Lead: Inevitably, the ever-expanding European colonial enterprise discovered Zeelandia Nova, but when Dutch arrived in New Zealand in 1642 they found a well- established culture already there.
Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.
Content: New Zealand, rugged, rich, wildly beautiful, hidden behind a vast oceanic barrier, was the final large land mass colonized by the human race. It is estimated that not until about AD 800 did Polynesian explorers, probably manning large capacity outrigger canoes, find their way to the northern of New Zealand’s two major islands, so remote that it is 1000 miles southeast from the closest part of Australia. Their arrival was the culmination of one of humanity’s greatest colonial expansions. Out from the East Asian land mass into the southern Pacific archepelago these Austronesian-speaking colonists exploded. 2000 years before the Vikings ranged west to North America, Indonesia, New Guinea, Tonga, Fiji, Rarotonga, and Tahiti were prosperous outposts of this eastern expansion. Finally, wheeling southwest they came to New Zealand.
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