Note 41 — Chapter I · The Stone Age: its Duration and its Place in Time.

In the Corrio Mountains in New Zealand, at a height of nearly 4,921 feet above the sea-level, have been found flints shaped by the hand of man, associated with a number of bones of the Dinornis, the largest known bird. Other facts bear witness to an extinct civilization, which we believe to have been extremely ancient, but to which, in the present state of our knowledge, it is impossible to assign a date. In the island of Tonga-Taboo, one of the Friendly group, is a remarkable megalith, the base of which rests on uprights thirty feet high, and supports a colossal stone bowl which is no less than thirteen feet in diameter by one in height. In the same island is a trilithon consisting of a transverse bar resting on two pillars provided with mortises for its reception. The pillars weigh sixty-five tons, and a local tradition affirms that the coralline conglomerate out of which they were hewn was brought from Wallis Island, more than a thousand miles off. It is difficult to explain41 how the makers of this trilithon managed to transport, to work, and to place such masses in position. In a neighboring island a circle of uplifted stones, covering an area of several hundred yards, reminds us of the cromlechs of Brittany. The so-called Burial-Mound of Oberea at Otaheite, if it really was constructed with stone tools, is yet more curious. Imagine a pyramid of which the base is a long square, two hundred and sixty feet long by eighty-seven wide. It is forty-three feet high. The top is reached by a flight of steps cut in the coralline rock, all these steps being of the same size and perfectly squared and polished.42