The history of Vanuatu spans over 3,200 years. Premodern history The pre-European history of Vanuatu can be reconstructed by combining insights from linguistics (particularly historical linguistics), anthropology, archaeology and human genetics. Archaeological evidence supports that peoples speaking Austronesian languages first came to the islands some 3,300 years ago. Pottery fragments have been found dating back to 1300 BC. The first inhabitants of Vanuatu were carriers of the Lapita culture, speakers of the Proto Oceanic language. That first wave of migration was likely followed, about 500 BC, by a second wave of Melanesian populations. Around the 13th century AD, one important king was Roy Mata, who united several tribes in central Vanuatu. He was buried in a large mound with several retainers – a place which is now one of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites. The memory of Roy Mata is still told today in oral histories and legends. European contact The Vanuatu group of islands first had contact with Europeans in 1606, when the Portuguese explorer Pedro Fernandes de Queirós, sailing for the Spanish Crown, arrived on the largest island and called the group of islands La Austrialia del Espiritu Santo or "The Southern Land of the Holy Spirit", believing he had arrived in Terra Australis or Australia. The Spanish established a short-lived settlement at Big Bay on the north side of the island. The name Espiritu Santo remains to this day. Europeans did not return until 1768, when Louis Antoine de Bougainville visited the islands, naming them the Great Cyclades. In 1774, Captain Cook named the islands the New Hebrides, a name that lasted until independence. In 1825, trader Peter Dillon's discovery of sandalwood on the island of Erromango began a rush that ended in 1830 after a clash between immigrant Polynesian workers and indigenous Melanesians. During the 1860s, planters in Australia, Fiji, New Caledonia, and the Samoan Islands, in need of labourers, orchestrated a long-term indentured labour trade known as "blackbirding". At the height of the blackbirding, more than one-half the adult male population of several of the islands worked abroad. Fragmentary evidence indicates that the current population of Vanuatu is greatly reduced compared to pre-contact times. It was at this time that missionaries, both Roman Catholic and Protestant, arrived on the islands. For example, John Geddie, a Scots-Canadian presbyterian missionary, arrived at the island of Aneityum in 1848; he spent the rest of his life there, working