Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/607

Rh the face. It thus provides an interesting, and in some respects a remarkably close, parallel to the Easter Island cylinders, and supports Dr. Rivers' explanation rather than those advanced by Mr. Balfour and Sir Everard im Thurn.

The researches of Mr. Balfour have shown that the most important comparative material for the elucidation of Easter Island problems is probably to be gathered in the Solomon group. But the case just quoted indicates that the New Zealand area also yields important comparative material. The most striking example is undoubtedly the Moriori rendering of the human figure in the round. So close is the resemblance that the only known Moriori example was identified by one of the most experienced of British ethnologists as Easter Island work. The close similarity of Easter Island and Moriori mata has been pointed out by several observers. The manaia, or bird-headed man, of Maori carving is also closely related to the bird-headed man of Easter Island and the Solomons.

Of great interest in this connection is the carving recently discovered in the Kaitaia swamp and now on exhibition in the Auckland Museum. A drawing is published in the Journal of the Polynesian Society, No. 4, 1921. Though made of totara, a native New Zealand timber, the carving differs in important respects from any known Maori work. It has a central human figure (male) and two outward-facing terminal figures of reptilian appearance. Between the central figure and each of the terminals is a series of large chevrons, splendidly carved in open work. This arrangement of a central figure with two outward-facing monster terminals, and spaces filled with open work decoration, is that followed in the simplest form of Maori lintel, and it is on this ground that the Kaitaia carving has been classified by most students as a lintel; indeed, it has usually been referred to in the press as "the Awanui lintel." That such a classification has some justification will be admitted by anyone who studies the simplest type of Maori lintel, as exemplified by, for example, the ancient specimen at the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Cambridge, or the beautiful example at the Horniman Museum. In each of these there is a central human figure, separated on either hand by a piece of