The southeast Asia-Pacific region is where humanity's first and last long water crossings to unoccupied land happened. It began with the occupation of Sunda--Australia and nearby islands that were connected by land bridges during the Pleistocene--at least 50,000 years ago and continued through the colonization of Micronesia and eventually Polynesia during the second millennium A.D. The story of where the peoples who made these journeys came from, what routes they took, when initial colonizations occurred, and what consequences colonization had for newly occupied lands is important in its own right, but is even more significant for what it tells us about human capabilities, motivations, and impacts.
