New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses (commonly called the North Island and the South Island), and numerous smaller islands.
New Zealand is notable for its geographic isolation: it is situated about 2000 km (1250 miles) southeast of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and its closest neighbours to the north are New Caledonia, Fiji and Tonga.
During its long isolation New Zealand developed a distinctive fauna and is one of the most recently settled major landmasses.
The first settlers were Eastern Polynesians who went to New Zealand, probably in a series of migrations, sometime between around 700 and 2000 years ago.
The name New Zealand originated with Dutch cartographers, who called the islands Nova Zeelandia, after the Dutch province of Zeeland. |
