[gus_massa]

> people who had lived here for tens of thousands of years

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C4%81ori_people

> Māori originated with settlers from East Polynesia, who arrived in New Zealand in several waves of canoe voyages between roughly 1320 and 1350.

> No credible evidence exists of pre-Māori settlement of New Zealand; on the other hand, compelling evidence from archaeology, linguistics, and physical anthropology indicates that the first settlers migrated from Polynesia and became the Māori.

[defrost]

Why would you assume richardjam73 is referring to New Zealand?

Most of here in the Austral-Asian region are aware of the history of Polynesian expansion and Māori settlement .. so it's pretty clear they're not referring to New Zealand.

[gus_massa]

The OP was about NZ, and richardjam73 said "this country" so I though the comment was about NZ.

I made a quick search in the previous comments of richardjam73 and I see no location, so my second guess is that richardjam73 is from USA like 50% people here. Also, my guess is people not from NZ nor USA would say which country they were talking about.

The problem is that migration to America was like 16000 years ago, no tens of thousands of years ago. (And there was also a quite simultaneous megafauna extinction.) https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8b/Early_mi...

Thinking about it again, Australia may be a good third guess.