Our treasures: History goes round in circles

Keswick Stone Circle is one of about 1300 stones circles located across the British Isles and Brittany. Photo / Supplied

Sailing boats, stones and moa bones

During my wanderings in Europe this Northern summer, I found myself musing on the development of societies in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. I was particularly interested in the correlation between the development in the United Kingdom and the Pacific.

When I visited Keswick in Cumbria, northwest England, I explored the amazing Castlerigg Stone Circle.

All over the British Isles and Brittany in Northern France, about 1300 stones circles have been located.

These circles are believed to have been places of gathering and worship for megalithic people up to 5000 years ago.

Of the many I have seen Castlerigg is my favourite.

Located on high ground and surrounded brooding hills the stone circle exudes a remarkable presence.

The builders of this edifice knew how to set the stage to impress.

Even at this early time there was much cross fertilisation of people, cultures and development across Europe.

Meanwhile, across the other side of the world, in what is now Southeast Asia, the people of the Lapita culture had developed great skills in navigation and had started to explore eastward across the Pacific. As they journeyed from island to island, over thousands of years, they took their language, culture and designs with them.

The early Lapita clay pots were covered in patterns similar to the tattoos on some present day Polynesian people.

Such was the navigational skills of these explorers they accurately sailed far and wide and returned home to the islands from whence they came. With the development of DNA testing, the origins of the Polynesians have been confirmed. Over the thousands of years, on scattered Pacific islands, they encountered very few other cultures.

In the south of the Pacific lay a country covered in rich forest and colonised by birds, reptiles and insects.

In a harbour, not yet to be named Whangarei, a profusion of birdsong filled the air.

Many species of the large moa roamed the environment and just inland the ancestors of the bush moa, whose skeleton we hold in the Whangarei Museum, peacefully lived out their life spans.

Unaware of an invading species from the Southern and Northern Hemisphere, Aotearoa-New Zealand lay basking in its unspoiled beauty.

• Kiwi North (Whangarei Museum, Kiwi North and Heritage Park) is open daily from 10am to 4pm.