1500 BC-AD 1

The indigenous peoples of Australia successfully adapted to the drying climate after the Ice Age and occupied the whole continent, exploiting its varied habitats and regions using a simple light-weight tool kit of stone and wood, and a complex understanding of their environments.

Archaeological evidence suggests that by 1500 BC, peoples speaking a language called Austronesian had begun to move from Asia along the north coast of New Guinea and into the western Pacific. By 800 BC the makers of Lapita pottery had settled the islands of Melanesia including Santa Cruz, New Britain, Vanuatu and New Caledonia. As the migrants moved from island to island they brought their staple crops with them such as taro, a starchy tuber, and the breadfruit tree. The Lapita peoples were skilled sailors and navigators. They arrived in Fiji from Melanesia in about 1500 BC and continued on to settle Tonga around 1200 BC and Samoa and Futuna in about 1000 BC. Both linguistic studies and archaeology suggest that this region was the starting point for the subsequent settlement of most of the rest of eastern Polynesia.

Western Micronesia had been settled from the Philippines by 1500 BC. Eastern Micronesia was probably settled from Melanesia, and the earliest date for human settlement here, on the Micronesian coral atolls and low islands, was on the Marshall Islands as late as 50 BC.