New Caledonia, and Fiji by 1200 BCE, and Samoa and Tonga by around 900 to 800 BCE. This was the furthest extent of the Lapita culture expansion. During a period of around 1,500 years, they gradually lost the technology for pottery (likely due to the lack of clay deposits in the islands), replacing it with carved wooden and bamboo containers. Back-migrations from the Lapita culture also merged back Island Southeast Asia in 1500 BCE, and into Micronesia at around 200 BCE. It was not until 700 CE when they started voyaging further into the Pacific Ocean, when they colonized the Cook Islands, the Society Islands, and the Marquesas. From there, they further colonized Hawaii by 900 CE, Rapa Nui by 1000 CE, and New Zealand by 1200 CE. In the Indian Ocean, Austronesians from Borneo also colonized Madagascar and the Comoros Islands by around 500 CE. Austronesians remain the dominant ethnolinguistic group of the islands of the Indo-Pacific, and were the first to establish a maritime trade network reaching as far west as East Africa and the Arabian peninsula. They assimilated earlier Pleistocene to early Holocene human overland migrations through Sundaland like the Papuans and the Negritos in Island Southeast Asia. The Austronesian expansion was the last and the most far-reaching Neolithic human migration event. Caribbean The Caribbean was one of the last places in the Americas that were settled by humans. The oldest remains are known from the Greater Antilles (Cuba and Hispaniola) dating between 4000 and 3500 BCE, and comparisons between tool-technologies suggest that these peoples moved across the Yucatán Channel from Central America. All evidence suggests that later migrants from 2000 BCE and onwards originated from South America, via the Orinoco region. The descendants of these migrants include the ancestors of the Taíno and Kalinago (Island Carib) peoples. Arctic The earliest inhabitants of North America's central and eastern Arctic are referred to as the Arctic small tool tradition (AST) and existed c. 2500 BCE. AST consisted of several Paleo-Eskimo cultures, including the Independence cultures and Pre-Dorset culture. The Inuit are the descendants of the Thule culture, which emerged from western Alaska around CE 1000 and gradually displaced the Dorset culture. See also List of first human settlements Middle Paleolithic Quaternary extinction event Timeline of human evolution Timeline of maritime migration and exploration Notes References Further reading Diamond, Jared, Guns, germs and steel. A short history of everybody