no surprise to antiquarians

You don’t have to travel half way around the world to see standing stone circles or overland alignment sites. It’s all here under our feet and in plain sight.

New Zealanders want to know – and it is time the real evidence was laid-bare for all to draw their own conclusions. In a series of articles, Franklin eLocal will present insight into aspects of this fascinating subject, including the locations of local alignment markers used by ancient navigators, along with further evidence related to the remnant structures and skeletal remains of the original New Zealanders.

You don’t have to travel half way around the world to see standing stone circles or overland alignment sites. There is ample evidence that branches of the selfsame family tree of nations that built the great megalithic sites of Britain, Continental Europe or earlier edifices around the Mediterranean Basin, were also living for many thousands of years in New Zealand and brought all of those cultural expressions to this country in remote antiquity. It’s all here under our feet and in plain sight.

What IS the source of that 300 year old European female skull in the Wairarapa, dating from an era when the history books tell us this enigmatic woman could not possibly have been in New Zealand at that time? The discovery and its revelation on Campbell Live has provoked a major talking point among Kiwis, but is old-hat to those who have long realised that Maori were relative latecomers to our South Pacific shores. Maori themselves have been ignored when they speak of the "fairy people" with pale skin, pale eyes and reddish hair who were in Aotearoa long before the arrival of the first Polynesian travellers. Carefully documented discoveries by early explorers and surveyors have been dismissed, while modern explorers, with evidence by the caseload, are routinely discredited.

In the past, many New Zealand authors, archaeologists, surveyors or anthropologists left us with documented facts based upon their professional observations or what was recounted to them by Maori Tohungas. For years, modern day explorer, surveyor and researcher Martin Doutré has been painstakingly documenting the evidence - scrambling up hills and through bush and mud to follow the trail of the First People.

Google Earth offers us a global GPS system on the internet to look at historical mysteries like Nazca Peru, the Moai statues of the Easter Islands, the Giza Plateau in Egypt, Carnac in Brittany and Avebury Henge - and sites in New Zealand. These sites are all "stand alone," where people used exploitable features of their surrounding terrain to create solar observatories or standing stone structures to serve particular purposes.

Despite long denials by entrenched historians that European travellers ventured as far south as New Zealand, there is ample evidence to the contrary. Martin specialises in comparative analysis, based upon measurable similarities within archaeological sites, spread over several continents. He focuses on the repetitive use of the selfsame distances and angles that were deliberately built into ancient edifices or marked by large obelisks, stone cairn heaps or purpose-built mound humps. These mathematical or surveying features recur in the worldwide distribution of code-bearing sites – including throughout New Zealand.

Martin Doutré: "For decades, the existence of an ancient peoples living in New Zealand has been denied or suppressed, despite the evidence all around us and clearly stated in Maori oral traditions. We can even track one of the main migratory routes of these ancient travellers from their Mediterranean homelands, coming through the Canary Islands to Mexico, Costa Rica and Peru, etc., then to Easter Island and ultimately to New Zealand. Their entire route to New Zealand is littered with the selfsame cultural symbolism, food plants and skeletal evidence, through each leg of continental or island-hopping travel – just one example is the Maori Hei-Tiki, found in Egypt, Mexico and Peru."

The Bombay Obelisk

In the past, many New Zealand authors, archaeologists, surveyors or anthropologists left us with documented facts based upon their professional observations or what was recounted to them by Maori Tohungas.

Locally, let us start our journey of discovery with one obvious local point of interest.

How many of you have noticed a cluster of large stones near the Pukekohe southern off ramp at Bombay and thought - "They look like standing stones?" Well, you would be right. It took a visiting British Antiquarian to spot and draw them to Martin’s attention. These stones are obelisk boulders with ancient spiral incising and five hand hewn bullauns cut into them, and are not unique. They are part of a network of such points covering the entire Auckland isthmus – and beyond. Bullauns are Neolithic ceremonial ‘holy wells,’ used for ritualistic cleansing found in rock structures throughout ancient Europe. (later adopted by the Christian Church as baptismal fonts.)

The Bombay stones were uncovered in 1992 when engineers dug to build the Southern motorway extension. They were repositioned on farmland close to their original site, while several others were buried nearby.

Construction Superintendent, Nick Botica was told by advisors at the time that the tephra ash covering the obelisks and other component parts of the Bombay Hill structure came from the Taupo eruption of 186 AD – providing positive evidence that this site was last used over 1800 years ago. If the tephra is from Taupo, then there can be no doubt the intricate incising and bullaun bowls were created by humans over 1000 years before Maori arrived on these shores. The Taupo eruption is said to be the largest volcanic explosion in recorded history, the noise from which was heard in China. It’s quite possible that shock waves and ground tremors from the massive eruption toppled the standing obelisks at the Bombay Hills. Over ensuing days or weeks beyond the eruption they were covered in a blanket of volcanic ash and not found again until Nick Botica’s roading crew happened upon them in 1992.

Another intriguing fact is that there isn’t a lot of stone in evidence throughout the Bombay Hills area. The landscape for miles around is layered with rich volcanic soil atop clay beds and it’s very evident that this cluster of large obelisks or sizeable boulders was brought together by ancient human intervention to serve some profound structural purpose. The same ‘out of place’ factor has been noted with other obelisks at Red Hill in Papakura and Silverdale – and at Stonehenge in Britain, So, what could their purpose be to provoke so much effort?

In the next edition of eLocal: We follow an ancient overland alignment of purpose built structures extending through the Auckland Isthmus. Why were these structures built? What is the true age of Rangitoto? Who were the people who built these overland structures in a dead straight line and what happened to the ancient society?