The Pacific was settled by the most ambitious voyaging in human history, and Australia holds the longest continuous cultures on Earth. These articles follow navigators, islands and the societies that grew between them.
Single sand grains put the lowest tools at Madjedbebe, on Mirarr country in Arnhem Land, at about 65,000 years. Some archaeologists dispute the date.
· 63,000 BCA 2016 Nature paper put people in arid Australia by about 49,000 years at Warratyi, north of Adelaide. Its Diprotodon radius is still argued over.
· 47,000 BCJim Bowler found burnt bones on the shore of Lake Mungo on July 15, 1968. Dated to 40,000 years in 2003, Mungo Lady and Mungo Man were reburied in 2022.
· 38,000 BCMary Pappin Jr. found the first Willandra Lakes footprints in August 2003. Optically dated to 19,000 to 23,000 years, the count rose from 124 to 563 by 2007.
· 21,000 BCRadiocarbon dates on 24 mud-wasp nests over and under 21 Gwion figures gave 11,500 to 12,700 years in 2020. A kangaroo painting dated in 2021 is older.
· 10,000 BCDCCEEW dates Gunditjmara stone eel-channel construction at Budj Bim to at least 6,600 years old; UNESCO inscribed the site in 2019.
· 4600 BCAt Kuk Swamp in Papua New Guinea's Wahgi Valley, people grew bananas on mounds by 6950 to 6440 cal BP and dug drainage ditches by about 4000 cal BP.
· 2000 BCPottery, rice husks and two skeletons from Ritidian Beach Cave date the first crossing to the Marianas to about 1500 BC and point to the Philippines.
· 1500 BCIn August 1985 Patrick Kirch's team found a waterlogged Lapita stilt-village at Talepakemalai on Eloaua Island, Mussau, with pottery and obsidian intact.
· 1300 BCPLOS ONE published a dwarfism claim from two Palau caves in March 2008, then a rebuttal from three universities five and a half months later.
· 1000 BCFound in January 2004 after quarrying for a prawn farm, Teouma on Efate held 68 Lapita graves, a skull in Pot 2 and DNA that rewrote Pacific ancestry.
· 1000 BCLapita voyagers from the Bismarck Archipelago were the first people on Vanuatu, Fiji, Tonga and Samoa, about 1400 to 1000 BC. DNA points to East Asia.
· 1000 BCDredging for the 'Upolu–Savai'i car ferry exposed Samoa's only known Lapita pottery. Fiona Petchey dated it to 930–800 BC; 'Upolu has sunk since.
· 930 BCLapita settlers landed at Nukuleka, Tonga, about 2,800 years ago. Descendants stayed in Tonga and Samoa until about AD 1025, then settled East Polynesia.
· 500 BCBirks dug 2,700 square meters of Fiji's Sigatoka dunes in 1965–66 and found three buried soils. Level 2, the Navatu layer, dates 1,700 to 1,300 cal BP.
· 200 BCA 2022 PNAS study ties Pacific atoll settlement to sea-level fall after a highstand. Digs date Ebon occupation to two millennia and Utrōk to the first centuries AD.
· AD 1Earthwork terraces cover an estimated 20 percent of Babeldaob, Palau, built about 500 BC to AD 650 and left by about AD 1000 for coastal villages of stone.
· AD 200Nan Madol is 92 to 100 islets of stacked basalt columns on a reef off Pohnpei. Coral from its first chief's tomb dates the monuments to AD 1180 to 1200.
· 1200Navigators read star houses, swells, clouds and birds. East Polynesia was settled about AD 1025 to 1290, and Hokulea sailed to Tahiti in 1976.
· 1200David Burley calls the Haʻamonga ʻa Maui trilithon at Heketa the most impressive commemorative site on Tongatapu, its uprights tied to the 11th Tuʻi Tonga's two sons.
· 1200In 1939 Jim Eyles, 13, found a burial site at Wairau Bar with moa eggs and tools. Radiocarbon dates the graves to the 1200s-1300s; 42 koiwi came home in 2009.
· 1300Tarawera's Kaharoa ash, dated to about AD 1314, holds rat-gnawed seeds. Rat bones, lake charcoal and a 2022 study date the first settlers decades earlier.
· 1314In 2012 Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo rocked a 5-ton replica moai upright with 18 people and three ropes. The road statues, the forest debate and the 1860s.
· 1400Shells in the ahu of marae Taputapuātea on Ra'iatea date to AD 1503 to 1722 at the earliest. The World Heritage text says 14th to 18th centuries.
· 1600
