Notes
Isolated by wide oceans for seventy million years, the islands of New Zealand became a different world. Tangled, fern-filled forests preserved ancient plants which had disappeared elsewhere. There were no land mammals at all and no snakes, so there were many unique, ground-dwelling species of birds, some of them very large. The diversity of the landforms and climatic conditions produced a great variety of natural environments, with warm lowlands, windswept tussock grasslands, active volcanoes and harsh alpine regions.
Twelve hundred years ago, New Zealand was one of the few parts of the earth’s surface still unknown to human beings. Then it was discovered by explorers from tropical Polynesia, the ancestors of the Maori. With a series of ingenious inventions, they adjusted to the very different conditions which life in this new land offered them. They acquired a profound knowledge of their environment and many new skills necessary for their survival. Meanwhile the land shaped their thinking, and their mythology, folklore, poetry and art forms came to reflect their new environment.
