The Great Divide, working from the original documents from 200 years ago, directly challenges the findings of books like Michael King’s Penguin History of New Zealand or Claudia Orange’s Treaty of Waitangi, and in doing so offers a fresh new perspective on an issue affecting every single New Zealander. It asserts: New Zealand may have been settled by humans between two thousand years ago and 14,000 years ago; a comet likely caused mass extinctions; early humans left South Island cave paintings featuring what scientists described as “crocodiles and pythons”; that the Treaty of Waitangi was rendered legally obsolete by an 1860 meeting between the Government and 200 Maori chiefs in Auckland; that while many of the cash settlements are justifiable, the legal decisions justifying them are wrong in fact and law.