The First Migration

Thousands of years ago, migrants from South China began the journey that took their descendants through the Pacific to the southernmost islands of Polynesia. Atholl Anderson's ground-breaking synthesis of research and tradition charts this epic journey of New Zealand's first human inhabitants.

Derived from the multi-award-winning Tangata Whenua: An Illustrated History, this text weaves together evidence from numerous sources: oral traditions, archaeology, genetics, linguistics, ethnography, historical observations, palaeoecology, climate change, and more.

The result is to people the ancient past, offering readers a sense of the lives of Maori ancestors as they voyaged through centuries toward the South Pacific.