TRADITIONAL TREASURES
The safe rounding of Cape Bojador, a dangerous and previously impassable point on the coast of Africa a mere 700 nautical miles from Lisbon, by the Portuguese captain Gil Eanes and his crew in 1434 heralded the beginning of Europe’s Age of Discovery.
But on the far side of the world, human history’s greatest Age of Discovery was already over. By then Pacific Island peoples in ocean-going vaka (Māori: waka) had found and settled the last habitable places on earth. This great expansion across thousands of miles of the world’s largest ocean was completed when Aotearoa New Zealand was found and settled during or before the 13th century.
These great voyages occurred in both directions – there is ample evidence to show return voyaging from Aotearoa to other Pacific Islands, and to and from other outliers like Hawai’i and Rapanui Easter Island. The kūmara, a
