High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Archeologists place the earliest human settlement of the Samoan archipelago at around 1500 B.C. This date is based upon the ancient lapita pottery shards found throughout the islands. Samoan oral history, however, extends only as far back as 1000 A.D. Whatever occurred between 1500 B.C. and 1000 A.D. remains a mystery, though this may have been the period of great migrations that led to the settlement of present-day Polynesia: Samoa is recognized as the center of Polynesia, whence people migrated eastward to the Marquesas, southward to Niue and the Pukapuka islands of Rarotonga, and northward to the Tokelau and Tuvalu island groups; in all these islands, oral tradition is maintained of ancestoral voyages from the Samoan islands.