Tuvalu at the Pacific Games similarly rotated on a four-year basis in the intervening years between the main games. A combined Gilbert and Ellice Islands team participated at the 1963, 1966, and 1971 South Pacific Games. An athlete from Tuvalu (then Ellice Islands), namely Nelu Arenga, is at least documented for 1971. Athletes from Tuvalu attended the 2003 South Pacific Games for the first time. Logona Esau was the first athlete from Tuvalu to win a medal at an international competition, when he took bronze at the 2005 South Pacific Mini Games in Koror, Palau. Tuvalu competed at the 2007 Pacific Games in Apia, Samoa.
History of the Pacific Islands Western Samoa became the first Pacific Island nation to gain political independence. In 1997, Samoa officially dropped the 'Western' from its name as it was an appendage from its colonial era. The human history of the Solomon Islands begins with the first settlement at least 30,000 years ago from New Guinea. They represented the furthest expansion of humans into the Pacific Ocean until the expansion of Austronesian-language speakers through the area around 4000 BCE, bringing new agricultural and maritime technology. Most of the languages spoken today in the Solomon Islands derive from this era, but some thirty languages of the