Aotearoa tradition spot on 25.01.2003 By SIMON COLLINS New scientific findings have backed traditional Maori accounts that New Zealand was settled about 30 generations ago. An international team led by Associate Professor David Lowe of Waikato University has pinned down the timing of the country's biggest volcanic eruption in 1000 years, at Mt Tarawera, to the winter of 1314, give or take a dozen years. The eruption spread a layer of ash from Northland to Hawkes Bay. There are signs that people may have begun to burn forests just before the eruption, but no human artefacts have been found below...