Settlement of Tonga and Samoa: The Birth of Polynesia

The settlement of Tonga and Samoa around 900–800 BC marked the beginning of Polynesia. Voyagers of the Lapita culture sailed east from Fiji in outrigger and double-hulled canoes and founded the first communities on these previously uninhabited islands. Over the following centuries their descendants developed the language and culture known as Ancestral Polynesian, the foundation of every Polynesian society from Hawaii to New Zealand.

The Lapita voyagers

The people who settled Tonga and Samoa belonged to the Lapita culture, named after a site in New Caledonia. Lapita communities appeared in the Bismarck Archipelago, north-east of New Guinea, around 1350–1300 BC. They spoke Austronesian languages and descended largely from peoples who had spread from Taiwan through the Philippines and Indonesia.

Lapita people made distinctive pottery decorated with fine patterns pressed into the clay with toothed stamps. They kept pigs, dogs and chickens, grew taro, yams, bananas and breadfruit, and were skilled fishers and sailors. Within a few centuries they moved beyond the islands that earlier humans had reached, crossing open ocean to Vanuatu, New Caledonia and Fiji by about 1000 BC.

Crossing to Tonga

From the Lau islands of eastern Fiji, the islands of Tonga lie several hundred kilometres to the south-east, across open water against the prevailing trade winds. Sailing into the wind may seem difficult, but it gave voyagers a safety advantage: if they found nothing, they could turn and run home with the wind behind them.

The earliest known settlement in Tonga is Nukuleka, a small site on the shore of the Fanga’uta lagoon on Tongatapu. Excavations by David Burley and colleagues uncovered finely decorated Lapita pottery. In 2012 they published precise uranium–thorium dates from coral files used as tools, placing the first settlement at about 880 BC, give or take a few decades.

Within a few generations settlers had spread through the Tongan archipelago, including the Ha’apai and Vava’u groups. Small hamlets were built on beaches and lagoon shores, where people could fish, gather shellfish and plant gardens inland.

Canoes and navigation

No Lapita canoe has survived, so their vessels are reconstructed from later Pacific craft and from shared vocabulary. Linguists can trace words for outrigger, sail, paddle, bailer and canoe hull back to the Austronesian ancestors of the Lapita people. Voyages of several hundred kilometres probably used large outrigger canoes or double-hulled canoes with sails of woven pandanus matting, able to carry families, food plants, water and animals.

The first European visitor to Tonga, the Dutch navigator Abel Tasman in 1643, recorded large Tongan double canoes, called tongiaki, which carried dozens of people. These were much later than the first settlement, but they show the long continuity of Polynesian sailing traditions.

Navigators relied on knowledge passed down by memory: the rising and setting points of stars, the patterns of ocean swells, the flight of seabirds returning to land at dusk and the clouds that gather over islands. Modern experimental voyages since the 1970s have shown that such methods can guide canoes across long stretches of open sea.

Settlement was almost certainly deliberate rather than accidental. The settlers brought breeding animals and planting material, which suggests planned colonising expeditions, probably followed by further voyages that kept the new communities in touch with their homelands.

Reaching Samoa

Samoa was settled soon after Tonga, probably from Tonga or Fiji, by around 800 BC. Its only known Lapita site is at Mulifanua on the island of Upolu. It was discovered in 1973 when dredging for a new ferry berth brought up thousands of pottery sherds from a submerged reef flat.

The site now lies under about 2 m of water, because the land has subsided since it was occupied. Dating suggests occupation around 800 BC, although estimates range by about a century. Other early Samoan sites have plain pottery, which makes them harder to recognise.

Life in the new islands

The first settlers found islands rich in birds, turtles and shellfish, but with few native food plants. They brought their crops and animals by canoe, and in the early generations they relied heavily on wild resources. Bones from early sites show that many large birds, including species of megapode and pigeon, soon became extinct or rare, a pattern repeated across the Pacific after human arrival.

Over time, farming became more important and communities grew. Pottery styles changed: the elaborate dentate-stamped Lapita designs disappeared within a few centuries and were replaced by simpler undecorated ware, called Polynesian Plainware. By around AD 300–400 people in Tonga and Samoa had stopped making pottery altogether, relying instead on wooden bowls, coconut shells and earth ovens.

Contact between Fiji, Tonga and Samoa continued. Stone adzes, red feathers, fine mats and marriage partners moved between the three archipelagos, creating a regional network that lasted into historical times.

The making of Ancestral Polynesia

The archaeologists Patrick Kirch and Roger Green argued that the islands of Tonga, Samoa and their neighbours, such as Futuna and ‘Uvea, formed the homeland of “Ancestral Polynesian” society. Here the Lapita settlers’ language changed into Proto-Polynesian, the ancestor of Tongan, Samoan, Maori, Hawaiian, Tahitian and other Polynesian languages.

Words reconstructed for Proto-Polynesian describe a society with chiefs (ariki), ritual spaces (malae), sacred restrictions (tapu) and descent groups. Many later Polynesian institutions, including the kava ceremony and tattooing, are thought to have deep roots in this period.

Ancient DNA has confirmed the Asian origin of the first settlers. A 2016 study of skeletons from Vanuatu and from Talasiu in Tonga, dating to between about 3,100 and 2,300 years ago, found almost entirely East Asian-related ancestry. Papuan ancestry, now present in all Polynesians, arrived through later contact.

Myths and facts

Myth: Polynesians came from South America. In 1947 the Norwegian adventurer Thor Heyerdahl sailed the raft Kon-Tiki from Peru to the Tuamotu Islands to support the idea of an American origin. Archaeology, linguistics and genetics all show that Polynesians came from the west, through Melanesia, with roots in Island South-East Asia. Some later contact with South America did occur, as shown by the sweet potato and by genetic studies, but it came after Polynesia was settled.

Myth: the islands were found by chance drift. Computer simulations and the cargo carried by settlers indicate deliberate voyages of exploration and colonisation.

The long pause

After Tonga and Samoa were settled, eastward expansion stopped for a long time. Radiocarbon studies suggest that islands further east, such as the Cook and Society Islands, were not settled until around AD 900–1100, roughly 1,500 to 2,000 years later. This “long pause” may reflect the greater distances involved, changes in wind patterns or the time needed to develop new canoe designs.

When expansion resumed, it moved quickly. Within a few centuries Polynesian voyagers reached Hawaii, Rapa Nui (Easter Island) and New Zealand, as described in Polynesian voyaging and the settlement of East Polynesia. Much later Tonga became the centre of a powerful chiefdom under the Tu’i Tonga, whose influence reached across western Polynesia.

Timeline

• c. 1350–1300 BC: Lapita culture emerges in the Bismarck Archipelago.
• c. 1000 BC: Lapita settlers reach Fiji.
• c. 880 BC: First settlement at Nukuleka, Tongatapu (uranium–thorium dates).
• c. 800 BC: Settlement of Samoa, including the Mulifanua site on Upolu.
• c. 700–500 BC: Decorated Lapita pottery gives way to plainware.
• c. AD 300–400: Pottery making ends in Tonga and Samoa.
• c. AD 900–1100: Polynesians begin settling the islands of eastern Polynesia.
• 1973: Mulifanua Lapita site discovered during ferry terminal construction.

Why it matters

Tonga and Samoa were the cradle of Polynesian civilisation. The voyages that reached them were among the most remarkable feats of early seafaring, and the culture that took shape there would eventually spread across a triangle of ocean larger than any other region settled by a single people before the modern era.