Polynesians settled New Zealand between the late 1200s and the mid-1300s. They called the land Aotearoa, which legend holds is...

The first humans settled in New Caledonia around 1600 B.C. The Lapita were skilled navigators, and evidence of their pottery...

By 1000 B.C., Micronesian and Polynesian settlers inhabited Nauru, and the island was divided among 12 clans. Nauru developed in...

Each of the four states that compose the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) -- Chuuk, Kosrae, Pohnpei, and Yap --...

Humans arrived in the Marshall Islands in the first millennium B.C. and gradually created permanent settlements on the various atolls....

Kiribati is made up of three distinct island groups -- the Gilbert Islands, the Line Islands, and the Phoenix Islands....

Guam was settled by Austronesian people around 1500 B.C. These people became the indigenous Chamorro and were influenced by later...

French Polynesia consists of five archipelagos -- the Austral Islands, the Gambier Islands, the Marquesas Islands, the Society Islands, and...

Austronesians settled Fiji around 1000 B.C., followed by successive waves of Melanesians starting around the first century A.D. Fijians traded...

The widely scattered Coral Sea Islands were first charted in 1803, but they were too small to host permanent human...

Polynesians from Tahiti were probably the first people to settle Rarotonga -- the largest of the Cook Islands -- around...