When people first came to New Zealand, they found there on the very edge of the vast

Pacific, an untouched land of wild rainforest and fiery mountains, of impenetrable woodland

and monsters within.

For before that time, some 800 or so years ago,

whilst Crusaders and Stepnomads fought it out far away on the other side of the world in Eurasia,

no humans had ever set foot in New Zealand.

Upon those islands, existing in perfect isolation from the rest of the world,

could then be found a rich tapestry of life, eons in the making, since that landmass first split

off from the other continents on Earth, some 80 million years ago, embarking it on its own unique evolutionary path.

Not only was New Zealand unpopulated by humans, but it was mostly lacking in mammals in general.

For this was a land of birds, avian fauna having filled every single ecological niche in the food chain,

ranging from colossal megafauna known as moa that once stalked the forest floor, far larger

than any birds that walk the earth today, to the last tiny holdouts that survived to the present.

Here, at the very edge of the earth, then

existed a prehistoric lost world of flightless giants and winged predators, left alone

to grow to immense sizes in perfect equilibrium with each other for millions of years.

Yet, all this was about to change.

For some time, around 800 years ago, gliding along the waves by sail and oar on double-canoed catamaranes, likely numbering no more than a few

hundred hardy and determined travellers at first, either fleeing from strife in their homeland

or striking out anew, humans arrived in New Zealand.

Originating in Southeast Asia some 3,000 years ago or more, the far-flung people, known today as Polynesians,

had made crossing the open Pacific their specialty,

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