Archaeological culture · c. 1600–500 BCE
Lapita culture
The Lapita people were the first to settle the remote Pacific. Known from finely stamped pottery, they appeared in the Bismarck Archipelago around 1600–1200 BCE, then within a few centuries sailed to the Solomons, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Fiji, Tonga and Samoa, islands no one had reached before.
Their descendants became the Polynesians. More than 200 Lapita sites are known.
See Lapita culture on the map in 1600 BCE
- On the map
- 1600–500 BCE
How we know
No writing existed; sites are dated by radiocarbon and, at Nukuleka in Tonga, by precise uranium-thorium dates on coral tools.
Sites
- Teouma c. 1100–900 BCE (about 3,000 years old)
- Lapita type site (Site 13, Foué) dated to c. 800 BCE
- Nukuleka founded c. 888 BCE; occupied for about 250 years