The First Migration by Atholl Anderson

The First Migration: Māori Origins 3000BC – AD1450 by Atholl Anderson

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.

Taken 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: to offer readers a sense of the lives of Māori ancestors as they voyaged through centuries toward the South Pacific.

BWB Texts are short books on big subjects by great New Zealand writers. Spanning contemporary issues, history and memoir, new BWB Texts are released regularly, and the series now amounts to well over fifty works.

Paperback, 164 pages, published May 2016.