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The history of Tonga is recorded since the ninth century BC, when seafarers associated with the Lapita diaspora first settled the islands which now make up the Kingdom of Tonga. [1] Along with Fiji and Samoa, the area served as a gateway into the rest of the Pacific region known as Polynesia . [ 2 ]
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 ...
In many Polynesian languages, including Tongan, the word tonga (Tongan:), [11] [12] [13] comes from fakatonga, which means 'southwards', and the archipelago is so named because it is the southernmost group among the island groups of western Polynesia. [14]
Queen Salote of Tonga: The Story of an Era 1900-1965 (ISBN 1-86940-205-7) Latukefu, S. (1974), Church and State in Tonga, ANU Press, Canberra; Campbell, Ian C; Island Kingdom: Tonga Ancient and Modern, 2001, ISBN 0-908812-96-5 "Brief history of the Kingdom of Tonga", on the website of the Tongan Parliament
The ancestors of modern Polynesians were Lapita navigators, who settled in the Tonga and Samoa areas about 3,000 years ago. Linguists and archaeologists estimate that this first population went through common development during about 1000 years, giving rise to Proto-Polynesian , the linguistic ancestor of all modern Polynesian languages.
Tonga is a sovereign island nation located in the South Pacific Ocean. [1] Tonga comprises the Tonga Archipelago of 169 islands, 36 of them inhabited, stretching over a distance of about 800 kilometres (500 mi) in a north–south line.
But a 2020 study, published in the journal Science Advances, indicates that early humans first left South America and headed to the region about 5,800 years ago — up to just 200 years before ...
[37] [38] The area of Tonga, Fiji, and Samoa served as a gateway into the rest of the Pacific region now known as Polynesia. [39] Ancient Tongan mythologies, as recorded by early European explorers, report the islands of 'Ata and Tongatapu as the first islands hauled to the surface from the deep ocean by Maui. [40] [41]