New Zealand - Maori Culture
- Maori Haka
- Circa 1910
- F.G.R.
- Frank Duncan & Co
- Real Photo Postcard Format
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Maori
- The most current reliable evidence strongly indicates that the initial settlement of New Zealand occurred around 1280 CE, at the end of the medieval warm period. Previous dating of some kiore (Polynesian rat) bones at 50–150 has now been shown to have been unreliable; new samples of bone (and now also of unequivocally rat-gnawed woody seed cases) match the 1280 date of the earliest archaeological sites and the beginning of sustained deforestation by humans. Māori oral history describes the arrival of ancestors from Hawaiki (the mythical homeland in tropical Polynesia), in large ocean-going waka. Migration accounts vary among tribes (iwi), whose members may identify with several waka in their genealogies (whakapapa). In the last few decades, mitochondrial-DNA (mtDNA) research has allowed an estimate to be made of the number of women in the founding population—between 50 and 100.
- Evidence from archaeology, linguistics, and physical anthropology indicates that the first settlers came from east Polynesia and became the Māori. Language-evolution studies and mtDNA evidence suggest that most Pacific populations originated from Taiwanese aborigines around 5,200 years ago (suggesting prior migration from the Asian or Chinese mainland). These ancestors moved down through Southeast Asia and Indonesia.
- Analysis by Kayser et al. (2008) discovered that only 21 per cent of the Māori-Polynesian autosomal gene pool is of Melanesian origin, with the rest (79 per cent) being of East Asian origin. Another study by Friedlaender et al. (2008) also confirmed that Polynesians are closer genetically to Micronesians, Taiwanese Aborigines, and East Asians, than to Melanesians. The study concluded that Polynesians moved through Melanesia fairly rapidly, allowing only limited admixture between Austronesians and Melanesians. The Polynesian population experienced a founder effect and genetic drift.
(source - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C4%81ori_people)