Data confirms Maori first

CARYS MONTEATH/The Press

EVIDENCE: rat bones and seeds have helped Landcare Research scientist Dr Janet Wilmshurst confirm that humans arrived in New Zealand around 1280-1300 AD.

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A re-examination of the age of Pacific rat bones and rat-gnawed native seeds provides "overwhelming evidence" that New Zealand's first Maori arrived in the late 13th century, scientists say.

Research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences yesterday discounts work that others may have visited New Zealand as far back as 2000 years ago.

Landcare Research scientist Dr Janet Wilmshurst led the four-year study, which used radiocarbon dating of rat bones and gnawed seeds to determine their arrival date of between 1280 and 1300.

"As the Pacific rat, or kiore, cannot swim very far, it can only have arrived in New Zealand with people on board their canoes, either as cargo or stowaways. Therefore, the earliest evidence of the Pacific rat in New Zealand must indicate the arrival of people," she said.

Researchers had re-excavated and redated bones from sites in North Canterbury, North Otago and north-west Nelson, and in all cases the bones were no older than from 1280.

That supported ecological and archaeological evidence for the same dates, she said.

"We are not saying that Maori arrived at any different time than we believed, but we are confirming that Maori were the first people to settle New Zealand. There wasn't this other group that arrived in 200BC," Wilmshurst said.

A controversial 1996 paper in Nature by University of Canterbury researcher Dr Richard Holdaway had concluded that rats had been established across New Zealand nearly 2000 years ago by transient visitors who either left immediately or quickly died out.