A skull found on the banks of a river near Wellington has turned out to be that of a European woman who died more than 260 years ago — a finding that has raised serious doubt whether Captain James Cook was the first westerner to step foot on the shores of New Zealand in 1769.
The discovery was made by a boy walking his dog four years back on the banks of a river in Wairarapa region of the North Island, an area settled by Europeans only after the establishment of a colony by the New Zealand Company in 1840. “It’s a real mystery, it really is. We have got the problem of how did this woman get here?
“Who was she? I recommended they do carbon date on it and of course they came up with that amazing result,” British newspaper the Daily Telegraph quoted Robin Watt, a Forensic Anthropologist who was called in by police who probed the discovery, as saying.
John Kershaw, the local coroner, said police at first thought they had a murder inquiry on their hands. “One of the reasons some work was done on the skull was because it had a number of puncture wounds. We don’t know how this lady met her death, although the historian we used indicated drowning was a reasonable guess. This (examination) suggests that the deceased may have been alive somewhere in the South Wairarapa in or about 1742,” Kershaw said.
The inquest also heard recently that the skull was definitely not Maori — the only race known to have inhabited New Zealand in the 18th century — and almost certainly of European origin. (Canberra Times)
