Aotearoa is settled
The last great landmass on Earth receives people
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The dating is unusually tight for a settlement: pollen, rat bones and volcanic ash layers agree on the late 13th century. Māori oral tradition tracks which waka the ancestors arrived on, and those genealogies still define iwi today. Aotearoa was far colder than the tropical islands, so tropical crops failed and the diet was rebuilt around hunting, fishing and kūmara. The moa and Haast's eagle, the largest raptor known, were gone within one or two centuries — the fastest documented megafauna loss anywhere.
For children
New Zealand was the last large landmass on Earth without people. Around 1300, Polynesian voyagers arrived in great canoes and became the Māori. They met a world without mammals, where birds had taken every role — including the moa, a bird three and a half metres tall.
Connects to
Part of Terra Saga — the story of Earth on a timeline. terrasaga.org