Maerewhenua Maori Rock Painting Site

Arriving before sunrise, we spent the whole day exploring and enjoying the countryside

Hardly to see paintings. If it's on your way, stop by and take a look at it. On the other hand if you make a detour to see paintings it's not worth. As mentioned, you can hardly see any paintings unless you have a lot of imagination.

Underwhelming, there's so much graffiti scratched in the rock, it's hard to distinguish the Maori art, it's good they have descriptions on the board

Unfortunately is no longer worth the stairs.There has been tagging which leaves the question of what is ACTUAL painting and what is recent tagging.There are a few original paintings left, but the rock is chipping away and with it, a piece of history.

Stunning . A shame it's been defaced over the years. What is left is worth stopping for.

Totally not worth stopping even if you pass by. Go to Takiroa place instead

The Maerewhenua Historic Area is one of only a couple such sites in the South Island open to the public.This site is item number 5 on the list for cultural significance - History of New Zealand in 100 Places list.We have had international tourists from overseas doing crazy things here, showing  a complete disrespect and breaking into the protected Maori rock art site.If you educate the ignoramus about the importance of the cultural artwork, they might think twice before doing something stupid like cultural vandalism.Carbon dating shows most of the artwork were drawn between 1100AD and 1500AD.Early Europeans were originally sceptical of Māori stories and legends that told of a giant mountain eagle attacking huge  flightless (now extinct) moa birds,  carrying away small children and killing adult humans.It had a wing span of 3 metres. Its largest claws were as long as 9cm, making them as large as those of a tiger and used these tiger-claw-sized talons to kill.Its main prey would have been moa, flightless birds which grew to as much as 250kg and 2.5 metres tall.It is not surprising that such an impressive predator left its mark and  is depicted  in the art of Maori rock drawings and was on  the minds of the early Maori inhabitants of these islands.An eagle which specialised in hunting large bipeds (2 legs) may have occasionally mistaken the new human arrivals in its territory for its regular prey, especially when the primates (humans) were wearing their customary feather cloaks!With no mammals or natural predators  in New Zealand, Haast's Eagle  are examples of what scientists call “island gigantism” – a biological phenomenon where the size of an animal species isolated on an island increases dramatically in comparison to its relatives elsewhere. Other New Zealand species showing island gigantism include Takahe, Kakapō (largest living parrot) and the now-extinct Moa, Adzebill and Zealand’s native geese.The number of moa fossils show extensive damage from eagle claws. It is estimated that the combined strength of the legs, feet and claws would have meant that Haast's eagle would been able to kill a moa weighing 200 kilograms.Humans generally weigh half that size which means it  could easily kill a human! If you watch YouTube videos, birds of prey will swoop down at high speed and kill animals of a much larger size,  easily knocking prey off cliffs and letting the fall kill them.Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) is well known to have studied bird flight, few people realize that he was the first to document flight manoeuvres now called dynamic soaring. Birds use these manoeuvres to extract energy from the gradient of wind velocity (wind shear) to gain kenetic energy (hight and mass).The kinetic killing energy of present day living Golden eagles, has themsometimes attacking  large mammals; deer and pronghorns of all ages have been observed being attacked or killed by eagles. Records also exist of bighorn sheep, coyotes, bobcats, and foxes being killed.The  Haast's eagle has only been found in the South Island where their bones have been found at more than 50 sites.Early cave drawings from other ancient cultures, usually show hunter-gatherers depicting the strange animals or objects they saw in their new land.The Maerewhenua art work  depicts a variety of subjects ranging from birds and reptilian forms to drawings of European sailing ships.

Don't bother. You can't see the Maori rock art from the graffiti. So sad that people have to deface such a historic site. Just goes to prove the people that do such things are probably very closely related to primitive man.

The better of the two art sites, cool to see upgrades happening

As all the historic Maori drawing even this been destroyed by graffiti, but still you can recognize Maori drawing :-)