The ancestors of the Māori people were eastern Polynesian people , originating from south - east Asia . Some historians says that New Zealand ' s early settlers had migrated from where today ' s China is located , taking a long voyage through Taiwan and the South Pacific . They had eventually arrived in a forest of New Zealand . After they settled in New Zealand ( also known as the Archaic period ) , most of them has been known to have developed their own culture in the cost of the Otago Region . The groups of settlers formed had consisted of fourty to three hundred people . The best known Archaic site , located at Wairau Bar in the South Island , resembles villages in eastern Polynesian . It was occupied from about 1288 to 1300 , according to radio carbon dating . Because of tectonic forces , some of the Wairau Bar site is now underwater . Work on the Wairau Bar skeletons in 2010 showed that life span was very short that even the oldest one is shown to be 39 years old . Moreover , lots of them seemed to have suffered anaemia or arthritis .