Page 59 - New Zealand: Natural Wonders North & South

New Zealand’s history is divided into two distinct phases: Pre-European settlement by the
Maori and their ancestors, and European settlement from the 18th century onward.

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Islands. Their landing on the beaches of the North Island in about 1300 A.D. signaled the end
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cool temperate rain forests, snow-frosted mountain peaks, aquamarine lakes, and spurting
geysers composed a landscape the likes of which they had never seen on their tropical South
;LNTʭN T^WP^

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brought from their homelands, like kumara (sweet potato) and yams, were planted to augment
this easy supply of food. Over time, as the moa population dwindled, farming took on a more
important role. Since the crops would not grow in the cooler southern areas, the emerging
Maori culture settled predominantly in the warmer North Island and began a “golden age” of
agricultural settlement.

Villages sprang up, often with a central marae (village common) and elaborately carved whare
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and priests were employed by a people who no longer had to spend all their time hunting
and gathering food. But as the population increased, so too did the desire for good farmland.
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warriors.

Though Abel Tasman, a Dutch navigator working for the Dutch East India Company, was the
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broke out that left four of the Dutch crew dead, and as a result Tasman set sail and never
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Landt. An unknown Dutch cartographer back in Holland later changed this to Nieuw Zeeland
(or Nova Zeelandia in Latin) after the Dutch maritime province of Zeeland.

European Settlement

For over a century New Zealand was largely left alone by explorers. Then, between 1769 and
1777, British Captain James Cook made three voyages to the islands aboard the Endeavour.
Eventually, Cook was successful in navigating and charting the coastlines of New Zealand’s
North and South Islands. While he met with some initial hostility from the islands’ residents,
Cook was able to forge a peaceful relationship with the Maori—but he soon claimed the
islands for the British Crown without their consent.

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the land’s natural resources. Sealers ruthlessly plundered the thriving seal colonies in the
waters around the South Island and practically decimated the entire seal population by 1802.

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