New Zealand: A New Britain?
What if a race of Celtic people settled New Zealand 2000 years before Maori?

Last issue, elocal asked why an ancient stone town had been covered up in Northland’s Waipoua Forest. In Part 2 of In Search of Our Tangata Whenua, we examine a popular theory in ancient New Zealand studies: What if a race of Celtic people settled New Zealand 2000 years before Maori?

If you'd asked any 19th century gum digger he’d have shared his stories about digging up strange artefacts, or finding mysterious stone altars deep in the kauri forest. Ask the Maori forestry workers about the miniature fairy people they witnessed flitting through the Northland bush. And ask the farmers across the North Island who for almost two hundred years have been digging up bizarre objects submerged in fields, which appear to have come from places as diverse as Sri Lanka, Egypt and Hawaii.
The golden age of New Zealand archaeology was the decade 1955 to 1965, when a movement of self-educated archaeologists around the country caused a surge in valuable finds, without the constraints of political correctness, bureaucracy or iwi interference. “This decade is when digs got dug,” John Tasker explained in 1999’s Secret Landscape, “when things actually happened on the archaeological front, when there was no DOC to interfere, and when the frontiers of knowledge were pushed back further than at any time in our history.” It was an era in which the British cataloguing of Maori oral history was coming to an end. The country had been explored inside out, New Zealand seemed to have no more secrets to yield, and a people called New Zealand Europeans were realising themselves.
In this golden age, University of Auckland’s Polynesian Society hadn’t yet defined the separation of Waitaha/Moa Hunter and Maori peoples. It had been thought that New Zealand could have been settled as long ago as 600AD, because carbon dating had not yet been popularised, and craniometry (skull differentiation) was not sufficiently refined. There are different interpretations about what Waitaha means – ask around, and you’ll find Waitaha trying to reassert itself as a people, although the Waitangi Tribunal hasn’t fully recognised Waitaha and many historians have concluded that Waitaha really belong in myth only. However, most Maori acknowledge that the Waitaha were once widespread across these islands, but exactly when is the subject of speculation.
Most museums know the first few hundred years of Polynesian civilisation in New Zealand as being the time of the Waitaha. In Ancient Celtic New Zealand Martin Doutré defines Waitaha as:
‘An emerging force in Maoridom, which acknowledges and gives recognition to more ancient ancestors. People of mixed bloodline, Waitaha lineage, can quote a whakapapa (genealogy) which extends many generations further of continuous New Zealand occupation than mainstream Maori. Waitaha lineage… was absorbed into the conquering Maori tribes.’
Sadly, in the 19th century, Maori were paid by Europeans to bring bones to a mill in Onehunga where it is said 60,000 skeletons were crushed to be converted into paint and fertiliser which was often used in Franklin’s agricultural fields. That destruction meant the only people who know precisely when the tangata whenua first arrived in New Zealand have been dead for hundreds of years.
Maori lore speaks of Tangaroa, the god of the sea, as being “from a land where leaves stay on the trees for only half a year,” and it is the eerie synchronicity between the Antipodes and Europe which has got Martin Doutré searching for the truth. Doutré is a trained surveyor, but he’s also an experienced archaeologist, anthropologist, a linguist and a mathematician. He doesn’t buy Michael King’s casual, inoffensive Penguin edition of New Zealand history. “Michael King’s work started off all right, but he got sucked in – later on, he flipped,” Doutré reckons.
He’s realised hundreds of parallels suggesting that a Celt-like people from the British Isles populated New Zealand until around the time that Maori arrived here, but he now says that New Zealand is suffering ‘collective amnesia’ which suppresses the knowledge painstakingly collected from Maori in the 19th century. “Many things attributed to Maori – the haka, the koru, the tiki – are actually traceable to Egyptian culture,” which in itself has parallels with northern European culture. These Celt-like people may have become known to the Maori as Turehu and Patupaiarehe – short and tall varieties of proto-Celts, whose ethnicity was similar to Scandinavians’ or Britons’.
So how did the Celts die out? “There have been some cataclysmic events: tidal waves, and the Taupo explosion of 186AD, but it was mainly predation by Maori warriors.” Interbreeding is another explanation for their disappearance: early explorers frequently puzzled over the high incidence of Caucasoid physiology in Maori, and even as recently as 2008, a skull was found in the Wairarapa which was scientifically proven as dating from before Captain Cook even arrived here. An ancient people built upon New Zealand’s forests, hillsides and lakes, and Koru Pa, outside New Plymouth, is the apotheosis of this.
Martin Doutré recognises that Koru Pa was once not only a fortress, but also a temple. Its grooved stone altars and ley lines are still visible today. “You’ve got Mt Taranaki (from the Gaelic god of thunder and lightning, Taranaich) which gives the holy water which runs past the pa, and you’ve got your bullauns (cups) to drink from.” From the Wairarapa to Taranaki to Northland, the land is full of clues.
“Often what we mistake for kumara pits are actually sighting pits. You sit down and you’ve got alignments to other areas, because the ancient people were into land mapping and surveying. In fact a Ngati Kuri kaumatua talked about his ancestors coming to New Zealand in 700AD – not 1350 – and encountering a people called the Surveyors who worked on top of hills, lining up angles and surveying.”
Doutré wrote the seminal book Ancient Celtic New Zealand over 10 years ago, but he can’t wait to update it, as new evidence is surfacing every year. “I could now tell you the whole mathematical system with which the Celts navigated to New Zealand,” he says. Ancient Celtic New Zealand describes in impressive detail how henges (think Stonehenge, Avebury Henge and Woodhenge) were built in New Zealand thousands of years ago. These roofless observatories were training for the great voyage to New Zealand, which would involve months at sea measuring one’s course with the sun and the horizon. We can still see glimpses of mathematical code in Maori koru and moko.
One legend has it that the navigator Kupe couldn’t land at the Coromandel because there were so many nations here, including the ancestors of the Waitaha.
Many believe the Celts had fled here from warfare, because they built so many fortifications – in New Zealand we have an unbelievable number of pa: 10,000! New Zealand was at first a peaceful refuge, which is why so many gardening implements have been discovered by archaeologists. Perhaps, then, the next settlers found these pacifists easy to conquer.
But let’s move further south, firstly to Ngaroto lake, near Te Awamutu. It’s here that Jill Johnston, who we introduced last issue, believes she’s found evidence of a Celtic island-fort, or crannog. Johnston’s been reconsidering the world around her: “My mission is that I just want the truth, whatever that is.” She’s been finding clues in out of print books which contain first hand testimony from those who appear to have encountered strange races in pre-colonial New Zealand. Although the Polynesian Society placed a 50 year embargo against the reprinting of some key texts which didn't fit in with convention, Johnston says “At least these books are safe with me. The first book I bought, by Joel Polack, just blew me away. People like Captain Cook, Julius von Haast and Alfred K Newman mentioned people that were here before the Maori. They use the names Patupaiarehe and Turehu to describe them.” This was a time when it was thought Maori were a dying race, and so Europeans scrambled to record their lore, which frequently contained tales which would blow the minds of 21st century readers.
“I've got different eyes now, when I look at the landscape,” she says. Ngaroto is where Johnston had been led to. In 1964, Wilfred Shawcross carried out an archaeological dig here, following the discovery of a dugout canoe, as well as a mysterious, gigantic carving which today is called Uenuku, which strangely resembles both a Hawaiian carving and the Egyptian Eye of Horus. Shawcross also discovered – submerged in the lake – steps, timber, and earthworks contributing to island fortresses closely resembling Irish crannogs. These were constructed of crisscrossing logs packed with earth and stone and accessed by submerged causeways. The Waipa District Council currently attributes Ngaroto’s island pa/fortress to Ngati Apakura, who indisputably occupied the site when encountered in 1864. However, the work of archaeologist Leslie Adkin throws Ngati Apakura's ownership into disrepute.
Adkin was a ground-breaking archaeologist who, over 50 years, published 53 scientific papers and four books, proving among other things that human beings had occupied the shifting Horowhenua coast as far back as 300BC, and that they had been responsible for building canals and causeways and leaving behind stone clubs. His work was done just before the New Zealand Archaeological Association issued an edict discouraging amateur archaeological digs and the hoarding of artefacts, which ended the 'golden age of New Zealand archaeology'. Much like Shawcross, Adkin investigated ancient prototype crannogs in Lake Horowhenua, the design of which were later copied by the Muaupoko people.
The circle of reeds in the centre of Ngaroto likely indicates a now-submerged fortress. Johnston’s theory is that the Celts were attracted here for food and peat. “The crannogs were built to be something a bit like home – wherever home was.” Her theory is that there may be steps hidden under the water which, if examined, will show that the crannog was not built by Maori. The shore is now pasture and swamp, as human beings have changed the lake over hundreds and hundreds of years, which is something of which Jill's ancestors were a part. “My mum's dad comes from that Kakepuku area,” she tells me. “One day he was ploughing a field and found a skeleton – buried sitting up, which is a Celtic style burial.”
Bizarre skeletons have been found in all sorts of places, though. Down the road at Port Waikato, the skeletons of giants were discovered by a roading crew in the 1960s. Historical anomalies in New Zealand are incredibly widespread, and that’s what elocal will be delving into in the five part series that is In Search Of Our Tangata Whenua.

Next issue
We’ll consider evidence that Greek and Phoenician peoples were active in New Zealand, and we’ll delve into the cave at the north end of Lake Taupo where evidence of human occupation was found beneath 2000 years of soil and volcanic rock. Until next time, remember to second guess everything that’s been taught to you about New Zealand history, and remember what Martin Doutré taught us: 'Those who control the past, control the present and the future.' Email elocal with any finds you may have editorial@elocal.co.nz