Humans arrived in NZ after 1300: Study

Radiocarbon dating of rat bones and rat-gnawed seeds reinforces a theory that human settlers did not arrive in New Zealand until 1300 - about 1,000 years later than some scientists believe, according to a study released yesterday.

An international team of researchers led by New Zealander Dr. Janet Wilmshurst spent four years carbon dating rat bones and native seeds, and concluded that the earliest evidence of human colonization in the South Pacific country was from 1280 to 1300.

Their work, published yesterday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in the US, contradicts findings from a previous radiocarbon dating study of rat bones, published in Nature magazine in 1996. That study found evidence that man was in New Zealand from around 200 BC.