According to the tradition of some tribes, carving was invented by Rauru, the son of a remote ancestor named Toi. Others say that an ancestor named Rua, after defeating the Ponaturi, a people who lived under the sea, brought back the carved slabs from the Ponaturi meeting house and used them as patterns for the first Maori carved house. European students have suggested many origins, including Melanesia, Peru, and India. The fact that Maori carving differs from that of tropical Polynesia has given rise to many theories. There is little doubt, however, that the basic patterns came with the Maori from Polynesia. With the exception of Samoa and Niue, carved representations of humans were reasonably common in all of the larger Polynesian islands. Only one figure is known from Samoa, and that may be of Tongan origin. Tongan carved figures are naturalistic, with a pointed chin, the arms normally extended down the sides, and the knees bent. The same pointed chin occurs in the Society Group, the Austral Islands, and some of the Cook Islands. But throughout Eastern Polynesia there is a tendency towards a more grotesque, stylised figure. There is a strong family resemblance among the carved figures of Hawai'i, the Marquesas, and New Zealand. Gilbert Archey has shown that the very common arrangement found in Maori carving (a full-faced relief figure flanked by figures in profile) is also found in Rarotonga.
It is apparent that Maori carving has developed greatly since the first Polynesians came to New Zealand. The earliest settlers probably brought with them a fairly simple set of basic designs and a small range of largely geometrical surface patterns with straight lines rather than the curvilinear patterns almost universally used when the Europeans first arrived. Archaeologists, particularly in the South Island, have recovered a number of archaic objects decorated with rectilinear patterns or simple notching similar to those found in many parts of tropical Polynesia. At the same time, the Maoris were not the only Polynesians to use spirals and other curvilinear patterns.
