Genetic analysis identifies the missing parchment of New Zealand's founding document, the Treaty of Waitangi.

ABSTRACT: Genetic analyses provide a powerful tool with which to identify the biological components of historical objects. Te Tiriti o Waitangi | The Treaty of Waitangi is New Zealand's founding document, intended to be a partnership between the indigenous Māori and the British Crown. Here we focus on an archived piece of blank parchment that has been proposed to be the missing portion of the lower parchment of the Waitangi Sheet of the Treaty. However, its physical dimensions and characteristics are not consistent with this hypothesis. We perform genetic analyses on the parchment membranes of the Treaty, plus the blank piece of parchment. We find that all three parchments were made from ewes and that the blank parchment is highly likely to be a portion cut from the lower membrane of the Waitangi Sh

SUBMITTER: Shepherd LD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6334937 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature