An English amateur historian believed that the Chinese discovered New Zealand well before Maori or Dutchmen.

South Island-based daily The Press reported Friday that conventional histories showed the first recorded European to sight New Zealand was Dutch navigator Abel Tasman who sighted the South Island's West Coast on Dec. 13, 1642, and English explorer Captain James Cook "discovered" New Zealand's East Coast on Oct. 7, 1769, hundreds of years after it had been settled by Maori.

But two visits early this year have convinced Cedric Bell, who has been a visitor to Christchurch on the South Island of New Zealand, that Chinese ships were visiting New Zealand 2000 years ago.

He is equally sure a Chinese city of 4000 people was situated in the present day Christchurch Botanic Gardens 1000 years ago, alongside a fort - one of 30 supposed Chinese sites he has found in the South Island.

Christchurch was the Chinese capital of the South Island, said Bell, who is not deterred by the fact that not a single artefact or Maori acknowledgment of Chinese exploration exists in New Zealand. He claimed that his research was "indisputable."

The retired marine engineer and production manager for Castrol has been exploring Roman remains in Britain for the past 10 years.

He read of early Chinese global expeditions in the alternative history book by former Royal Navy officer Gavin Menzies, 1421 - The Year That China Discovered America.

Menzies argued in the bestseller that squadrons from the fleet of legendary admiral Zheng He, between 1421 and 1423, not only discovered the Americas, but also Greenland, Antarctica, Australia and New Zealand. But he offered no proof and other historians said a lot of his circumstantial evidence was marred by questionable scholarship.

Bell said he explored while visiting his son in New Zealand, and claimed to have detected a "Chinese fort" near the children's playground in Christchurch's Botanic Gardens and the ramparts and drains of a walled city, 400 meters long by 100 meters wide, immediately behind the Canterbury Museum.

Bell claimed the "Chinese settlers" diverted the Avon River to create the loop around the Botanic Gardens, used the river for navigation and developed a boat harbor between the walled city and the fort.

He argued the carbonized remains of a Chinese junk can be seen in the cliffs at Moeraki, south of Oamaru, the result of the vessel being swept ashore by a tsunami. He has seen signs of another in a Catlins cave.

Bell said the findings could turn academic history on its head, but he had not tried to convince historians and scientists because they would try to demolish his arguments.

He also claimed DNA evidence pointed to early Maori warriors having wiped out the male Chinese and taken the Chinese women as wives and slaves.

"There are the roots of the Maori people," Bell said.

In fact, a genuine scientist, Dr. Geoffrey Chambers, of Victoria University in Wellington, reported in 1998 that the ancestors of New Zealand's Maori - and the other Polynesian peoples - were "made in Taiwan."

The people who eventually became the Maori originated in mainland Asia and, starting from Taiwan, island-hopped their way through the Philippines and Indonesia to West Polynesia, and ultimately on to the islands of East Polynesia and then New Zealand, according to an analysis of DNA through the Pacific.

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