She also theorised that famed Chinese admiral Zheng He reached New Zealand in the 1430s before a meteorite impact destroyed his fleet.<\/p>\n
New Zealand researcher Robert Jones, who is behind a proposed Museum of Anomalous Antiquities, also presented in Penang and mentioned artefacts he said could indicate early Chinese or other pre-European contact, the Morning Post reported.<\/p>\n
Among them was a North Island rock bearing scratches that he suggested depicted an elephant.<\/p>\n
Jones also pointed to the Tamil Bell, a bronze bell bearing a Tamil inscription found by a missionary in a M\u0101ori village, and the Korotangi, a carved stone bird associated with Tainui. <\/p>\n
No credible evidence \u2013 NZ historians<\/p>\n
New Zealand historian Dr Vincent O\u2019Malley said there was \u201cnot one iota of credible evidence\u201d supporting a pre-Polynesian settlement of New Zealand.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no debate about this whatsoever among serious scholars,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Malley said \u201cfanciful\u201d theories involving everyone from the Celts to the Chinese had circulated for years.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut there is zero actual evidence for any of this.\u201d<\/p>\n
Auckland University of Technology professor of history Paul Moon said Wang\u2019s claims could be \u201cdisassembled quite simply\u201d.<\/p>\n
He said an earlier population would have left traces of buildings and everyday life, which existed \u201cin abundance\u201d for M\u0101ori.<\/p>\n
Moon said M\u0101ori migration accounts also corresponded closely with oral histories across Polynesia.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere isn\u2019t the comparable history in other countries.\u201d<\/p>\n
Moon said the internet had helped sensational theories spread without the scrutiny they would face through academic peer review.<\/p>\n
\u201cNowadays, you can make the assertion online and it starts to circulate in the bloodstream of the internet,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Moon said pre-M\u0101ori settlement theories had been used by some to challenge M\u0101ori indigeneity, though he stressed he was not suggesting that was the motivation behind the latest claims.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s always a risk if belief precedes the evidence… I think the better way is to examine evidence using tested methods and if they show something new, wonderful. If they don\u2019t, move on.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018Hugely corrosive\u2019<\/p>\n
T\u016bhura Otago Museum curator M\u0101ori Dr Gerard O\u2019Regan (K\u0101i Tahu), an archaeologist specialising in M\u0101ori rock art, said alternative settlement theories were \u201chugely corrosive\u201d to public appreciation of heritage sites.<\/p>\n
Speaking about the broader effects of such narratives, he said there had been examples of people trying to add new rock art to w\u0101hi t\u016bpuna (ancestral places) and \u201creclaiming and rewriting\u201d their histories.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Regan said alternative settlement narratives could shape how people viewed and treated heritage places.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis kind of information has a huge impact across our community and shapes how people support and engage with our heritage places, including whether they get protected and valued in the way they should be,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd of course, one of the hard things for iwi and local marae looking after these heritage places is that the stories of those places and their treasures get misappropriated.\u201d<\/p>\n
He was also sceptical of the supposed elephant carving, saying some of the marks on the rock appeared to be natural formations.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Regan said researchers could not select markings that supported an interpretation while disregarding those that did not.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t just count the hits, you\u2019ve got to explain the misses.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"She also theorised that famed Chinese admiral Zheng He reached New Zealand in the 1430s before a meteorite…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":608540,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[12889,9218,20273,4444,10712,2562,102166,49738,2206,186073,299882,305,100393,13620,2720,111,43,139,69,299880,181060,117811,12177,299881,126532],"class_list":["post-608539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-aotearoa","tag-before","tag-branded","tag-chinese","tag-claiming","tag-claims","tag-dismiss","tag-evidence","tag-explorer","tag-explorers","tag-fanciful","tag-have","tag-historians","tag-leading","tag-mori","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-premori","tag-resurfaced","tag-settled","tag-settlement","tag-theories","tag-unsupported"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=608539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608539\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/608540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=608539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=608539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=608539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}