Home › Timeline › The Capture › The last lands: East Polynesia and Aotearoa
Radiocarbon dating shows that the islands of East Polynesia, New Zealand, Hawai'i and Rapa Nui among them, were the last habitable places on earth to be settled by prehistoric peoples, the Society Islands about 1025–1120 and the rest in one pulse about 1190–1290. Earlier chronologies had varied by more than 1,000 years; the short one rests on 1,434 dates screened for reliability.
The mechanism
A TECHNOLOGY THAT TURNS THE BOARD
How it was checked
- EvidenceT5 INDEPENDENT SECULAR; Status: ADDED 2026-09-19
- Letter eraTHE CAPTURE 313 to 1302
- SourcesRECORD — Wilmshurst, Hunt, Lipo and Anderson, 'High-precision radiocarbon dating shows recent and rapid initial human colonization of East Polynesia', PNAS 108 (2011): 1815-20; Britannica, 'New Zealand' (Maori arrival around 1300 CE) · checked 19 September: Wilmshurst, Hunt, Lipo and Anderson, PNAS 108 (2011): abstract via Europe PMC