Editing History of Tonga (section)

===The Old Tonga===
The [[Haʻapai]] of three thousand years ago was a bit different from the Haʻapai of today. Large flightless birds called megapodes bounded through the tropical rain forest while giant iguanas and various other lizards rested on tree limbs.<ref name="shutler">Shutler, Burley, Dickinson, Nelson, & Carlson, Oceana Publications, ''Early Lapita Sites, the colonisation of Tonga and recent data from northern Ha'apai''</ref> The skies hosted three different species of fruit bats, three different species of pigeon, and more than two dozen other types of birds. There were no pigs, horses, dogs, cows, or rats.

The South Pacific, meanwhile, was almost completely uninhabited. Any present humans existed on the western fringes of the [[Solomon Islands]]. Then, around that time, these islanders were suddenly replaced by a new branch of humanity that originated from the [[Bismarck Archipelago]] off [[Papua New Guinea]].<ref name="kirch">Patrick Vinton Kirch, ''The Lapita Peoples: Ancestors of the Oceanic World''</ref> They intrepidly stormed through the region, rapidly colonizing and pushing east. They brought with them new plant and animal species, as well as a distinct pottery design. Today these people are named the [[Lapita]], after the location in [[New Caledonia]] where they were first noticed archaeologically.