Introduction

About 100,000 years ago Homo Sapiens living in Africa spread out through the Middle East. The people we want to follow went around the coast of modern India until they reached South East Asia all the way to about where Taiwan is today. From South East Asia, humans travelled by foot to the islands that may cut Malaysia and Indonesia,. It is also thought that rafts may have been used across small stretches of water - but technology wasn't quite as sophisticated as it would be when the age of voyage comes along. Those who remained were the ancestors of the Melanesians, a group closely related to Polynesians, which Māori are a part of.