A controversial new book entitled To the End of the Earth claims to contain evidence that Greeks, Spanish and Egyptians settled in New Zealand before the Maoris.
The 378-page title published in the United States, co-authored by three American researchers, includes maps drawn before the birth of Christ which the authors’ maintain, accurately depict the coastlines of Australia and New Zealand.
If correct, Captain James Cook and Abel Tasman will forfeit their place in history as the first Europeans to reach New Zealand.
Skeletons, rock carvings, ancient buildings and monuments allegedly attest to people of European origin living in New Zealand for centuries before the arrival of Polynesians, according to the authors.
The artefacts include a rock carving of a what the authors say is an ancient Greek ship found in Taupo, and a stone pillar with an accurate coastal map of New Zealand.
The book claims that Maui – the hero deity of Polynesian mythology was not the legendary Maori god-explorer, but instead an Egyptian naval navigator who steered a flotilla of Greek ships under the flag of Ptolemy III in 232BC to discover new shores.
A cave inscription in Chile is also suggested as evidence to show the Maori god-explorer was an Egyptian.
Academic historians in the US have distanced themselves from the book’s ‘findings’, arguing that none of Ptolemy’s known maps suggest any knowledge of the South Pacific.