Chapter Graphic :Non - Fiction Reading Passages
Band 5
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Non - Fiction Band 5
Title: Taonga Mäori,
Author: National Museum of NZ, Publisher:Australian Museum, Sydney: 1989.

Introduction:

This passage is from the introduction to the book Taonga Mäori. The book is about the art treasures of the New Zealand Mäori and the introduction outlines the history of the Mäori people.

Text:

The Mäori people are Polynesians, closely related to the inhabitants of other islands of the central and eastern Pacific. About 3,500 years ago skilled navigators with ocean-going canoes sailed into the central Pacific from the west. Those who settled in the islands of Samoa and Tonga developed features of language, culture and society which were distinctively Polynesian. These were carried by their descendants to all parts of the Polynesian triangle, which stretches from New Zealand to Hawaii and Easter Island.

Aotearoa (New Zealand) was one of the last land masses to be discovered by humans. Its long isolation had resulted in many unusual features of plant and animal life. The only land mammals were two small bats.

 

 

In the absence of animal predators, many species of flightless birds, some very large, had evolved. When the Polynesians arrived, the country was covered in forest, birds were extraordinarily abundant, and sea mammals, particularly fur seals, were very numerous around the coast.

About 1,000 years ago, the first Polynesian explorers set foot on Aotearoa. They were probably the first of many colonising expeditions from the region that includes the Cook and Society Islands. The Polynesians who discovered Aotearoa were descended from people who had lived for generations on small tropical islands. They were fishermen and gardeners who took plants and animals with them on their voyages of exploration. Many of their tropical plants could not survive in temperate New Zealand, but they established several food plants in warmer parts of the country and introduced one domestic animal, the dog.

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