Ancient Whispers

Ancient Whispers

This pendant is made of mammoth ivory and kauri wood. Believe it or not, the wood in this piece was from a tree that had been buried for 25,000 years before this mammoth was even born.

Ancient Kauri were massive trees that were felled during the last ice age and covered over in peat bogs. Carbon dating has put these trees between 30,000 and 50,000 years old. But the wood is perfectly preserved. It has not fosilized, petrified, or mineralized in any way. Finely polished, this wood glows from within. Moving it in the light causes the rays and flecks in the grain to shimmer and shift, looking more like a gem then wood.

Found only in New Zealand, the Kauri tree still exists today. The Waipoua Forest is watched over by Tane Mahuta. Named after the Maori forest god, this tree is over 160 feet tall and 50 feet in circumference. This is one of the few giants remaining of the once 3,000,000 acre forest of giants. As recently as a few hundred years ago the Haast's Eagle, the worlds largest eagle, inhabited this majestic region and preyed upon the flightless, nine foot tall moa bird.

When the Maori people first arrived in New Zealand, they found a landscape very different from their polynesian homelands. They became one with the spirits of the place as they understood the relationship between the spiritual and physical worlds. With reverence they built their meeting houses, shrines, and great canoes from Kauri timber. The resin of the tree was used in making the dye of the spiritually symbolic Maori tattoos. Yet the Maori have called Aotearoa home for only 1000 years. The ancient Kauri trees being unearthed today have been resting since the time when man first migrated out of Africa. What spirits once roamed among them? Do they still call the remaining forests home? Perhaps we can hear them in the whispers of the ancients.