The colossal Taupō eruption of around 232 struck a New Zealand with no people at all: Polynesians would arrive more than a thousand years later.
The events
- Hatepe eruption of Taupōc. 232 · Lake Taupō, New Zealand. Around AD 232 (±10 years) Taupō produced New Zealand's largest eruption in 20,000 years, scorching the land and reshaping its caldera lake. No human saw it: people would not reach these islands for another thousand years.
- Polynesians settle New Zealandc. 1280 · Aotearoa. East Polynesian voyagers in canoes reached New Zealand, the last major landmass to be settled by humans. Their descendants created Māori culture; one of the oldest settlements has been found at Wairau Bar.
More amazing facts
- 79 · 200 A little over a century after Vesuvius buried Pompeii, across the ocean in Teotihuacan the Pyramid of the Sun rose — one of the largest pyramids in the world.
- 105 · 751 China had paper by the early 2nd century, but according to tradition it reached the Islamic world only after the Battle of Talas in 751, via Chinese captives.
- 165 · 166 In 166, men claiming to be envoys of the ruler of Rome — probably Marcus Aurelius — reached China.
- 301 · 313 · 330 Among the first Christian states were Armenia (traditionally 301) and Aksum in Ethiopia (around 330).
- 378 In January 378, a party from Teotihuacan arrived at the Maya city of Tikal, about 1,000 km away.
- 476 · 1453 The Eastern Roman Empire outlived the Western one by almost 1,000 years: Rome fell in 476, Constantinople only in 1453.