Researchers studying the evolution of culture say analysis of Polynesian canoe design suggests New Zealand was at least partially settled from Hawaii.
The concept of Hawaii as the ancestral home of Maori fell out of fashion in archaeological circles over 60 years ago.
But the new research in the November Proceedings of the Royal Society B (crct) suggests a course of Polynesian settlement that started in the far western islands, jumped to the far eastern islands, then worked backwards towards the original point of origin.
Archaeologists have said the Lapita peoples -- probably from China and South East Asia -- who colonised Pacific islands between about 1400-900 BC became the Polynesians who settled several island groups outwards out of Tonga and Samoa beginning about 500 BC, arriving in the Marquesas about 300 Ad, the Hawaiian islands by 800-900 AD, and finally in New Zealand about 1200 AD.
Stanford University researcher Marcus Feldman, Deborah Rogers and Paul Erlich analysed a big 1930s study of traditional canoe design by AC Haddon and James Hornell.
They tracked functional characteristics such as outrigger attachments, construction technique, keel shape, and symbolic things such as painting, detailed designs, and figureheads of pre-European canoes from different island groups.
Canoe construction techniques persisted, with the Polynesians bringing traditional techniques but changing decorative features as they colonised new island groups. The study showed scientists could measure the effects of "cultural evolution", they said.
"Evolution is a logical way of looking at change over time," said Ms Rogers, an evolutionary biologist. The study involved computing 10 million possible configurations of canoe taxonomy and Ms Rogers said the same methods could be applied to anything from pottery design and fishhook construction to social and legal structures.
Mr Erlich said that if science can shed insight into the mechanisms underlying cultural change, it might help modern cultures turn climate change insight into action or avoid ill-advised wars.
"This is not a paper about canoes," he said: "It's a paper about whether or not there are discernable, explicable patterns in history."
