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Not much is known about Tonga before European contact because of the lack of a writing system during prehistoric times other than the oral history told to the early European explorers. The first time the Tongan people encountered Europeans was in April 1616 when Jacob Le Maire and Willem Schouten made a short visit to the islands to trade with ...
Around 2850 BP, the Lapita people reached Tonga, and carbon dating places their landfall first in Tongatapu and then in Haʻapai soon after. [3] The newcomers were already well adapted to the resource-scarce island life and settled in small communities of a few households [3] on beaches just above high tide line that faced open lagoons or reefs.
Tonga's precontact history was shared via oral history, which was passed down from generation to generation. By the 12th century, Tongans and the Tongan monarch, the Tuʻi Tonga , had acquired a reputation across the central Pacific – from Niue , Samoa , Rotuma , Wallis and Futuna , New Caledonia to Tikopia , leading some historians to speak ...
It is there that some believed that Tongan culture and its people developed and evolved out of the ancient Austronesian/Lapita culture (c. 1600 BCE - c. 500 BCE) that migrated from the South East Asian islands through Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, New Caledonia, Vanuatu, Micronesia and Fiji in ...
Tongans or Tongan people are a Polynesian ethnic group native to Tonga, a Polynesian archipelago in the Pacific Ocean. Tongans represent more than 98% of the inhabitants of Tonga. The rest are European (the majority are British ), mixed European, and other Pacific Islanders .
2010 Tongan general election: An election produced a Parliament in which an absolute majority of representatives were elected by the people, and which had the power to select a Prime Minister. 2012: 18 March: George Tupou V died and was succeeded as king by Tupou VI. 2014: 27 November
The oral history of Niutao recalls that in the 15th century Tongan warriors were defeated in a battle on the reef of Niutao. Tongan warriors also invaded Niutao later in the 15th century and again were repelled. A third and fourth invasion of Tongan occurred in the late 16th century, again with the Tongans being defeated. [13]
Any description of Tongan culture that limits itself to what Tongans see as anga fakatonga would give a seriously distorted view of what people actually do, in Tonga, or in diaspora, because accommodations are so often made to anga fakapālangi. The following account tries to give both the idealized and the on-the-ground versions of Tongan culture.