“And because it’s an island we can be much more specific about the natural resources, the population, all the things that are more difficult when people are on a continent and all connected. Mc Coy’s team narrowed that to just a 20-year window more than 100 years earlier, from 1180 to 1200.So we can understand it with a lot more precision.” Nan Madol, which UNESCO this year named a World Heritage Site, was previously dated as being established in A. The finding pushes back even earlier the establishment of the powerful dynasty of Saudeleur chiefs who asserted authority over the island society for more than 1,000 years.“It has its roots in a pre-modern era like Nan Madol where you have a king or chief.These islanders invented a new kind of society — that is a socially creative achievement.Improved vessels and favorable winds resulting from frequent El Niño conditions probably contributed to the unusually rapid spread to hundreds of islands across an ocean area the size of North America.

Polynesian ancestors settled in Samoa around 800 BC, colonized the central Society Islands between AD 10 and dispersed to New Zealand, Hawaiʻi and Rapa Nui and other locations between AD 11.

Lake drainage occurred between 13 and 8 kyr ago and was initially gradual eastward into the Atlantic, then subsequently reorganized westward into the Pacific as new drainage routes opened up during Patagonian Ice Sheet deglaciation.

Coupled ocean-atmosphere model experiments using Had CM3 with an imposed freshwater surface “hosing” to simulate glacial lake drainage suggest that a negative salinity anomaly was advected south around Cape Horn, resulting in brief but significant impacts on coastal ocean vertical mixing and regional climate.

In the 19th century, Hawaiian scholars Kamakau and Kepelino attributed the discovery of Hawai‘i to a fisherman named Hawai‘iloa.

He is said to have discovered the islands during a long fishing trip from a homeland in the west called Ka ‘Aina kai melemelea Kane (“Land of the yellow sea of Kane”); the Big Island was named after him while Kaua‘i, O‘ahu, and Maui were named after his children.