c. 1600 BCE–c. 500 BCE
Lapita expansion into Remote Oceania
Oceans, navigation & cartography · Ocean navigation · Indigenous knowledge
Lapita sites and pottery trace a rapid expansion from the Bismarck Archipelago toward Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa. Reaching islands separated by open sea required ocean knowledge, transported crops, and navigation that cannot be reduced to a single founding date.
Precision, calendar, and review
- Start
- year · approximate
- End
- year · approximate
- Calendar and convention
- Historical-era years; the source calendar is not identified. No conversion of days is assumed.
- Year zero
- The scale goes from 1 BCE to 1 CE without year zero. Changing era names changes labels only.
- Documentary review
- Date not recorded
Reading the date: duration of a process.
Sources
- 1. whc.unesco.org (opens in a new tab)
Source provenance and scope
- Publication date
- Pending verification: the source could not be accessed
- Bibliographic date checked
- 2026-09-23
The correspondence between this reference and individual claims has not yet been itemized.
- 2. whc.unesco.org (opens in a new tab)
Source provenance and scope
- Publication date
- Pending verification
- Bibliographic date checked
- 2026-09-23
The correspondence between this reference and individual claims has not yet been itemized.
This record is an editorial synthesis. Consult the sources to check claims and their limits. Chronological relationships alone do not establish causation.