Ancient Rock-Drawings
p. 54 · Read in the full issue
In Southern NZ Caves
ANCIENT rock-drawings of known animals and of what look like fabu lous creatures of the imagination have recently been found in lonely caves of the South Island by a young Dutch painter Theo Schoon.
Carrying his tent and camping gear, Schoon has spent the past few months in a one-man investigation of primitive art in New Zealand.
Moving slowly down the east coast of the South Island, he has made discoveries in Marlborough, Canterbury, and Otago Provinces—among them caves with floors strewn with the bones of the extinct moa, and walls covered with drawings, some of them nine feet long.
Local experts have not yet seen all Schoon’s finds, but he says these ancient pictures show a high degree of skill.
Schoon has now traversed the whole length of the island, and the other day in Southland he announced that he had found more drawings.
No one has yet estimated the age of' these cave-pictures or made a pronounce ment, on who the ancient artists were, but they may have been Morioris— dwellers in New Zealand before the Maoris came from Polynesia, and who now survive only on the Chathams a small, bleak group eastward of NZ.