AD 1100-1520

Contacts between Indigenous Australians and the sea-trading Makassans of Indonesia continued during this period. Chinese explorers travelled throughout the South China Sea and Southeast Asia, near to Australia from the beginning of the 15th century AD, and may have visited the coast. Both Arab and Chinese accounts mention Southern Lands. There is some evidence that the Portuguese discovered northern Australia in about 1528.

In Polynesia this was a time of increasing population density and the rise of chiefly lineages in places like Tonga, Samoa, the Society Islands and Hawaii, this was in part connected to a rise in warfare on and between islands. There was also increasing complexity and elaboration of religious practice with the construction of religious centres, some very significant architectural achievements. On Easter Island (Rapa Nui) between 1000-1500, most of the island’s huge stone statues (moai) were produced, as part of the construction of religious sites. Sometime before 1200 the Maori of New Zealand colonised the Chatham Islands (about 800 km east of New Zealand). This was the probably the final landfall in the Polynesian expansion across the Pacific.