[In 1939], Jim Eyles was the son of the farmer who lived on Wairau Bar, and had started to become interested in the history of the site when his dad’s ploughing began to turn up large numbers of bones and adzes. There were so many artifacts found that the farmer filled up a couple of old benzene boxes with them and left them under a tree for people to help themselves. As word got out, various experts began to visit the site and fossick for themselves, and soon informed the Eyles’ that what they thought were masses of old cow bones turned up by the plough were actually from New Zealand’s extinct giants - the moa.
Using his dad’s old potato fork (!) Jim began to dig in random spots around the 12-acre farm... During the school holidays in 1939, while digging near where some moa bones had been found next to an old water tank, Jim was surprised to see a strange cavity appear in the bottom of his hole. At first he thought it must be a rabbit burrow, but looking more closely he saw he had broken into a hollow container of some kind. Jim had learned at school that Maori had traditionally used gourds to carry water, so that’s what he thought it was. He “carefully” dug it out of the ground... and took the mysterious object home. His step-father, Charlie Perano, quickly corrected him - it was in fact a moa egg.
(More details at the link. Via Metafilter.)
No comments:
Post a Comment