<P> On his first voyage of Pacific exploration, Captain James Cook had the services of a Polynesian navigator, Tupaia, who drew a chart of the islands within a 2,000 miles (3,200 km) radius (to the north and west) of his home island of Ra'iatea . Tupaia had knowledge of 130 islands and named 74 on his chart . Tupaia had navigated from Ra'iatea in short voyages to 13 islands . He had not visited western Polynesia, as since his grandfather's time the extent of voyaging by Raiateans had diminished to the islands of eastern Polynesia . His grandfather and father had passed to Tupaia the knowledge as to the location of the major islands of western Polynesia and the navigation information necessary to voyage to Fiji, Samoa and Tonga . Tupaia was hired by Joseph Banks, the ship's naturalist, who wrote that Cook ignored Tupaia's chart and his skills as a navigator . </P> <P> There is academic debate on the furthest southern extent of Polynesian expansion . </P> <P> There is material evidence of Polynesian visits to some of the subantarctic islands to the south of New Zealand, which are outside Polynesia proper . Remains of a Polynesian settlement dating back to the 13th century were found on Enderby Island in the Auckland Islands . Descriptions of a shard of early Polynesian pottery buried on the Antipodes Islands are unsubstantiated, and the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, where it was supposedly stored, has stated that "The Museum has not been able to locate such a shard in its collection, and the original reference to the object in the Museum's collection documentation indicates no reference to Polynesian influences ." </P> <P> Oral history describes Ui - te - Rangiora, around the year 650, leading a fleet of Waka Tīwai south until they reached, "a place of bitter cold where rock - like structures rose from a solid sea". The brief description might match the Ross Ice Shelf or possibly the Antarctic mainland, but may be a description of icebergs surrounded by sea Ice found in the Southern Ocean . The account also describes snow . </P>

Polynesians – primitive mapping and long distance open ocean seafaring