Māori ancestors first arrived in Aotearoa New Zealand in the late 1200s, with most scholars now placing initial settlement around 1250–1300 CE.

Quick Scoop: When did Māori arrive in NZ?

Most historians and archaeologists agree that:

  • The first Polynesian settlers reached Aotearoa from East Polynesia roughly 1250–1300 CE.
  • A major period of settlement likely continued into the 1300s, with many iwi tracing their whakapapa to ancestral waka arriving around about the mid‑14th century.
  • A recent synthesis of archaeological and genetic evidence suggests that, while there might have been earlier exploratory visits, the main, sustained settlement phase was in the decades after about 1320–1350.

Put simply: people had been living in places like Europe for thousands of years by then, but human settlement in Aotearoa is comparatively recent, beginning only about 700–800 years ago.

Traditions vs science

Māori oral traditions kōrero about ancestral waka migrating from Hawaiki (an ancestral Polynesian homeland) in a series of planned voyages, not a single one‑off trip.

Modern dating methods (like radiocarbon analysis of early sites, food remains, and moa bones) line up well with these traditions, converging on that 13th–14th century window for first and main settlement.

Many iwi place the arrival of their founding waka around “about 1350”, which has become a common touch‑point in popular histories of Aotearoa.

Why you sometimes see different dates

If you browse forums or older books, you might see:

  • Very early dates (like over 1000 years ago): these tend to reflect outdated theories that have been revised as better evidence came in.
  • Slightly different ranges, like “1200–1400 CE”: that’s because different studies emphasize different lines of evidence, but they still cluster in the late 1200s and 1300s.

Today’s best‑supported view in mainstream scholarship is that Polynesian voyagers became the first permanent human inhabitants of Aotearoa between about 1250 and 1300 CE, with large, planned migrations continuing into the 14th century.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.