- When our Maori ancestors arrived on these shores, Aotearoa became the last major land mass on earth to be inhabited by humans. Our genealogies tell me the names of those tupuna, those ancestors, but who came before them? In this series, I want to understand where we come from and how our people got here. There have been so many theories about our origins. (INTENSE MUSIC) Last time, I travelled to the Tahitian island of Ra'iatea, where I found what I believe is my Hawaiki, my homeland. But there are still so many questions. No reira Maori ma? No Ahia ranei tatou? Are we from Asia? Was there a great fleet? Were my ancestors great sailors or starving refugees? I want to put everything I believe to the test. I want to follow our stories back to Hawaiki, and then go further to find out what came before. Hono mai ki pau kia hikoi tahi tatou ki te Ao whanui me to tomo au o te wa. So join me as I travel across the world and through time. Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air. www.able.co.nz Copyright Able 2020 These foggy mountains may seem like a strange place to uncover long-lost secrets of our seafaring past. It's a long way from the tropics, but the place names are straight from Polynesia. So, we're at the top of the South Island, driving from Motueka to Takaka. Now, these names come from inlets on the island of Ra'iatea. The names of those inlets are Ta'a'a and Motue'a. (EPIC MUSIC) When our ancestors' waka arrived in Aotearoa, they didn't just bring people, they brought the names, culture and language of where they came from. So when I visited Ra'iatea, home to the original Ta'a'a and Motue'a inlets, I felt like I was walking in the footsteps of my ancestors. It felt like I'd found my Hawaiki. In a Tahitian museum, I saw an ancient hand-hewn plank that came from the kind of ocean-going waka that explored the Pacific and discovered Aotearoa. Now I'm on my way to see one of the most important discoveries in our nation's past. It's our own ancient plank. It's dated to 1400AD, which puts it at the age of Pacific exploration. But what makes it really unique is that it's built from native timber but to that same Eastern Polynesian design. - So, it was it was found out on the West Coast, at a place called Anaweka, which is where there's a there's a river out there called the Anaweka River. To think that we've all walked past and driven past that spot, and there she is, just lying in there. I think it's near on impossible to know who it was associated with. I sorta like that we don't know, in some way. You know, so it could have floated in. We just don't know. - What I do know is it's remarkably like the canoe piece I saw in Tahiti. And being allowed to touch it, it feels like I'm making a connection with my ancestors. It's just amazing how this is almost looking an identical piece to that one in Tahiti. - Same thickness and everything? - Amazing, isn't it? - Pretty much, yeah. I don't think it's as big as this one, but it looks the same. To preserve the timber, it's been soaking in this tank for nearly seven years. It's a meticulously crafted piece, which has more in common with Eastern Polynesian waka than later waka Maori from here in Aotearoa. - It's an unknown form of waka in New Zealand. And it's not a part of something. It's complete, and it fits in to some sort of template. - So, why is it unknown? What did you mean by that, that it's an unknown piece? - I guess the Maori waka that we know and love are what we call five-piece waka, and they have a dugout section and two sides strakes and a bow and a stern. So, this is very` it's not like that at all. We laser-scanned it and got exact measurements, and this piece is just over 6m, so if there was another piece the same, that makes it 12m. And more often than not, there would be a piece that went in between it. So at least 12m. Big waka. So it definitely could be a blue-water voyager? Yeah. - I think so, yeah. - And so there's a honu, a turtle, under here somewhere. How big is it? - I think it's about, sort of, that big. - Wow, so it's pretty big. - And its tail goes out to the end of the strake. - We have a proverb about the honu manawa rahi. - Oh yeah? - And that's basically the turtle with a big heart. But it talks about the endurance of a turtle to be able to go a long way. The 600-year-old waka plank was found out here in a sandbank on the West Coast. We'll never know if it was wrecked here or washed up from far away. It could have been a very early waka built here, or perhaps a repair for one of the original ocean-voyaging waka that made their way down from Hawaiki. If I sat on this log, if this log was here 700 or 800 years ago, at the right time, I could be sitting here looking out on to the ocean there and, hello, there goes a big double-hulled waka with a turtle on the hull, on one of the hulls, going past out there. That would be a sight to see. That would be amazing. There are still so many questions around our voyage and arrival here. I want to understand what my tupuna went through coming to Aotearoa. Ko tetahi o nga take kua roa e tohea ana. One of the arguments that's been going for some time now is whether or not our ancient voyaging waka could sail upwind. If they couldn't, then some say they would have discovered Aotearoa by accident, and it would have been very difficult for them to return back to the place where they came from. No boat can sail directly into the wind. If they do, the sails just flop around in the boat gets blown backwards. Like what's happening now. So if you're trying to get to an island, or even a buoy that's upwind, you have to tack or zigzag to get there. Modern boats can sail almost 30 degrees to the wind, but older boats and multi-hulls can't get anywhere near that. And if they can't get much closer than 90 degrees, then they just end up going back and forth on the same line. Of course, it helps to be a good sailor, like our ancient tupuna were. It suited the Victorian superiority complex to say our Maori ancestors discovered this country by accident, when it was Europeans who arrived here by accident, searching for a fictional southern continent. So why can't we accept that my Polynesian ancestors were on a coordinated campaign of discovery? In their first century in Aotearoa, there's evidence of timber and obsidian being transported around the country and as far away as the Kermedecs and Norfolk Island. And an adze made of Norfolk Island basalt was found near Newcastle. So if those early ancestors travelled all the way to Australia, it doesn't make sense to me they weren't able to get back up into the Pacific. - When I look at this chart, I see a great deal of ocean and not much land. And yet it was crossed so fast. New Zealand down here, it's the last part of East Polynesia to be settled, because it was the hardest place to get to. People always had to be able to return. The alternative is that if they didn't have to get home, then they had to find land or they had to die. So, I think they weren't suicidal. - How do you think they would have done this exploratory phase? - I think they went upwind to central East Polynesia before they come south. Every time canoes went out and found something, the information was coming back. When they went out and found empty ocean, that information was coming back as well. And if they hadn't been coming home, the loss of life would've been astronomical. So that's why I think it's all based on return voyaging. - 'But deliberate discovery isn't the story we were brought up on.' In the 19th century, Maori were painted in a way that emphasised European superiority, like in this painting ` The Arrival of the Maoris in New Zealand ` a depiction that continues to dominate many New Zealanders' perceptions of the first Polynesian arrivals. The Goldie-Steele painting The Arrival of Maori to Aotearoa depicts our ancestors arriving here in a traumatic state, on the brink of death, looking very desperate and looking very malnourished. The painting promoted a view that our ancestors arrived accidentally. It's an idea explored at this exhibition, Here from Kupe to Cook, which looks at the Maori, Polynesian and European navigators who explored early Aotearoa. Photographer Greg Semu has taken Goldie and Steele's painting and recreated it with a Cook Island cast. - What I'm thinking with Goldie when he came here was like, 'I want to make a painting that's dramatised, powerful, emotional.' But it's 99% fictional. - And so what changes did you make from the original to this one? - They're more physically stronger in this one, because it doesn't make any sense. Nobody gets on these ocean-voyage wakas untrained and unprepared for a long journey that could potentially be your last journey. - What's your version of how Maori got here? - Oh, by determination. (CHUCKLES) - (BOTH LAUGH) - By determination. - Yeah, no, I mean` - And an exploring kind of attitude. - They already had the knowledge. It was already given to them. Yeah. They arrived here not by accident but by purpose. There's no doubt about it. (INTRIGUING MUSIC) - And one legend tells us that first voyage was Kupe's. He was a chief and a fisherman whose people were going hungry. A giant wheke was stealing the bait from their fishing lines. Vowing to kill it, Kupe set out in a waka. But far out at sea, it grabbed the canoe and tried to capsize it. Kupe struck it with his mere, and it fled. They chased it for weeks, until one day his wife, Kuramarotini, cried, 'He ao! He ao! He Ao-tea-roa!' They had discovered Aotearoa. They chased the wheke down the coast to Te Moana-o-Raukawa, Cook Strait, where Kupe leapt on its back and struck a fatal blow. They returned to Hawaiki the discoverers of new lands. Was Kupe a real person? 19th-century Pakeha writers claimed his waka was down this way in 950AD, and a great fleet colonised Aotearoa in the mid-1300s. But were they right? I'm meeting historian Dr Rawiri Taonui, who has compared whakapapa to early colonial writings. In your opinion, how accurate is the korero that's contained within these books? - You really need to go in with your eyes and heart wide open, because there's a lot of stuff in these books that are really exciting, and it's really interesting, but it's not true. One of the biggest difficulties with the Pakeha approach to oral traditions is when things didn't fit, then they would just make up new bits. In, say, between 1890 and the 1920s, people like Percy Smith, they'd changed a lot of the canoe traditions and put their own ideas in there. And that had a big impact on Maoridom. In the original traditions, the only canoes that have korero of coming together are the Te Arawa and the Tainui, and that's consistent in all the early accounts that we have. And the Pakeha read that as a fleet. And so Percy Smith pulled all the traditions together and made them fit as a fleet. - But the other thing too, though, is because when you look at this, you've got Te Rangi Hiroa, who's a well respected academic. He's written this as well. So what part did they play, earlier Maori academics like Te Rangi Hiroa, like Apirana Ngata ` what part did they play in this reversioning, I suppose, of our history? - They were trying to find a place in New Zealand, or a stage or a platform where Maori would be accepted and respected as a people that have got something valid. Now, they used to write to each other privately and say, like, 'This is really rubbish. 'I think I think they're just making it up.' Now, in public they would promote it, and they probably did more to promote it than Percy Smith did. - No reira, no hea nga waka nei? Where do you think the waka came from? - The prevailing orthodoxy was that all of our arrival was from East Polynesia. My main summation of things would be there's probably a West Polynesian arrival, maybe one or two canoes, early arrival, not widespread, just confined to one part of the country. And later on, you know, it was mostly East Polynesian. - West Polynesia ` I've never considered that some of the first waka to Aotearoa may have come from there. And historically, that's most likely to mean Samoa. So that's where I'm going next. (DRUM ROLL) VOICEOVER: Get that winning 'peeling' with the Monopoly game at Macca's. There's a 1-in-5 chance of winning and $93 million worth of prizes to be won. Peel, play & win today! (DRUM ROLL CONTINUES) (MACCA'S JINGLE) * Samoa. The double-hulled waka that enabled Polynesians to explore the Pacific Ocean were first developed here. It's a place that's been described as a Hawaiki for Eastern Polynesia. Rawiri Taonui's research into waka narrative's suggest Samoan origins. And I'm told ancestors left here over a thousand years ago. So there are a lot of reasons for me to be here. No reira, kua tae mai ki Hamoa nei, te putaketanga o te Poronihiatangta e ai ki nga korero. So, here we are in Samoa, said to be the cradle of Polynesia. It's a privilege to be here. And I felt some really strong connections in Tahiti last week with the people and the culture ` and the language, especially the language. So, ko te patai, the question is, will I feel the same connection here in Samoa? Will I find connections to myself, to te iwi Maori here with the Samoan people? (CHOIR SINGS HYMN IN SAMOAN) My initial feeling is Samoa is quite different. How much of that is the big influence of the church, I don't know. But I'm surprised to learn that although they speak Samoan, formal Samoan has fallen out of use. I'm going to a school that teaches formal oratory and uses traditional stories to teach Samoan values. It sounds nicely familiar, like the Kohanga Reo movement back home. - Welcome, Tohunga. Welcome, Matua Faiva. This is your fale. This is where your boat will rest. - We would like to start by giving you a welcome song. - Kia ora. - As we know, language is everything. Language is the window through which our eyes see the world. And the story we are going to perform for you today is the story of Tinilau and his three turtles. (DRUMMING, SINGING IN SAMOAN) - We have this story too. But we call him Tinirau, the guardian of fish, and our story involves whales, not turtles. It's a surprising, immediate connection. - In the place where I come from ` Rotorua ` there's an island in the middle. We've got a lake there, and there's an island in the middle, and its name is Te Motutapu-a-Tinirau. And it's named after Tinirau. (SINGING IN SAMOAN) So, you're not only reviving language here at the school, you're reviving traditional practices like this, - and teaching the language through these kinds of practices. - That's right. And you're also teaching them that they are awesome. They have in their blood, you know, an amazing heritage and an identity, that they shouldn't be apologetic about or ashamed of. - Well, they're doing the same work as what their ancestors did thousands of years ago,... - and still relevant today. - Yes. - It's the best way to teach language, I think, is through action and through traditional practices. This is also why this is a blessing. It's like it's part of life. It's a village. It's a family. - Do you see connections in the Maori language and the Samoan language? - I can understand some of the words that that you were singing. There is a distance. There is a challenge sometimes. - We can understand the Tongans, and people from Tokelau. I can understand them when they speak. - Even Tuvalu. Yes. - I think that if` when you were speaking in Samoan, - I reckon if I stayed here for long enough,... - You would understand. - I would start to pick it up. (GENTLE MUSIC) As well as a linguistic connection to the past, there's a tangible connection on the school grounds, in the form of an ancient kava bowl. So, what is the significance of this rock? - It's a place where they would pound the 'ava. - Very important. It's a really important find. - It is. - Very significant. - Something we treasure. - It's a tangible link to your ancestors. - That's right. Yes. - I kind of like every now and then coming here and placing my hand in it. (SPEAKS SAMOAN) (CHILDREN SING IN SAMOAN) (RHYTHMIC DRUMMING) (RAIN PATTERS GENTLY) - That's power ` you made it rain. - Yeah. Ho-ho-ho! That's power. We call that a tohu wairua. That's a spiritual recognition of the incantation. - Uaga o fa'amanuiaga. (CHUCKLES) - Boom. - Rain of blessing. (GENTLE MUSIC) - Samoa is famous for its tatau. I want to know where that tradition started and whether it's connected to ta moko at home. - It's been my dream. Back in the '90s, you know, I saw what was going to happen, you know. People that were tattooing ` the tattoo artists ` die and there's no one from the family, no sons, no one to pick it up from him. So I started thinking, maybe this has to be done. You know, I started teaching my sons and teaching other people who wanted to become tattoo artists. - So, when you talk about Samoan ancestors, early ancestors coming from the east and places like Taiwan, do you see similarities in their tatau styles to the tatau styles of Samoa? - The only thing I see is the method. The method is still the same, the tapping, you know. Why we have different designs is that we adapted to our own environment. - Are there similar designs across Eastern Polynesia and down into Aotearoa? - The only difference is that in New Zealand, most of their designs are spiral. While here in Samoa, everything is geometrical. That's the only difference. But maybe they wanted to adapt to their own environment and bring things that they believe that, you know, connected to them as people. - Our Polynesian ancestors adapting to each new environment may be part of what makes things feel so different. My origin story doesn't mention Samoa, which does make me wonder about the origin of Samoans. * (GENTLE MUSIC) The people I've talked to here in Samoa don't really talk about Maori. They don't talk about people of Tahiti, Eastern Polynesia. They don't talk about those connections. But what about looking at before Samoa? At their origin story? Could that help explain the disconnect? What are your versions of the origins of Samoan people and where they came from? - What I teach my students is the accepted version of migration in the Pacific from Southeast Asia, the Lapita people coming here, going spread northwards and southwards to Tonga, from Tonga, from Samoa, Fiji and so on. The stories about migration on these big canoes are hardly told. It's one of the puzzling things for me. - Is Samoa the beginning of Polynesian society? - That's certainly what a lot of people here say. - Yeah, I think if think about Peter Buck. - Yes. - Peter Buck, when Te Rangi Hiroa` when he came here, (CHUCKLES) there's a story where he asked the Samoans where they came from, - they said, 'No, no. We came from here'. (LAUGHS) - Yes. Archaeological evidence says people arrived in Samoa 3000 years ago. But there's no cultural memory of their arrival or of the huge waka they built to explore the Pacific. The recent discovery of ancient walkways and drainage systems may offer clues to a long-lost past. - These are all over the place, and there's huge networks of them ` extensive, vast networks of these walled walkways. - But they're remnants, they're features of ancient settlements? - Yeah. - That's exciting. - Yeah, a lot of these features, according to archaeologists, fell out of use maybe 300, 500 years ago. So we stopped using them several hundred years ago, but they're still there. - What are the other major features that you've found? - Drainage channels. OK, and you can see it really well on this. When we asked the people what they were for, it was like, 'Stupid palagi, you're always asking stupid questions. 'Sure, the water runs through these. This is to drain the water off the soil.' You can't build a system like this if an 'aiga controls this and a different 'aiga controls this and a different 'aiga controls this, because when they're fighting, the whole system is gonna break down because, 'We're not gonna fix that'. And so then your drainage system doesn't work any more. So this shows that somebody in this area had a lot of control over this whole area, to be able to get everybody to build this. - What is it telling you about traditional Samoan society that people didn't know before? - We all know that if you want people to do a lot of things, you need somebody very powerful to be able to do this. - Somebody with a big stick. - Yeah, which challenges` - Somebody with mana. - Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I actually feel like we can confidently say that we can rewrite Samoan history, because right now all we have is basically what people wrote at the point of contact. And most of those people are not Samoan. - This is sounding like a familiar story. I'm travelling to the island of Savai'i, Hawaiki in the Samoan dialect. I need to see these archaeological sites for myself. (MAJESTIC MUSIC) Walking around here feels as ancient and historical as any lost city in Europe or South America, and the scale is mind-blowing. Today Samoans live in villages around the coast, but this tells a very different story ` massive populations with what could almost be described as massive public works, 5km stone walkways, large, labour-intensive star mounds, intensive agriculture with drainage ditches. This scale of works really would need to be driven by centralised leadership, which sounds more like the paramount ariki leadership of our system than the way Samoa is organised around local matai, chiefs connected to village and land. Here, Sunday lunch is about putting down an umu. It's a time when family issues are hammered out and resolved. It's just like the family at home when we have a big occasion at one of our marae. Everyone comes together, starts to work together for a common goal. Whangai i te manuhiri, whangai i te iwi, whangai i te whanau. To feed our visitors or to feed our family. And, yeah, it's good for connections, it's good for whanaungatanga. It's good for bringing people together for the one purpose, and that's to have a kai. While I'm here, I have the honour of meeting this family's matai, who immediately reminds me of some of my aunties at home. What's your view on the origins of the Samoan people and where they actually came from? - I've always thought that we came from Savai'i. Not because I'm from Savai'i, but because of our friend Lata who came and built his canoe here. - So of course I would say, 'No, we came from Savai'i'. (LAUGHS) - Yes, yeah. - Because he's well known. He's known in Maori as Rata. - Like Tinilau riding the turtles, the tale of Lata ` or in our case, Rata ` is another story we share. When his father was murdered, Rata vowed to recover his bones from his enemy, but he needed a waka. He went into the forest and felled the tallest tree. When he returned the next morning to hollow it out, the tree was standing. Rata cut it down again. But the next day it was back up. After toppling it a third time, he hid in the bushes and watched as the children of Tane ` insects, birds and spirits ` magically resurrected the forest giant. When Rata caught some of the creatures, they turned on him, saying he had no authority to fell one of Tane's trees. He was overcome with shame, and the forest creatures, seeing his remorse, sent him away and went to work. The next day, the canoe was finished, and Rata and his warriors set out to recover his father's bones. This is pretty mind-blowing. Here I am on Savai'i, another possible Hawaiki, in Lata forest, named after a man who also appears in our stories in Aotearoa, with giant trees that are like the trees Rata would have felled for that famous canoe. I know Rawiri Taonui's claim that one of our waka may have come from here is highly contentious. But standing here in the bush, cleansed by the light tropical rain, it all suddenly seems quite possible. And so I return to the main island, mourning the lost knowledge of Samoa's ancient ancestors, but with far more of a sense of what might have been. I've been looking south towards Aotearoa. Now it's time to look west again, to where science tells us the original Samoans came from. Archaeologists call the ancestors of Polynesians the Lapita people, after their ancient pottery, discovered all the way from the Bismarck Archipelago to here in Samoa. So, back in the 1970s, when they were building that ferry terminal over there, they found thousands of Lapita pottery shards and two adzes, which were over 3000 years old and pointed back to Vanuatu, the place where Lapita pottery flourished, which means it's time to leave Polynesia and head further west, and further into the past, to Vanuatu. Try Micellar Cleansing Water. Micelles work like a magnet, not only removing make-up it cleanses dirt and impurities and soothes sensitive skin for the cleanest skin every day. Garnier Micellar Cleansing Water by Garnier, naturally. * (CONCH BAYS) (MEN CHANT) - My first experience of Vanuatu is like a wero. The young warriors coming out to challenge me feels familiar. - (SPEAKS BISLAMA) - (SINGS IN BISLAMA) (ALL SING) - Well into Melanesia, Vanuatu feels quite different. And even within the Vanuatu archipelago, it's incredibly diverse, with 130 languages spread across 80 or so islands, some with connections to Polynesia, others with stronger connections to Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. It's the Lapita phase that brings us here to Vanuatu, part of our evolvement, according to the scientists. And so I really want to know, is there linguistic connection, is there cultural connection, even a whakapapa connection between Maori and the people here in Vanuatu? Our ancestors are said to have left here for Polynesia over 3000 years ago. Like Samoa, it's not mentioned in Maori oral history, so I need to look for other clues. The discovery of ancient Lapita pots here in Vanuatu may provide some answers. The name Lapita, can you tell me where the name came from? - Lapita is a place in New Caledonia. - Ah. - Where the particular kind of pottery was first found. But then it's been found since then, all over the Pacific from Vanuatu, southern Solomons, - out to Fiji, Samoa. - And where did these people come from? - Linguistically? Taiwan. - Taiwan. And also, if you go to Taiwan and meet the indigenous people, they speak languages you can understand, they have outrigger canoes, they have bananas, taro. So it makes sense. - The patterns on these pots found that the Teouma site here in Vanuatu remind me of the symmetrical shapes in Samoan tatau. So, did these come from the Teouma site? - Yes. They actually served as burial pots. - OK. - So there were skulls inside, bones inside. - A bit like what we've got at home. We've got carved receptacles. We call them waka tupapaku. - And we used to put bones in those. - Ornately carved. - Yeah. - And we put the bones in. - So, that's a similar tradition to this, because this is very ornately carved. - Yes. Yes. I can see the similarity. So they would have spent a bit of time on that, - and that probably indicates the importance of the burial rituals. For us in Vanuatu today, this culture, we don't know anything about it. - All we know about this culture is from archaeology. - Yeah. So, in our own tradition, this is unknown to us. So it's almost like a different culture. - So, if I was to go back to Aotearoa and retell the story of the origins of Maori, how would I incorporate Vanuatu into that korero? - Well, definitely the ancestors of the Maori came through Vanuatu. Probably the last wave of colonisation of the planet. It started in Vanuatu about 3200 years ago, and that same wave ended in Aotearoa about a thousand years ago. So we are part of that last wave of colonisation of the last empty places in the world. And we are the start of it, and you're the end of it. - Seeing these pots that would have once held the remains of early ancestors makes me wonder what other connections I might find here. Another tradition that's been erased is a form of written communication now known as sand drawing. There are over 100 languages here, so this became a shorthand for communicating between tribes. - Was this like how you would write things down, record things? - Yeah. This is to pass messages, or telling stories to the kids. Because we have different languages, so when they want to communicate with other villages that they know they don't know the language, then they have to do it in the sand to pass the message to others. Yeah. So, this one is one of our totems. - Each tribe would have a distinctive signature, like this. Oh, cool. (BOTH CHUCKLE) - Te honu. Turtle. - Turtle. - Yeah. And so if someone else came along, so, say, if you left this, and someone else came along and looked at it, would they be able to identify what it is? - If they knew about sand drawing. - Yes. Yeah. They would know that these people came from that tribe. Yeah. Writing in the sand has been replaced by Bislama, a universal pidgin language. While all the tribal languages here are Austronesian languages, they're incredibly varied. I'm going to meet a man from Malakula, a Vanuatu island with a strongly Polynesian local dialect. And when you want someone to come to you, do you say haere mai or... - Yeah. Mai, mai, mai. - Mai, mai, mai. What's the word for swim? - Kaukau. - Kaukau. - Mai kaukau. Purutia mai. Kaukau. - Same. Same. - Same. Same. - What about your grandchildren, what do you call them? - Uh, tamarekela. Tamarekela. - Tamarekela. - Yeah. - Tamariki. - Yeah, tamariki. - And what about your gra` mokopuna? - Makapu, yeah. Makapu, yeah. - Mokopuna, yeah. - Like you've got makapu? - Well, I haven't got mokopuna. I'm not old enough yet. (LAUGHS) - This is the family? - Yeah. Tama ` tamakekela. - Tamariki katoa. - Yeah, tamariki. - Yeah, tamariki. Me te` What about the dog? What do you call a dog. - Kuri. - Kuri? - Eh, kuri, kuri, kuri. (DOG BARKS, CHILDREN CALL) (GENTLE MUSIC) - Te kuru, this one. - Te kuru? Ae. Kuru. - You plant? - Yes. - You plant te kuru? - Our ancestors used to fight over that. - Te kuru. - Te kuru, yeah. - Koro. - So, rakau? Rakau for tree? - Yeah. - Whare for house? Whare? - Te pare, yeah. - Whare. - So, this language ` Polynesian language, yeah? - Yeah. - Your language is a Polynesian language? - Ae. - (CALLS) - Te ara van tai. Te ara van ki runga. - Te ara ki runga. Te ara ki tai, te ara ki runga. This is nuts. My ancestors may have left here 3000 years ago, but we have so many common words. It wouldn't take me long to learn the language here. Kia ora. Still, people don't look like me. It's the diverse languages that have led Vanuatu to be described as ground zero for the mixture of Austronesian and Papuan peoples. * (ATMOSPHERIC MUSIC) - It was, yeah, it was partly luck ` or a lot of luck. - (CHUCKLES) - They were building earthworks for a prawn farm, so they were digging up the soil. About 80cm, and they then start coming across burials and pottery, which is the Lapita site. - In 2003 a major archaeological site was discovered at a place called Teouma, and the big surprise was 3000-year-old bones of what could be the first humans to Vanuatu. Archaeologist Stuart Bedford and landowner Chief Silas are taking me to the site they've both spent years uncovering. - These islands are uplifting. And Efate is uplifting at about a rate of metre every thousand years. So this would have been the bay. It would have been going right up into the interior here. - So this massive sheltered bay with lots of resources, of course. - Oh, yeah. - Full of marine resources, shellfish, fish. - Yeah. This site has completely transformed our understanding of these populations. We now have the DNA from these people. This is a settlement which is, no question, it's first arrival. - 'And even today, I can see the appeal for those first settlers.' - Whoo-hoo! Beautiful! - Yeah, prime real estate. - Yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you get a pretty good idea of why... this is obvious why people choose this. This massive, sheltered bay. Incredibly rich resources. They rock up here and establish themselves on that point. There's the village, and then they've got the cemetery next door, the urupa, which is hugely significant. - The site reminds me of Wairau Bar at home in Aotearoa, an old area of civilisation lost beneath the ground, that was scraped back to reveal its secrets and has now been covered over again. - The bodies are buried, and they're buried with pots, these very highly decorated Lapita pots. We've identified 400 individual different pots that have been buried here, and 10% of them come from New Caledonia. OK, so people are actually aware that these ceremonies are happening here. They're coming here with those pots and they're being placed with those burials. - Pretty neat, huh? - Sounds very similar to what we were told at Wairau Bar as well. - You're talking about Wairau Bar, but the similarities here are striking. That very early community being pulled together from different areas. Here you can see clearly feasting. I mean, we've found 2000 tortoise bones at this site. Layers that were 50cm thick of shell. - So, who are the actual people that were found in here? - It looks as though there are local individuals and individuals not necessarily from a long way away, but potentially other islands. - So, these people that were found in here, potentially they're 3000 years old? - Oh, yeah, no question about that. - No question they're 3000 years old? - Directly dated, 3000. Yeah, no question. Yep. - Silas, how did you feel when they dug up the bones? How did you feel? - I... I didn't feel anything, because this is my place. - Yeah. - So you just felt, 'My ancestors'. - Very happy. Yeah. - You know at the Wairau Bar, the local people there said to me, 'If you do a DNA test, your DNA code will link to these first people that are here. 'One of these burial grounds, you'll find your genetic code will connect to.' Could I say the same with the people that are here? - More so than Silas in many respects, because the very earliest people, Silas has a percentage of those early Lapita genes as well, and he's also got the input of Papuan genes later on. When these Lapita settlers ` some stay, some keep moving. And ultimately, when they get out to Tonga, there's virtually no input from New Guinea, and so the genetic material is much more similar to Maori from Aotearoa. - Wow. - Yeah. - Gee, that... - CHUCKLES: Yeah. - That's all of a sudden changed my whole... spiritual reaction to this. - Yeah, no, no, sure. - Because, you know, you come along and, I mean, it hadn't actually clicked in my head that that's what it would be ` that they would actually be closer Polynesian relatives. Oh, that's pretty freaky. If this was a place that people returned to for burial, it could be another Hawaiki. I'm ready to move on, but before I go, Chief Silas has invited me to his Eratap village to meet his whanau and share some of Vanuatu's famous kava. E te rangatira. He koha no matou o Aotearoa. A bit of a gift for you. - (LAUGHS) - Thank you. Thank you for inviting me to your home. - Thank you very much. - What does the name Vanuatu mean? - Something like, 'Let's stand up'. Something like that. - Mm. - The land, the whenua? - Yeah. - Whenua. - Yeah. - And then tu, stand. - Yeah, stand up. - Same as us. - Yeah. - Yeah. In Maori, we say whenua tu ` tu. - (CHUCKLES) - Whenua-tu, not Vanuatu. Whenua-tu. But same ` pretty close. - (LAUGHS) - Cousin. - Cousin. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cousin, cousin. - Oh, I'll take the small one. - Just the little one? - I'll take this little small one here. - Huh? - Oh, he's filling it up. (CHUCKLES) - Sini. - (SIGHS) - You like? - Should've called it kawa, not kava. Vanuatu's been a real eye-opener, from learning about the Lapita people, discovering I was a closer genetic match to the ancient burial site than Chief Silas, and the resonance of the name between Vanuatu and whenua. I wasn't expecting to feel more of a connection here than I did with Samoa, but I have. The final part of my journey will take me further back in time. Next time on Origins, I'm confronted by a visit to a place I've always thought of as Asia. Could be sitting in one of our wharenui in Ohinemutu, Rotorua, right now. It'd be exactly the same as this. I travel right back to the cradle of humanity... - (SPEAKS HAMAR) ...and go to the last stop before Aotearoa, and meet a Cook Islander who reckons we're all the same.