First inhabited roughly 2,500 years ago by the Lapita civilisation, Tonga’s Polynesian settlers gradually evolved a distinct and strong ethnic identity, language and culture as the Tongan people. They were quick to establish a powerful footing across the South Pacific, and this period of Tongan expansionism and colonisation is known as the Tu’i Tongan Empire. From the rule of the first Tongan king, ʻAhoʻeitu, Tonga grew into a regional superpower. It was a thalassocracy that conquered and controlled unprecedented swathes of the Pacific, from parts of the Solomon Islands and the whole of New Caledonia and Fiji in the west, to Samoa and Niue and even as far as parts of modern-day French Polynesia in the east. Tu’i Tonga became renowned for its economic, ethnic and cultural  hegemony over the Pacific, which remained strong even after the Samoan revolution of the 13th century and the outside discovery of the islands by Europeans in 1616.