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Who are the Maori?


The most current reliable evidence strongly indicates that initial settlement of New Zealand occurred around 1280 CE at the end of the medieval warm period. Previous dating of some Kiore (Polynesian rat) bones at 50â€"150 CE has now been shown to have been unreliable; new samples of bone (and now also of unequivocally rat-gnawed woody seed cases) match the 1280 date of the earliest archaeological sites and the beginning of sustained deforestation by humans.[15]

Māori oral history describes the arrival of ancestors from Hawaiki, (the mythical homeland in tropical Polynesia), in large ocean-going waka. Migration accounts vary among tribes (iwi), whose members may identify with several waka in their genealogies (whakapapa). There is limited evidence of return, or attempted return voyages, from archaeological evidence in the Kermadec Islands.
No credible evidence exists of human settlement in New Zealand prior to the Polynesian voyagers. Compelling evidence from archaeology, linguistics, and physical anthropology indicates that the first settlers came from east Polynesia and became the Māori. Language evolution studies[16] and mitochondrial DNA evidence[17] suggest that most Pacific populations originated from Taiwanese aborigines around 5,200 years ago (suggesting prior to migration from the Asian or Chinese mainland),[18] moving down through Southeast Asia and Indonesia.[19]


reference: wikipedia.com

The Origins of the Maori People