David Bellamy backs controversial history of NZ

Dr David Bellamy. File photo / Andrew Warner.

Acclaimed British academic, botanist and TV personality Professor Sir David Bellamy has defended a controversial book which claims to turn New Zealand history on its head.

Co-written by New Zealand pre-historians Maxwell C Hill and Gary Cook, with Dargaville shipwreck explorer Noel Hilliam, To the Ends of the Earth details evidence the authors say convinces them Greek-Egyptians and others sailed to and settled New Zealand long before the arrival of Maori.

The 378-page book shows ancient maps detailing the coastlines of Australia and New Zealand and first drawn before the birth of Christ. Skeletons, rock carvings, stone buildings and monuments and oral tradition all attest to people of European origin living here for centuries before the arrival of Polynesians, the authors say.

The artefacts include a rock carving of an ancient Greek ship found on Mt Tauhora, Taupo; a stone pillar with an accurate coastal map of New Zealand showing Lake Taupo in its pre-232AD eruption shape and intricate letter and line carvings on rocks at Raglan.

Mr Hill, who lives near Hamilton, says the most stunning find attesting to ancient Greek presence here before the birth of Christ is that of a huge boulder weighing several tonnes, deeply cut into a huge circular star calendar and marked with what are believed to be figures and rebuses (picture words).

He claims evidence shows that Maui was not the legendary Maori god-explorer but an Egyptian naval navigator who steered a flotilla of Greek ships to discover these shores.

"Proof of that is that detailed rock drawings and paintings preserved by calcite formation in caves at McCluer Bay, West Irian Jaya - and deciphered and translated by the late Professor Barry Fell of Harvard University which names Maui as the navigator of the fleet sailed from the Red Sea under the flag of Ptolemy III in 232BC."

Another cave inscription near Santiago, Chile, says this was "the southern limit of the coast reached by Maui this land the navigator claims for the king of Egypt, for his queen, and their noble son, running a course of 4000 miles, steep, mountainous, on high uplifted. August day 5, regnal year 16".

However, Professor Paul Moon, of Auckland's AUT University, has been quoted as saying that the book's authors lack credibility and questions their research and methodologies.

"Ptolemy's maps do not show New Zealand was discovered by the Greeks or Egyptians. There is no evidence at all that people came to New Zealand at this time," he says.

In an audio-visual presentation at the book's launch in Dargaville last month Professor Bellamy says as an "Aotearoa-a-holic" he was at first concerned, but after reading the book several times found it allowed him "to touch history revealed by cross staffs, astrolabes and Maui's 'taniwha"'.

"These instruments designed by scientists and hand-made by craftsmen allowed master mariners to plot their courses and map their maps before the time of Christ," he says.

In a foreword to the book he writes: "Oh, to be have been a member of those ancient crews who found that the choice bits of the Garden of Eden were already overflowing with descendants of Eve."

As to the alleged lack of evidence, Professor Bellamy says Max Hill has filled his steerage log with a collage of artefacts any museum would like to have in its keeping.

The book features interviews with two descendants of pre-Maori settlers in New Zealand.

Hori Te Manuka Manuka, who prefers to be known as George Connelly, is a Waitaha descendant carrying the ancient title of Upoko Ariki (chief of chiefs). He insists his ancestors came to New Zealand via Easter Island from Peru in 450AD.

Moriori chief Philip Ranga, meanwhile, says his people sailed to New Zealand in the waka Aotea around 1150AD, hundreds of years before the arrival of the Maori.

Photographed remains underpin assertions by Dargaville Museum curator and shipwreck explorer Noel Hilliam that both Spanish and Portuguese vessels visited these shores hundreds of years ago. Their maps are reproduced in a section contributed by pre-history researcher Ross Wiseman.

Most controversially Mr Hill asserts that far from arriving on a canoe, the Tainui people reached Waikato shores in the 1500s after being rescued at sea near Hao Atoll and transported to Raglan harbour by a Spanish ship.

He maintains the tribe's prized taonga 'Urenuku', far from accompanying them on a voyage to New Zealand, is actually a sacred Waitaha manuka post that once stood proclaiming that the Waikato River belonged to Waitaha.