By DEBORAH DIAZ
The makers of tonight's Documentary New Zealand: Who Was Here Before Us? (TV One, 8.30 pm) couldn't go wrong because they started with such a great question.
The programme canvasses a range of theories about who arrived in New Zealand first and when, from the orthodox to the downright silly.
All these stories, whether there is scientific evidence to back them up or not, make for fascinating television.
This is despite the documentary managing to tell the tales poorly. Desperate for pictures, it relies on a series of static interviews and landscape shots, strung together with a cheesy voice-over of the worst kind.
You know the type - deadly earnest, melodramatic and most commonly found on "serious" probes about UFOs.
Perhaps it's not entirely inappropriate, given that the documentary makes the most of theories held by various amateur historians and archaeologists.
Some would have New Zealand settled by ancient Celts, or by the lost Waitaha tribe who were supposedly a mixed group of Polynesians, Africans and Europeans who arrived 66 generations ago.
You can't but help admire the passion and hard work of the proponents of these theories. They are neither crazy nor stupid - they just see things in piles of rocks that the scientists do not.
And despite New Zealand's relatively short history as the last land mass in the world to be settled by humans, there's obviously a lot that is not known.
A point the documentary makes well is that there is a huge difference between theories, even plausible ones, and being able to back them up. After all, the myth that Maori arrived in a fleet of seven canoes was for years taught as fact in schools.
It's only in the past 20 years or so that archaeological, geological and DNA evidence have come together to show that the early Maori probably began to arrive in waves about 800 years ago.
The documentary throws up intriguing nuggets of scientific evidence about these early Polynesians - among them that Maori language has its origins in the hills of Taiwan, and DNA tests trace the Maori gene pool back to about 70 original female settlers.
But, of course, even science can throw up quandaries. Carbon-dating places rats on these islands 2000 years ago, yet the rodents most likely hitched a ride with ... people.
Over all, history seems to tell us that people didn't get here by accident, rather by a purposeful exploration of the Pacific by some impressive navigators.
Says the documentary's director, Mark McNeil: "One of the most interesting things for me was finding out why New Zealand was the last place in the world to be colonised by humans.
"I thought it was because we were the hardest place to reach, but in fact we were the hardest for people to get back from so they had to stay once they arrived here."
McNeil and his crew started with a great question. They've had fun with possible answers.
Theories abound - and some even make sense
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