History of the Pacific Islands islands to create Polynesia. During pre-European-contact times there was frequent canoe voyaging between the islands as Polynesian navigation skills are recognised to have allowed deliberate journeys on double-hull sailing canoes or outrigger canoes. Eight of the nine islands of Tuvalu were inhabited; thus the name, Tuvalu, means "eight standing together" in Tuvaluan. The pattern of settlement that is believed to have occurred is that the Polynesians spread out from the Samoan Islands into the Tuvaluan atolls, with Tuvalu providing a stepping stone to migration into the Polynesian Outlier communities in Melanesia and Micronesia. In 1568 Spanish navigator Álvaro de Mendaña
Postage stamps and postal history of the Marshall Islands used from 1914 to 1944. The islands became part of the United Nations Trust Territory of the Pacific in 1947 and used U.S. stamps until 1984. Marshall Islands has issued stamps since achieving postal independence in 1984. The website of the U.S. Pacific Islands Bulletin is now: https://sites.google.com/site/pacificislanditems/united-states-pacific-islands-bulletin Postage stamps and postal history of the Marshall Islands This is a survey of the postage stamps and postal history of the Marshall Islands. The "Republic of the Marshall Islands" (RMI) is a Micronesian nation of atolls and islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, just west of the International Date