section_path: Homo sapiens/Holocene migrations/Indo-Pacific
section_name: Indo-Pacific
paragraph_text: Indo-Pacific
  
  The first seaborne human migrations were by the Austronesian peoples originating from Taiwan known as the " Austronesian expansion ". Using advanced sailing technologies like catamarans, outrigger boats, and crab claw sails, they built the first sea-going ships and rapidly colonized Island Southeast Asia at around 3000 to 1500 BCE. From the Philippines and Eastern Indonesia they colonized Micronesia by 2200 to 1000 BCE.
  
  A branch of the Austronesians reached Island Melanesia between 1600 and 1000 BCE, establishing the Lapita culture (named after the archaeological site in Lapita, New Caledonia, where their characteristic pottery was first discovered). They are the direct ancestors of the modern Polynesians. They ventured into Remote Oceania reaching Vanuatu, New Caledonia, and Fiji by 1200 BCE, and Samoa and Tonga by around 900 to 800 BCE. This was the furthest extent of the Lapita culture expansion. During a period of around 1,500 years, they gradually lost the technology for pottery (likely due to the lack of clay deposits in the islands), replacing it with carved wooden and bamboo containers. Back-migrations from the Lapita culture also merged back Island Southeast Asia in 1500 BCE, and into Micronesia at around 200 BCE. It was not until 700 CE when they started voyaging further into the Pacific Ocean, when they colonized the Cook Islands, the Society Islands, and the Marquesas. From there, they further colonized Hawaii by 900 CE, Rapa Nui by 1000 CE, and New Zealand by 1200 CE.
  
  In the Indian Ocean, Austronesians from Borneo also colonized Madagascar and the Comoros Islands by around 500 CE. Austronesians remain the dominant ethnolinguistic group of the islands of the Indo-Pacific, and were the first to establish a maritime trade network reaching as far west as East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. They assimilated earlier Pleistocene to early Holocene human overland migrations through Sundaland like the Papuans and the Negritos in Island Southeast Asia. The Austronesian expansion was the last and the most far-reaching Neolithic human migration event.