The Maoris

     My! I am drowning in historical waters as deep as the Mariana Trench in the Pacific, which is the deepest water in the world. From Canada, Ross Wilcock (who may be of Scottish origin) sends a very long message in support of George Sassoon of which I can reproduce only a part. He says:
     "I sat with a fascinating New Zealand Maori lady on a leg from Toronto to London last year. We were both on the way to '99 The Hague Peace Conference, and we enjoyed a fascinating conversation.
     She said she was one of the most ancient New Zealand (fair skinned) Maoris who, she said, have been in NZ for some thousands of years. She said the memory of her people remembers connections with the Pyramids and 'The Land of 2 Rivers.' "
     The rest of the message is about the prehistoric spread of the Celts around the world, and their relationship with the Chechens in the Caucasus. We get here into the history of anthropology. Basque is of mysterious origin and was spoken presumably by the CeltIberians of Iberia (prehistoric Spain). Philologists have related it to Georgian. In Tbilisi I stayed in the Hotel Iberia, which is also a Georgian name. I spoke to a member of the Georgian Academy of Sciences who specializes in the subject, and he dismissed the theory of a relationship with the CeltIberians. I don't know.
     Ross does not recall that the Maori lady mentioned the Celts, but she was clearly referring to what Michael Bassett calls "whakapapa", which presumably includes a lot of fiction. There have been reports of a fair-haired people like the Celts in pre-Colombian South America, but I have never seen convincing evidence. In the nineteenth century all kinds of stories about races such as the Aryans were circulating. Now the dominant theory is that man originated in Africa, but a few specialists claim it was China. The evidence is so fragmentary that I view all of these theories as tentative, which is what theories are.
     Ross refers to the Chechen colleague with whom he is in touch and wonders if he could be invited to join WAIS. The answer is yes, to add color to the WAIS tartan. Ross goes back to the Pyramids, which takes us into another whole area of the history of thought.

Ronald Hilton - 1/2/00