known to few Kiwis - but that could soon change
They’ve been called Aotearoa's original art galleries - they're paintings on limestone caves that are up to 1000 years old. But few Kiwis even know about them.
Deep in a leafy green gully, half an hour out of Timaru, you'll find a network of limestone caves. And if you hold your head the right way, some pictures will emerge.
"Start to look for the black pigment or red pigment. They start to appear out of the limestone canvas."
There are 760 Māori rock art sites in the South Island alone, covered in artworks painted between 500 and 1000 years ago.
"The meaning of rock art has been lost over time but the kind of things we can see are kuri, taniwha, insects, birds, all sorts of things Māori would have been seeing before Europeans arrived."
The images include extinct birds like the moa and the pouakai or Haast eagle, and in one cave, there's the pièce de résistance - an extremely rare painting of a pregnant taniwha.
Link to video and article: Aotearoa's original art galleries: Māori rock art up to 1000 years old known to few Kiwis - but that could soon change | Newshub
