perhaps the most remarkable chapter in human history is the settling of the pacific without the aid of modern navigational equipment shipbuilding and food preservation technology humans would voyage thousands of miles upon the vast open ocean to settle the hundreds of islands in the pacific that stretch about eight thousand miles or thirteen thousand kilometers from the westernmost islands of palau to the easternmost islands of guahu si pulan and this is the story of the peopling of the pacific the last great human expansion the story begins in island southeast asia more than 40 000 years ago at this time the sea level was much lower than it is today exposing the land masses of sunderland and sahu this allowed the first phase of modern human expansion into these areas by the ancestors of papuans and aboriginal australians these peoples reached as far as the solomon islands in near oceania the islands in what is known as remote oceania remained uninhabited over the next thousands of years the sea levels rose forming the continental islands which we see today between 2500 and 2000 bce the second phase of human expansion began from the southeast asian coast of china and ultimately taiwan australian-speaking peoples of east asian ancestry began to expand rapidly into island southeast asia they first expanded into the philippines where the migration stream split with one group entering the marianas no later than 1500 bce this makes the marianas the first islands to be settled in remote oceania another group branched into palau around 1000 bce a third migration stream moves southward into the indo-malaysian archipelago and a fourth branched off into the north coast of new guinea and the bismarck archipelago it is here that these austronesian-speaking peoples established a la pizza cultural complex through a fusion of austronesian and papuan cultures where their highly distinctive pottery began to appear in the islands of the bismarck archipelago by 1350 bce about two or three centuries after the emergence of the lupita the libita expanded into remote oceania between 1100 to 800 bce the lupita apparently leapfrogged the solomons in their initial eastward expansion to settle the santa cruz islands vanuatu new caledonia fiji all the way to tonga and samoa for reasons still debated lupita would not expand further east into the rest of the polynesian triangle in fact it would be their descendants the polynesians who would settle east polynesia about 1500 years later scholars call this long pause of eastward expansion the long pause while it's still unclear about the level of genetic mixing between the papuans and east asian australian speakers before and during the la pizza expansion into remote oceania what's clear is that by the end of the lupita period the peoples of island melanesia and western polynesia contain the genetics of both east asians and papuans with those peoples in ireland melanesia containing more papua and ancestry than those in the tonga samoa area roughly between 100 bce to 200 ce the sea level lowered to modern day levels allowing human inhabitation of the hundreds of islands north of melanesia in the region of micronesia from island melanesia a post-lupita expansion of proto-nuclear micronesian speakers journeyed to settle caribos nauru the marshals and the central eastern carolinas yap was settled directly from the bismarck archipelago probably the admiralty islands around 50 bce or possibly much earlier finally at the end of the long pause around 800 ce from either outlier polynesia or the tonga samoa area a post la pizza people who we now call polynesians expanded into eastern polynesia roughly between 800 to 1200 ce polynesians settled the islands from leeward to marquesas the astros to gambia mccarran and rappanui hawaii was settled as early as 1000 ce and ateyaroa was the last major island to be settled by polynesians by 1250 ce closing the final chapter of the peopling of the pacific the last great human expansion if you liked and enjoyed the video consider supporting me on patreon so i can continue to produce more pacific studies content like this video subscribe to the channel turn on all notifications follow me on social media and a special seduce masi to patreon supporters puti un and pimlin tiako seduce masi for watching guahu si pulan and poulet has spoken esta