Around 880 BC, Lapita seafarers landed on Tonga — at nearly the same time the Phoenicians founded Carthage.
Two great ages of seafaring, worlds apart.
The events
- Settlement of Tongac. 880 BC · Nukuleka. Lapita voyagers landed on Tongatapu and founded Nukuleka, the oldest known settlement in Polynesia. From Tonga and Samoa their descendants would later settle the whole Polynesian Triangle.
- Founding of Carthagec. 814 BC · Carthage. According to legend, Phoenicians from Tyre led by Princess Elissa (Dido) founded Carthage on the North African coast. It grew into the great sea power of the western Mediterranean and Rome's chief rival.
More amazing facts
- 1200 BC · 1936 The thylacine vanished from mainland Australia about 3,200 years ago, yet survived in Tasmania into the 20th century: the last one died in Hobart Zoo in 1936.
- 1050 BC · 863 Cyrillic is a distant descendant of the Phoenician alphabet: Phoenician gave rise to Greek, and Greek to the letters created almost 2,000 years later.
- 1000 BC · 210 BC The terracotta sculptures of Nigeria's Nok culture were being made centuries before China's Terracotta Army of Qin Shi Huang.
- 776 BC · 753 BC The Olympic Games are older than Rome: the first were held in 776 BC, and by tradition the city was founded only 23 years later.
- 650 BC · 612 BC The fire that destroyed Nineveh in 612 BC baked the clay tablets of Ashurbanipal's library — helping them survive to the present day.
- 563 BC · 551 BC · 530 BC By traditional dating, the Buddha, Confucius and Pythagoras were contemporaries: all three lived in the 6th century BC.