattered over several continents, acted as ancient open air ‘universities,’ constructed by the selfsame confederation of world travellers. Aligned markers cover the length and breadth of New Zealand. In the Auckland area alone, starting from the north at the Silverdale boulders, the line crosses the high ground at Okura and there is another mound marker there, perfectly located on the ridgeline. The line then runs down the coastline, brushing between North Head and Mt. Victoria in Devonport, then crosses a boulder cairn at Bastion point and proceeds onwards to the ancient trig mound on Mt. Wellington. It then passes alignment, off to each side, are secondary markers that relate in a surveying sense to the "main-trunk-line".

These overland-surveying alignment structures were once a part of a larger land-mapping complex, including the Bombay the entirety of Auckland from Bombay to Moirs’ Hill north of Puhoi.

The main north-south alignment traverses a shorter east-west equinox alignment extending from Stockade Hill in Howick, through the crest trench at Mt. Wellington and onward to the marker stone boulder atop Mt. Albert. The long alignment from Silverdale to Bombay also traverses another short (true north-south) alignment that extends from an observatory and trig site at Red Hill in Papakura to the obelisk cluster at Bombay. Pukekohe Hill serves as an appendage site to the main alignment and an incised arrow in a rock within the Mt. William complex points at Pukekohe Hill. A secondary trig of double stones at Bastion Point, sitting some four hundred feet offline northeast from the boulder cairn marking the main alignment through Auckland, works well as a solar observatory. It fixes upon the southern side of distant Moehau Mountain on the Coromandel Range as its equinox sunrise marker. It also acts as a centre hub for viewing and taking angle fixes onto prominent hills of the Auc?Islands including Rangitoto, Motutapu, Waiheke and Great Barrier, with the Coromandel Ranges sitting eastward.

He says: "Stonehenge and nearby Avebury Henge contain the sum total of the astronomical, calendar or navigational knowledge encoded into the dimensions and angles of the Great Pyramid and Khafre Pyramid (Egypt’s pyramid of the moon). The pyramids of Giza acted as a "Bureau of Standards", founded upon precise measurements and geometry. The parcel of special numbers generated within the dimensions and angles of these code-bearing edifices were incorporated into all of the weights, measures and volume standards of the ancient Mediterranean and Continental European nations in remote antiquity. These sophisticated standards remained with them, at least in part, until the recent introduction of the metric system.

"All of the numbers found within the ancient Mediterranean-European standards related to such things as the equatorial size of the Earth and navigation, the solar and lunar cycles (lunisolar Sabbatical calendar), by which means functioning, abundant, civilised society was regulated and rendered possible. Southern English sites like Stonehenge and Avebury Henge, are repositories or libraries of sophisticated scientific knowledge. Egypt and satellite countries at the Eastern base of the Mediterranean were the former homelands of Continental Europeans, who left that increasingly arid region in remote antiquity to move to the new, verdant territories of Europe (there is speculation that the Egyptian Pyramids are much older than "officially" recognized). Upon arrival in Europe, these migrants from Egypt and its environs built a huge library of the mathematically-coded information by carefully positioning 3000 obelisks at Carnac, Brittany, France. Through this industrious undertaking, the astronomical-cyclic and navigational sciences, carried by them from Egypt, were now permanently preserved in the European landscape and mathematically extractible to all future generations.

"In an age where there was no large-scale availability of paper for fabricating books, the scientific principles of astronomy, the cycles related to the calendar calculations or mathematical principles for intercontinental navigation, were being taught at many regional standing stone sites to the brightest and best of the civilisation’s youth.

"Major open air universities teaching specialised knowledge were established on the Giza Plateau of Egypt; throughout Continental Europe at such sites as Carnac in Brittany, Avebury Henge in Southern England and many other British sites; the Octagon of Newark Ohio and numerous other North American geometric earth embankment complexes; within the overland mounds, crowned by huge round boulders and statues, of the Diquis Delta of Costa Rica and throughout the vast desert etched geometry of Nazca Peru; at Easter Island amidst the precisely placed moai statues and ahu platforms circumnavigating the entire coast or situated inland; within the dimensions of stepped pyramids ranging all the way across the Pacific; to New Zealand, with its own multitude of standing stone circles, like the large Northland complex at the Waitapu Valley beside Maunganui Bluff or ancient geometric and coded edifices like the Crosshouse of Miringa te Kakara, near Bennydale.

"Maori oral traditions state that this school of learning (wharewaananga) was a constantly maintained rebuild of a rebuild, built by the original pre-Maori people whom Maori from the Takitimu canoe encountered when they entered the district for the first time. When a part was deteriorating, it had to be carefully removed and used as a template or pattern for making a new part that was precisely the same and installed in the exact same position as the old part. Amongst other very precise mathematical standards from the ancient Mediterranean and Europe, the strange edifice positively incorporated the use of the PHI formula in its dimensions. This ratio relationship was encoded into many edifices of the Mediterranean, including the Great Pyramid, where the base area of ground covered by the pyramid is in a ratio of 1:1.6180339 (PHI) to the surface area of the four upper faces.

"A large dossier of compelling evidence now exists to show that a highly-mobilised group of cousin European nations, ranging from the Mediterranean Basin, Continental Europe and the British Isles thousands of years ago, set up civilisations or mining colonies all over the world. To traverse the vast, featureless oceans safely they had to have advanced mathematical knowledge for accurate positional plotting at sea, which knowledge needed to be supported by intricate familiarity with zodiacal-patterns, constellation signposts, as well as stellar or planetary rises and sets at the sea horizon for accurate celestial navigation.

"In every location where these ancient globetrotters settled long term, including New Zealand, they encoded these scientific principles into the landscape by way of ground markers set to precise distances and angles around from north from a central hubstone. As long as all the stone-marked positions remained intact and undisturbed through the unfolding centuries, the information could be repetitively extracted by a precise measuring rule and a theodolite, which gave degree angle (azimuth) readings within a 360-degree circuit. This ancient Sumerian system is positive proof of an ancient civilisation in New Zealand before Maori, who did not possess this knowledge.

Over the last 250-years or so, New Zealand archaeologists, historians, theologians, surveyors, meteorologists, anthropologists and explorers, all drawing upon expertise associated with their professional disciplines, have painstakingly documented undeniable evidence of pre-Maori human occupation of New Zealand or the greater Pacific region. The recently revealed Wairarapa skull is not unique. Many more skeletons have been destroyed, but evidence remains – the bones of the First Peoples of New Zealand.

Pukekohe Hill serves as an appendage site to the main alignment and an incised arrow in a rock within the Mt. William complex points at Pukekohe Hill. A secondary trig of double stones at Bastion Point, sitting some four hundred feet offline northeast from the boulder cairn marking the main alignment through Auckland, works well as a solar observatory. It fixes upon the southern side of distant Moehau Mountain on the Coromandel Range as its equinox sunrise marker. It also acts as a centre hub for viewing and taking angle fixes onto prominent hills of the Auckland Isthmus and outlying islands. The hills within full view of the two Bastion Point boulder trigs include Mt Eden, with Mt. Albert tucked behind, Mt. Hobson, Three Kings, One Tree Hill, Mt. Wellington, Mt Victoria, North Head, as well as many outlying Islands including Rangitoto, Motutapu, Waiheke and Great Barrier, with the 

How old is Rangitoto?

Martin questions the age of Rangitoto, which he has demonstrated was clearly an "outer marker" or "fix-point" from ancient purpose-built surveying positions found within the Auckland Isthmus. "Geologists, Botanists and Ecologists have assessed the time available for the vegetation to develop on Rangitoto after volcanic activity by looking at features of the cliffs at nearby Motutapu Island and beach areas or cone region of Rangitoto itself. All features combined, including leaching and weathering on the cone suggests a minimum of 1000-4000 years. Maori oral history talks of forests of rata and pohutakawa growing there as far back as 1150AD. Scientists say that Rangitoto Island emerged violently from the sea 600-years ago – its last estimated eruption - but all of the available evidence indicates it could be up to 5,000 years old or even older and that there were long periods of dormancy between eruptions."

WHO WERE THE FIRST     PRE POLYNESIAN       POLYNESIA      OCEAN GOING CANOES   TAINUI 

AN UNPALITABLE TRUTH     TAURANGA TRIBES     BAY OF PLENTY HISTORY     NEW ZEALAND HISTORY      CAPTAIN COOK

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