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Initial research into the presence of the Maori in New Zealand was carried out by historians, philosophers, and scientists who studied aboriginal peoples as an aspect of natural history. In 1770, English explorer Captain James Cook and English botanist Joseph Banks noted similarities between the New Zealand Maori and the inhabitants of other South Seas Islands and concluded that both had a common origin to the west (Beaglehole 1962). By the time of his third voyage in 1777, Cook was able to discuss the distinctive features of Maori material culture (fortified villages, carved canoes, weapons, and ornaments) and the dissimilarities between Maori and eastern Polynesian cultures, such as the absence of the monumental stone marae (temples comprising a rectangular enclosure with a stone platform) he had seen in Tahiti (Reed and Reed 1969).
The presence of the giant ratite Dinornithiformes, or moa, in New Zealand was demonstrated by Richard Owen on the eve of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi (Owen 1839), and knowledge that the extinct moa occurred in human habitation sites followed shortly after. Scientific demonstration of the association of moa and human remains came from the work of the German-trained geologist Julius von Haast (1872), though other scientists such as Walter Mantell and James Hector were also active at the same time.
Through the works of English geologist sir charles lyell (1869), Haast was influenced by John Lubbock’s (1865) division of human cultural development into the Paleolithic period, characterized by crudely chipped stone artifacts and extinct mammals such as the mastodon, and the more recent Neolithic period, containing polished stone implements. Haast assumed that the moa remains from human encampments in the South Island were of Pleistocene age and that the moas had been finally exterminated by a Paleolithic race who used only chipped stone implements. He initially identified this race with the Australian Aborigines but later accepted that its members were of Polynesian origin. He denied that these moa hunters were the ancestors of the Neolithic Maori, as the latter manufactured polished stone implements and used nephrite (greenstone), indicating that they had reached a higher state of civilization.
Haast’s views were challenged by Alexander McKay, whom Haast had employed to excavate Moabone Point Cave near Christchurch, New Zealand. McKay (1874) noted that moa bones and polished stone adzes occurred together and argued that this was proof that the moa hunters had a technology similar to that of the Maori. He concluded that whether or not the Maori had been responsible for the extinction of the moas depended on how old the sites were as well as on the date of first arrival of the Maori. Basing his estimate on the length of time required to produce the Maori population present in 1769, McKay suggested the Maori had probably been in New Zealand for about 1,350 years and furthermore that their first impact on the country was the extermination of the moa.
The polynesian society was created in New Zealand in 1892, and its formation marked a split between the humanities and the natural sciences following the reorganization of science into specialized disciplines. Most of the research at the end of the nineteenth century and in the first half of the twentieth was carried out by a small number of professionals in museums or else was done on a part-time basis by interested individuals working for private firms or in public service. Although the Polynesian colonization of the Pacific archipelago was diffusionist by necessity, the study of Maori origins retained other aspects of the older natural history approach. In particular, changes in culture were invariably interpreted as the result of racial replacement. Innovative peoples were seen as emanating from a center as waves that left isolated peoples on the margins as the embodiment of these primordial events.
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