Maori of course have whakapapa that provide that link in their identity, but when that goes together nicely with the scientific evidence, there's almost a relief." At the centre of a new study by Matisoo-Smith, awarded a $767,000 grant by the Marsden Fund, are 42 individual samples of koiwi tangata, or human remains, that came from the bar. This led to her a collection of human remains in a South American museum, and the skulls instantly struck her as Polynesian. It was, however, a region somewhere in Central East Polynesia, an area that matched up with artefacts found at the Wairau Bar. "We often tend to just gloss migration back to a single point in the past and a point today, whereas I think most human history is much more complicated than that."

Source: New Zealand Herald June 28, 2016 17:03 UTC