TRADITIONAL TREASURES PART II
The two large islands of this southern land were the last habitable place on earth to be settled. Human expansion into the Pacific took place over several millennia. The oldest settlement sites in outer Melanesia (Vanuatu, Fiji etc.) date to 1,200BC, and in Polynesia (Tonga) to before 1,100BC.
Māori settlement of New Zealand – and later the more remote Chatham and sub-Antarctic Auckland islands – was founded on repeated journeys to and from an ancestral homeland, Hawaiiki, somewhere in Eastern Polynesia, possibly the Marquesas Islands. There could also have been influences on Aotearoa from Western Polynesia – the distinctive poi dance, and the name for owls (ruru) may have come from there.
In Aotearoa, Māori largely gave up on dual, lashed-together voyaging canoes driven by Oceanic lateen sails, in favour of paddle-powered, intricately-carved waka. The
