Archaeologists: Canoe Find Is 'Holy Grail Stuff'

A father-son duo on Chatham Island, 500 miles east of New Zealand, stumbled upon a find so rare, archaeologists describe it as "holy grail stuff." Vincent Dix and his son Nikau initially planned to build a coffee table from planks of wood found flowing out of a washed-out creek last winter—until they spotted a carved piece that made them change their minds. The planks turned out to be the remains of a traditional Polynesian oceangoing canoe, or "waka." "We can't overstate how incredible it is," lead archaeologist Justin Maxwell tells the Guardian. "Normally, when waka have been found ... you find very small parts of them. With this one, we have hundreds of components ... and a wide range of materials."

There are more than 450 pieces of this waka, including a 16-foot-long plank with holes for lashings; smaller planks with embedded discs of obsidian, pieces of iridescent abalone, or paua shell used as decoration; and the remains of rope and woven material, likely part of a sail. "And there's so much more down there," Vincent Dix tells Radio New Zealand, noting the site has been "closed up" temporarily until more excavation can be done. The artifacts are now stored in water tanks on the Dix family's property on Chatham Island's northern coast. Dix says initial tests on three pieces of timber show they came from trees native to New Zealand.

Maui Solomon, chair of the Moriori Imi Settlement Trust, is convinced this is an "ancestral waka" that carried the Moriori from mainland New Zealand to the Chatham Islands around AD1500. No matter the age, Maxwell expects the find to reveal new insights about Polynesian boatbuilding, seafaring, and trade. "It's by far the most important discovery in New Zealand, possibly Polynesian archaeology, and it will go down as one of the most important finds of all time in Polynesia," says the archaeologist, who's received permission to take samples for radiocarbon dating, per the New Zealand Herald. "There's so much story to be told and we haven't even scratched the surface yet." (More discoveries stories.)