Wet Auckland Anniversary Day, Archaeology 100 Years Ago

 

I typed 'Rock Art' into Papers Past. No much there but a 1910 story about pre-Maori inscriptions and megaliths in the Bay of Islands.  The claimant was one Clement Wragge. Typing in his name into Papers Past got a deluge of reports. The 1910 story was much reprinted in the provincial papers and there were even a couple of articles of refutation.

 

Here is one of the articles and the three others doubting the story.

 

http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast?a=d&cl=search&d=EP19100307.2.70&srpos=16&e=-------100--1----0clement+wragge+ancient-all

 

http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast?a=d&cl=search&d=EP19100416.2.140&srpos=5&e=-------10--1----2%22rock+art%22-all

 

http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast?a=d&cl=search&d=PBH19100326.2.5&srpos=23&e=-------100--1----0clement+wragge+ancient-all

 

http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast?a=d&cl=search&d=EP19100307.2.70&srpos=16&e=-------100--1----0clement+wragge+ancient-all

 

 

What did he think he had found? Here is one of the longer accounts.

 

INTERESTING DISCOVERY.

AN ANCIENT CITY OR TEMPLE. Auckland, March 7.

Mr Clement L. Wragge, the well known meteorologist, who has been lecturing - and doing some exploring work in the far North, claims to have discovered in the neighbourhood of the Bay of Islands the remains of an ancient city or temple that probably elates back to the time of sun worship. He says : "The huge blocks of stone, some nearly 15 feet long, were evidently hewn by prehistoric man. Some have cups or holes scooped out on the face, which are evidently written records of immense . antiquity, and others are marked with long and sort strokes, one being an ansated (looped) cross." Mr Wragge has taken a series of photographs of this weird place, which is probably unique in New Zealand, probably, he says, dating back to the megalithic track of ancient man, when he was forced by a change of climate to migrate from the northern to the southern hemisphere.

 

Later. In a further interview to-day Mr Wragge said his discovery linked New Zealand to the dim and distant past, long before the Maori, long before the Aryan, to the days of prehistoric man, when scientists presumed man was a giant, perhaps eight feet high. These rocks go back probably five hundred thousand years, and are most: likely a great deal older. "I consider they refer to sun worship,"' he said. "They are probably, most probably, connected with that continent that once doubtless existed in the western Pacific called Lemuria, and in order to emphasise my discovery, I .have provisionally called the spot Lemurion. They date back most likely to the time when, in the vast ages past, owing to the secular shifts in the inclination of the earth's axis, prehistoric man was forced to migrate from the higher latitude of the northern, hemisphere, following a track from the north-west to the southern hemisphere, which had then in its turn become more genial." Mr Wragge explained the phenomenon which is referred to. It showed that once one grasped the theory of axial shift, the history of the earth, was an open book. It explained the coal measures found by Lieutenant Shackleton at the South Polar regions; the" evidences of a former tropical vegetation found by Commander Peary at the North Pole. Countless ages ago the axis of the earth was horizontal, the North Pole pointing direct to the sun, and gradually the axis has shifted till it reached its present cant and it was during this change that the climates changed, and the race that inhabited the northern hemisphere, a megalithic race, travelled down to the southern hemisphere, the climate of which was becoming milder, just, in proportion as the north was growing colder. This migration had left many traces in its track, and it was considered that they culminate in the wonderful monoliths of Easter Island, which had been a source of speculation for years past. "These rocks which I have discovered are probably connected with the monoliths of Easter Island. I prefer not to say any more just at present as to the locality in which they are, except that I had to get a special sailing boat to reach it. It is absurd to tell me that they are the result of accident, or that they were geologically formed as we see them there; They are to my mind undoubted marks, showing that they are the work of man, and in some of them you can plainly see the chisel marks."

 

Apart from that story there was a lot by Mr Wragge on science and meteorology in Papers Past.

 

Clearly his archaeology was no better than his understanding of the physics as applicable to planetary bodies, which was pretty well known by 1910.

 

Wragge I thought, I know that name.  It turns out he was Queensland Meteorologist who named the huge Mahina hurricane of 1899 that nearly claimed the lives of the grandparents of Miranda, my wife.  See: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storms/news/article.cfm?c_id=328&objectid=10539503&pnum=1   It did kill hundreds in northern Queensland.

 

He is quite famous in Australia as the pioneer of its meteorological observations.

See:

http://adbonline.anu.edu.au/biogs/A120646b.htm

 and

http://www.austehc.unimelb.edu.au/fam/0824.html

and

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clement_Lindley_Wragge

 

From 1910 he lived at No. 8 Awanui Street Birkenhead in Auckland with a Indian partner – who was apparently not his wife. He was the creator of a tropical garden there – apart from his continuing scientific lectures via the Wragge Institute and Museum. He was also a leading spiritualist.

 

Not forgotten there: http://www.historicbirkenhead.com/membersstories72.htm

 

 

He died there in 1922.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Saturday, January 30, 2010