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According to oral tradition, the heroic explorer Kupe was the first discoverer of New Zealand or “Aotearoa”. In an early European synthesized interpretation of these accounts, around 750 CE he had discovered New Zealand and later, around 1350, one great fleet of settlers set out from Hawaiki in eastern Polynesia. [6]
Kupe was a legendary [1] Polynesian explorer who, according to Māori oral history, was the first person to discover New Zealand. [2] He is generally held to have been born to a father from Rarotonga and a mother from Raiatea , and probably spoke a Māori proto-language similar to Cook Islands Māori or Tahitian .
William Gilbert Rees (6 April 1827 — 31 October 1898) was an explorer, surveyor, and early settler in Central Otago, New Zealand. He and fellow explorer Nicholas von Tunzelmann were the first Europeans to settle the Wakatipu basin. Rees is regarded as the founder of Queenstown.
Captain James Cook, FRS, RN (7 November 1728 – 14 February 1779) was a British explorer, navigator, cartographer, and captain in the Royal Navy.Cook made detailed maps of Newfoundland prior to making three voyages to the Pacific Ocean, during which he achieved the first recorded European discovery of eastern Australia, Hawaii and undertook the first circumnavigation of New Zealand.
The Otago Provincial Council awarded Read £1000, having earlier advertised a £500 reward for "the discovery of a Remunerative Goldfield within the Province of Otago", even though an Indian man, Edward Peters, was the discoverer of the first workable gold field in Otago in 1858 and had two applications rejected.
Abel Tasman was the first known European explorer to reach the islands of Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania) and New Zealand, and to sight the Fiji islands. His navigator François Visscher, and his merchant Isaack Gilsemans , mapped substantial portions of Australia, New Zealand, Tonga and the Fijian islands.
Explorers of Australia included Willem Janszoon (1570–1630), who made the first recorded European landing in Australia; Yñigo Ortiz de Retez, who discovered and reached eastern and northern New Guinea; Luis Váez de Torres (1565–1613), who discovered the Torres Strait between Australia and New Guinea; Abel Tasman (1603–1659), who ...
Other books presenting such theories include The Great Divide: The Story of New Zealand & its Treaty (2012) by journalist Ian Wishart, [47] and To the Ends of the Earth by Maxwell C. Hill, Gary Cook and Noel Hilliam, which claims without evidence that New Zealand was discovered by explorers from ancient Egypt and Greece. [48] [49]