Marquesas history

This article details the history of the Marquesas. The Marquesas Islands are a group of volcanic islands in French Polynesia, an overseas collectivity of France in the southern Pacific Ocean. The Marquesas Islands form one of the five Administrative divisions of French Polynesia.

The first recorded settlers of the Marquesas were Polynesians. Based on a variety of archæological evidence, researchers at one time believed they arrived from 100-600AD. Ethnological and linguistic evidence suggests that they likely arrived from the western region of Tonga and Samoa.

But, a 2010 study using revised, high-precision radiocarbon dating based on more reliable samples has established that the period of eastern Polynesian colonization took place much later, in a shorter time frame of two waves: the "earliest in the Society Islands A.D. ∼1025–1120, four centuries later than previously assumed; then after 70–265 y, dispersal continued in one major pulse to all remaining islands A.D. ∼1190–1290." This rapid colonization is believed to account for the "remarkable uniformity of East Polynesia culture, biology and language." The new information will require major reworking of scholarship about the development of linguistics and culture in the islands.

The islands were given their name by the Spanish explorer Álvaro de Mendaña de Neira who reached them on 21 July 1595. He named them after his patron, García Hurtado de Mendoza, 5th Marquis of Cañete, who was Viceroy of Peru at the time. Mendaña visited first Fatu Hiva and then Tahuata before continuing on to the Solomon Islands. De Neira also discovered an ancient cross on one of the islands. Historians have speculated that this may have marked the grave of a sailor from San Lesmes, a Spanish vessel which disappeared in a storm during García Jofre de Loaísa's expedition through the region in 1526.

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