A waka, a 600 year voyaging canoe, was recently found on the New Zealand’s South Island’s West Coast.  The results of a study by University of Auckland researchers appeared recently in the US Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.   The waka, built in New Zealand of matai, an indigenous pine, has direct ties by design and distinctive carvings to the peoples of Eastern Polynesia. Carbon dating showed that the vessel was last caulked with bark around 1400.  As reported in Stuff.co.nz:  The newly described canoe seems to represent a mix of that ancestral plank technology and an adaptation to the new resources on New Zealand, since the boat has some big, hollowed-out portions but also sophisticated internal ribs, Johns and colleagues wrote.

The turtle carving on the boat also seems to link back to the settlers’ homeland.  Turtle designs are rare in pre-European carvings in New Zealand, but widespread in Polynesia, where turtles were important in mythology and could represent humans or even gods in artwork….  The canoe shares some design elements with a canoe found about 30 years ago on Huahine in the Society Islands.