Fiji was settled first by the Lapita culture, around 1,500–1,000 years BC, followed by a large influx of people with predominantly Melanesian genetics about the time of the beginning of the Common Era.

history of Fiji, a survey of notable events and people in the history of Fiji, a country and archipelago in the South Pacific Ocean. It surrounds the Koro Sea and is about 1,300 miles (2,100 km) north of Auckland, New Zealand.

Mar 28, 2025 · Fiji - Melanesian, Colonialism, Independence: When Fiji’s first settlers arrived from the islands of Melanesia at least 3,500 years ago, they carried with them a wide range of food plants, the pig, and a style of pottery known as Lapita ware.

Mar 28, 2025 · Fiji is a country and archipelago in the South Pacific Ocean. It surrounds the Koro Sea about 1,300 miles (2,100 km) north of Auckland, New Zealand. It consists of some 300 islands (about 100 of which are inhabited) and 540 islets.

Fiji has long had permanent settlements, but its peoples also have a history of mobility. Over the centuries, unique Fijian cultural practices developed. Fijians constructed large, elegant watercraft, with rigged sails called drua and exported some to Tonga.

Nov 11, 2024 · Fiji has a colourful history of early Lapita and Melanesian settlement, the development of Pacific Islander tribes, European colonisation and political unrest resulting in four military coups. In this brief history of Fiji, we look at the snapshots of history that make Fiji the islands they are today.

The timeline below shows the history of the island Fiji, from the ancient times to the present day. Fiji was suggested to have been settled by Micronesian, before Melanesians, but evidence is lacking that this happened – either in oral accounts or geological data, except that of Ma'afu.

1643 - Dutch explorer Abel Tasman is the first European to visit the islands. 1830s - Western Christian missionaries begin to arrive. 1840s-50s - Christian convert chief Cakobau gains control of...

Indigenous Fijians are descended from the Lapita peoples, a seafaring group from eastern Indonesia or the Philippines who probably arrived in the Fiji Islands during the second millennium B.C.E. and later interbred first with Melanesians from the west and subsequently with Polynesians (also Lapita descendants) from the east.

In 1970 Fiji became a fully sovereign and independent nation within the Commonwealth of Nations. However, by 1987, a perception had developed among some ethnic Fijians that democratic rule had led to an Indo-Fijian dominance of government, and that year saw two successive military coups.