Post #518072 by Paipo on Wed, Mar 17, 2010 5:12 PM

There are certainly folks here (including members of the carving fraternity) who believe in pre-Maori northern hemisphere settlers:
(link removed to avoid attracting the unhinged)
...however, being a reasonably logical thinker, and someone who has dedicated some serious hours of my life to book and museum study, I've yet to see anything convincing to support this theory (and I have read the book that site promotes). It's very easy to push agendas and build tenuous links when there is such a strong thread of commonality between the art forms of nearly every culture on the planet. To me it's very simple...we are all human, the human brain works in certain ways, and thus we are drawn to the same shapes, forms and symbols. Part of our study at rock school involved looking closely at the Mesoamerican, Chinese and Maori jade carving cultures and there is certainly plenty of crossover in terms of style and subject. The golden mean is another good example of these universal laws of design.

The example of Katsina art adapting to colonial influence is very similar to what happened here....but I need to gather a few stray pics to illustrate the process - so part 2 will have to follow....

(PS: my NZ side is totally Irish...from 2 of those "illiterate undesirable" families who landed in the 19th century, traced back to the ships and beyond...and I did dabble in knotwork in my very early carving days, before being distracted by the wealth of Pacific treasures around me :) )

[ Edited by: Paipo 2010-03-20 16:57 ]

[ Edited by: Paipo 2010-03-20 16:59 ]