Ui-te-Rangiora
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Ui-te-Rangiora is believed to have been a 7th-century AD Polynesian navigator from the island of Rarotonga. According to Māori legend, Ui-te-Rangiora sailed south and encountered ice floes and icebergs in the Southern Ocean. He called this area of southern ocean Tai-uka-a-pia ("sea foaming like arrowroot") due to the ice floes being similar to arrowroot powder (referring to Tacca leontopetaloides, Polynesian arrowroot).[1] It is also claimed by some[who?] that Ui-te-Rangiora reached the Ross Ice Shelf, although he did not land on it.
Authenticity
The veracity of Ui-te-Rangiora reaching Antarctic waters has been questioned.[2] It has been claimed that in 1886 Lapita pottery shards were discovered on the Antipodes Islands, indicating that Polynesians did reach that far south.[3]
Enderby Island, considerably south of Antipodes in the Auckland group, has been found to have proof of 13th- or 14th-century Māori use.[4]
Possible discovery of Antarctica
Very little is known about Ui-te-Rangiora, or about early Polynesia for that matter, but it is told in Māori legends[5] that, around the year 650, Ui-te-Rangiora led a fleet of Waka tīwai southwards in the Southern Ocean until they reached "rocks that grow out of the sea, in the space beyond Rapa".[1]
References
- ^ a b Smith, Stephenson Percy (1899). Hawaiki: the whence of the Maori, being an introduction to Rarotongan history: Part III. The Journal of the Polynesian Society, Volume 8. pp. 10–11. Retrieved 21 November 2019.
- ^ Kieran Mulvaney, At the Ends of the Earth: A History of the Polar Regions
- ^ Te Ao Hou The Maori Magazine, no. 59 (June 1967), p. 43
- ^ Anderson, Atholl. "Subpolar settlement in South Polynesia". Antiquity Magazine. Antiquity Publications. Retrieved 17 November 2018.
- ^ "Antarctica" Encyclopædia Britannica
