Ui-te-Rangiora

Ui-te-Rangiora is believed to have been a 7th-century 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.^[1] It is also claimed by some 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]

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^[4] 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".^[5] This may be a description of sea ice and icebergs.

References

1. Smith, Stephenson Percy (1898). Hawaiki: the whence of the Maori: with a sketch of Polynesian history, being an introd. to the native history of Rarotonga. Whitcombe & Tombs. pp. 90–91. Retrieved 2013-01-19.
2. Kieran Mulvaney, At the Ends of the Earth: A History of the Polar Regions
3. Te Ao Hou The Maori Magazine, no. 59 (June 1967), p. 43
4. "Antarctica" Encyclopedia Britannica
5. Smith p. 90