He came, saw – and went

Subtropical rainforests with kauri and laurel trees, tree ferns soaring as house, flightless birds like di kakapo, kiwi and moa, ancient reptile species tuatara: the flora and fauna of New Zealand differed in flora and fauna from anything even well-travelled Europeans knew the world in. The seventeenth century. Abel Tasman was close to all of this.

See New Zealand

But the captain of the Dutch East India Company is considered the discoverer of this remote piece of land 1,500 kilometers southeast of Australia since he saw the south of the two islands on December 13, 1642. But he never entered the country, which was completely new to him and other Europeans.

The reason for this is because the “Land of the Long White Cloud”, Aotearoa, had been discovered and settled by humans long before that. Polynesian seafarers may have settled the islands in several waves of migration as early as the late 13th century.

They must have found plants that were at least partially similar to those of the supercontinent Gondwana. The New Zealand land mass broke away from the one that existed about 85 million years ago and then moved south

Two islands going their own way

While ecosystems changed dramatically around the world after the extinction of the dinosaurs, and mammals in particular proliferated and proliferated, New Zealand took a different biological and ecological path. Devoid of mice, weasels, or foxes, flightless birds like the kiwi would have been able to occupy ecological niches conquered by mammals elsewhere. And in the forests remained huge ferns, of which fossils are only witnessed in Africa, America or Europe.

Abel Tasman had no idea about any of this. Once the discoverer saw the new land and sent a few men ashore for water and provisions, they came into conflict with the Maori, descendants of the first discoverers of New Zealand. Four sailors died, among them perhaps the first now unnamed European to set foot on New Zealand soil.

In any case, Tasman also sailed. And he went away. It might have been a good decision for the carrots. Otherwise, the European rat might have descended sooner than it eventually did, and then added to the kiwi and other soil-dwelling species, which might then not have been able to survive to the present day.