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
History of the Pacific Islands Tahiti, the islands were annexed as an overseas territory of France 27. “Reconstructing History: Literature, History, and Anthropology in the Pacific.” Ed. Cynthia Klekar. Special Issue of "The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation" 49, no. 3 (Fall, 2008). Introduction, 193-96. History of the Pacific Islands History of the Pacific Islands covers the history of the islands in the Pacific Ocean. Easter Island is one of the youngest inhabited territories on Earth, and for most of the History of Easter Island it was the most isolated inhabited territory on Earth. Its inhabitants, the Rapanui, have endured famines and big push factors,