The South Pacific, also called Oceanic, is a geographic term to describe the Austronesian inhabitants of any of the three major sub-regions of Oceania: Polynesia, Melanesia and Micronesia. Within a mere four centuries between about 1300 and 900 BC, the Lapita culture spread 6,000 km further to the east from the Bismarck Archipelago, until it reached as far as Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa which were populated around 2,000 years ago. In this region, the distinctive Polynesian culture developed.
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