Pre-Māori settlement of New Zealand theories

Since the 18th century, Europeans have been interested in the origins of human migration and the settlement of New Zealand. Captain James Cook, who arrived in 1769, believed that the Māori were Polynesian and had come from southeast Asia; however, some other early visitors speculated that they might be descended from ancient Greeks, Romans or Egyptians, and some Christian missionaries thought that the Māori ancestors belonged to the lost tribes of Israel.

During the 19th century, ideas about Aryan (or Caucasian) migrations became popular and these were applied to New Zealand. Edward Tregear's The Aryan Maori (1885) suggested that Aryans from India migrated to the southeast Asia and then to the islands of the Pacific, including New Zealand.

In the early 20th century, the Moriori people were thought to be possibly of Melanesian rather than Polynesian origin, but they are now regarded as descended from early Maori of the Archaic or Moa-hunter period.

Although modern archaeology has largely clarified questions of the origin and dates of the earliest migrations, some writers have continued to speculate that what is now New Zealand was discovered by 'Celts', Greeks or Egyptians, before the arrival of the Polynesian ancestors of the Māori.

Maori oral traditions

Maori oral traditions speak of people already living in parts of New Zealand when they arrived. They are known by various names, but most commonly as Patupaiarehe and Turehu.

Recent revivals of pre-Maori settlement theories

Martin Doutré argued in a 1999 book that New Zealand had a pre-Polynesian Celtic population, and that boulders with petroglyphs on a hill in Silverdale in Auckland are artifacts left by those people. An earlier presentation of the theory of pre-Polynesian white settlement of New Zealand was Kerry Bolton's 1987 pamphlet Lords of the Soil, which states that "Polynesia has been occupied by peoples of the Europoid race since ancient times".

Other books presenting such theories have included The Great Divide: The Story of New Zealand & its Treaty, (2012) by Ian Wishart, a journalist, and To the Ends of the Earth by Maxwell C. Hill, Gary Cook and Noel Hilliam, which claims that New Zealand was discovered by explorers from ancient Egypt and Greece.

David Rankin, a Ngāpuhi elder, has drawn attention to Maori legends suggesting that people, some of them with fair skin, were already present in the islands when the Maori arrived, and has claimed the existence of a conspiracy among academics to suppress inquiry.

Orthodox history and archaeology

Historians and archaeologists dismiss the theories. Michael King wrote in his history of New Zealand, "Despite a plethora of amateur theories about Melanesian, South American, Egyptian, Phoenician and Celtic colonisation of New Zealand, there is not a shred of evidence that the first human settlers were anything other than Polynesian", and Richard Hill, professor of New Zealand Studies at Victoria University of Wellington, said in 2012, "Not one of [the theories] has ever passed any remote academic scrutiny." Hugh Laracy of the University of Auckland called them "wild speculation" that has been "thoroughly disposed of by academic specialists".

Another historian, Vincent O'Malley, and the New Zealand Archaeological Association regard the theories as having a racist or at least a political element, seeking to cast doubt on Waitangi Tribunal claims. Scott Hamilton in "No to Nazi Pseudo-history: an Open Letter" further explains objections to the theories of Bolton and Doutré (and the website Ancient Celtic New Zealand).

Further reading

• Howe, K. (2003) The Quest for Origins - Who First Discovered and Settled New Zealand and the Pacific Islands?, Auckland: Penguin Books.

External links

• K. R. Howe. 'Ideas of Maori origins', Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 9 Nov 12, accessed 2 August 2015