Gary Cook and Tom Brown: The Secret Land - The People Before

(Stoneprint $29.90)

Review: Gilbert Wong

Alongside conventional archaeology and anthropology there has long been a parallel interest in the idea that Maori were not the first people to set foot in this country.

Cook, whose degree comes from an institution called the Open International University of Complementary Medicine, heads an organisation called the Integrity Research Foundation.

The high-sounding titles are an attempt to give credence to what is fringe science.

This book collects writings from before 1920 - from contributors to The Transactions and Proceedings of the New Zealand Institute and The Journal of the Polynesian Society - selected to bolster the case of an earlier people, sometimes called the Waitaha, or fairy people.

Few would call what is contained here a smoking gun. More fuel for the fringe theorists.