Maori migration reaches New Zealand

1200

Polynesian voyagers, sailing great double-hulled canoes along patterns of stars and ocean swells, made landfall on the uninhabited islands they would call Aotearoa. Their moa-hunting descendants would transform the isolated archipelago into the southernmost outpost of Polynesian civilization. The giant flightless birds they found had never encountered a predator and vanished within centuries of their arrival.