# What part of the world was the last to have permanent settlement by humans? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 25, 2010, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-part-of-the-world-was-the-last-to-have-permanent-settlement-by-humans/540748 "2010-05-25T20:59:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![MikeS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/919ad9/32.png) [@MikeS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MikeS)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2010, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-part-of-the-world-was-the-last-to-have-permanent-settlement-by-humans/540748/21 "2010-05-26T17:14:06Z")
> [@Meurglys](#): > > The most recent wave of Inuit settlers in Greenland are thought to have arrived there around 1200 A.D., (well after the Norse arrived further south) the previous waves all having died out centuries before. If I’m not mistaken, the [Dorset](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorset_culture) were present in Greenland until the Thule (the ancestors of the Inuit) arrived and displaced them. ---
**Author:** ![Arnold\_Winkelried](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Arnold\_Winkelried](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arnold_Winkelried)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2010, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-part-of-the-world-was-the-last-to-have-permanent-settlement-by-humans/540748/22 "2010-05-26T17:22:32Z")
> [@Zoinks](#): > > I was going to say the Azores, which were settled in the 1430’s, but Wikipedia gives the Chatham Islands a settlement year of around 1500. I think that’s the latest we’ll probably be able to get. > Silly me, forgot about Cape Verde (1462). Interesting, I didn’t know the Azores and Cape Verde were inhabited that late. Though they wouldn’t fit my subjective criteria as stated in the OP since they were colonized in “historical” times (written record). The people who settled the Azores and Cape Verde had pretty advanced technology (as compared to the people who would have settled the Chatham Islands, for example.) A related question would be the last “landmass” that was settled by humans who arrived there on foot. I would guess, from Giles’ post above, that it would probably be Tasmania? Or did the original settlers of Australia need boats to get to Australia? In which case, the last place settled by people whose ancestors walked the whole way would be South America. ---
**Author:** ![Giles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giles/32/60_2.png) [@Giles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giles)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2010, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-part-of-the-world-was-the-last-to-have-permanent-settlement-by-humans/540748/23 "2010-05-26T17:29:10Z")
> [@Arnold\_Winkelried](#): > > A related question would be the last “landmass” that was settled by humans who arrived there on foot. I would guess, from Giles’ post above, that it would probably be Tasmania? To get all the way from Africa to Tasmania, even during the last Ice Age, you need to cross water between island groups in Indonesia. So, the last place by foot is probably the southern tip of South America. (We aren’t all that sure how humans crossed the Bering Strait, but at the right time it can be done on foot, if you carry enough food across the ice.) ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2010, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-part-of-the-world-was-the-last-to-have-permanent-settlement-by-humans/540748/24 "2010-05-26T17:34:28Z")
I would have guessed **Easter Island** myself. Estimates of its settling range from 300 AD to 1200 AD. But New Zealand is believed to have been settled slightly later than that last date, which I find surprising – Easter Island is _much_ farther to the east, although island-hopping individual path lengths are shorter. ---
**Author:** ![MikeS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/919ad9/32.png) [@MikeS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MikeS)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2010, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-part-of-the-world-was-the-last-to-have-permanent-settlement-by-humans/540748/25 "2010-05-26T17:34:56Z")
> [@Giles](#): > > To get all the way from Africa to Tasmania, even during the last Ice Age, you need to cross water between island groups in Indonesia. Hence the [Wallace Line,](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace_Line) a fairly strong dividing line between Asian organisms & Australian organisms. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2010, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-part-of-the-world-was-the-last-to-have-permanent-settlement-by-humans/540748/26 "2010-05-26T18:50:55Z")
> [@Giles](#): > > To get all the way from Africa to Tasmania, even during the last Ice Age, you need to cross water between island groups in Indonesia. So, the last place by foot is probably the southern tip of South America. (We aren’t all that sure how humans crossed the Bering Strait, but at the right time it can be done on foot, if you carry enough food across the ice.) During the Ice Age, sea levels were lower, and although much of Alaska was under ice, the Wales Peninsula and a hinterland were ice-free, and connected by land to Siberia (the easternmost Siberia-exposed continental shelf-exposed land under what’s now Bering Strait-Wales Peninsula with hinterlands complex was termed Beringia). Plants colonized Beringia, animals came to eat them and each other, early humans followed and occupied it. As the ice receded and the strait opened, a passage between Cordilleran and Laurentian ice sheets opened, providing access to the rest of North America. While this has not been nailed down with precise dates and totally incontrovertible evidence, it’s as certain as any interpretation of prehistoric human migrations can be. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2010, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-part-of-the-world-was-the-last-to-have-permanent-settlement-by-humans/540748/27 "2010-05-26T18:55:57Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > I would have guessed **Easter Island** myself. Estimates of its settling range from 300 AD to 1200 AD. But New Zealand is believed to have been settled slightly later than that last date, which I find surprising – Easter Island is _much_ farther to the east, although island-hopping individual path lengths are shorter. The earlier Polynesians tended to move east and spread. The colonization of New Zealand was a backtrack to the southwest, apparently explored after they ran out of islands to the east and were scouting for more islands. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2010, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-part-of-the-world-was-the-last-to-have-permanent-settlement-by-humans/540748/28 "2010-05-26T19:03:52Z")
> [@Polycarp](#): > > Plants colonized Beringia, animals came to eat them and each other, early humans followed and occupied it. As the ice receded and the strait opened, a passage between Cordilleran and Laurentian ice sheets opened, providing access to the rest of North America. Many archeologists now think that the earliest migrants into the Americas did not wait until after the inland passage opened up after the glaciers began to melt, but instead came along the coasts of Alaska and British Columbia, using small boats to get around the any glaciers that reached the coast (or walking across them). ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2010, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-part-of-the-world-was-the-last-to-have-permanent-settlement-by-humans/540748/29 "2010-05-26T19:10:04Z")
People suspect that one reason Polynesians (and related groups) spread east-west before getting to New Zealand was the issue of latitude and the tropical crops they relied on. New Zealand is fairly far south, even farther south than Madagascar. It required a significant change in food production to be practical for an agricultural society. Jared Diamond discusses this in one of his books. ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2010, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-part-of-the-world-was-the-last-to-have-permanent-settlement-by-humans/540748/30 "2010-05-26T23:36:42Z")
> [@ftg](#): > > People suspect that one reason Polynesians (and related groups) spread east-west before getting to New Zealand was the issue of latitude and the tropical crops they relied on. New Zealand is fairly far south, even farther south than Madagascar. It required a significant change in food production to be practical for an agricultural society. Jared Diamond discusses this in one of his books. The problem with this reasoning is that no significant change in food production ever occurred. The crops that could be grown were grown where they could be. Many crops disappeared and the people on the south Island largely reverted to hunting and gathering. There is no reason why that sort of non-change had to wait for any specific period of time. ---
**Author:** ![Meurglys](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/258eb7/32.png) [@Meurglys](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meurglys)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2010, 11:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-part-of-the-world-was-the-last-to-have-permanent-settlement-by-humans/540748/31 "2010-05-27T11:51:00Z")
> [@MikeS](#): > > If I’m not mistaken, the [Dorset](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorset_culture) were present in Greenland until the Thule (the ancestors of the Inuit) arrived and displaced them. Thanks for the link; _my_ [wiki link](http://schools-wikipedia.org/wp/h/History_of_Greenland.htm) (well, schools-wikipedia) 😛 includes > [@](#): > > This part of Greenland was apparently unpopulated at the time when the Vikings arrived; the direct ancestors of the modern Inuit Greenlanders are not thought to have arrived until around 1200 AD from the northwest On re-reading it, I suppose it may only refer to Inuit migrarating from another part of Greenland, although I took it to mean from part of Canada. But then it also says > [@](#): > > The prehistory of Greenland is a story of repeated waves of Palaeo-Eskimo immigration from the islands north of the North American mainland. As one of the furthest outposts of these cultures, life was constantly on the edge and cultures have come and then died out during the centuries. Of the period before the Norse exploration of Greenland, archaeology can give only approximate times: > > ``` > * The Saqqaq culture: 2500–800 BC (southern Greenland). > * The Independence I culture: 2400–1300 BC (northern Greenland). > * The Independence II culture: 800–1 BC (far northern Greenland). > * The Early Dorset or Dorset I culture: 700 BC–AD 200 (southern Greenland). > > ``` > > There is general consensus that, after the collapse of the Early Dorset culture, the island remained unpopulated for several centuries. And also > [@](#): > > Although Greenland seems to have been uninhabited at the time of initial Norse settlement, after a couple of centuries the Norse in Greenland had to deal with the Inuit. The Thule-Inuit were the successors of the Dorset who migrated south and finally came into contact with the Norse in the 12th century. I’ve also attended at least one public lecture by an expert in the field who also said that Greenland was uninhabited when the latest wave of Inuit arrived.(Sorry, details of who and when are too hazy, but they would have been part of the [RSGS](http://www.rsgs.org/about/) Public Lecture series 3 or 4 years ago.) So you may be right, but there does appear to be some dispute over the matter. And it’s obviously not the answer to the OP, anyway! ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2010, 12:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-part-of-the-world-was-the-last-to-have-permanent-settlement-by-humans/540748/32 "2010-05-27T12:11:00Z")
What posessed ancient peoples to move to remote islands (places like Easter Island, Pitcairns Island, the Falklands)? I can see going to places like New Zealand (lots of land, good climate), but going to a remote, small island looks like it would be very dangerous…as in the case of Easter Island (the inhabitants were trapped, as the trees were cut down, so no wood to make boats). Why didn’t the Polynesians use easter island as a stopover, from which they could go on to South America? Islands can be OK (for a while), but eventually, they get too small, and the people living on them start killing eachother. ---
**Author:** ![coremelt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4491bb/32.png) [@coremelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/coremelt)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2010, 12:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-part-of-the-world-was-the-last-to-have-permanent-settlement-by-humans/540748/33 "2010-05-27T12:21:17Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > What posessed ancient peoples to move to remote islands (places like Easter Island, Pitcairns Island, the Falklands)? the polynesians and hawaii’s had trade routes of up to 2,500 miles between island chains. There is a whole section in Jared Diamond’s Collapse about the evidence for this. If they went off course and found a new uninhabited island (which they could detect up to 100 kms away by watching behaviors of birds) they would in time come back and found colonies. Previously uninhabited islands were extremely rich in seafood and edible bird life so prime targets for new settlements. ---
**Author:** ![Duke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e8c25b/32.png) [@Duke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duke)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2010, 1:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-part-of-the-world-was-the-last-to-have-permanent-settlement-by-humans/540748/34 "2010-05-27T13:04:46Z")
The answer is the [Chagos Islands](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chagos_islands). > [@](#): > > The archipelago’s first inhabitants arrived in the 18th century. These were the lepers of Ile de France (Mauritius) who were brought there in the second half of the 1700s. Soon after, a plan was drawn up by the French to settle the Chagos and make them profitable. However, the islands are now uninhabited: > [@](#): > > Between 1967 and 1971, the entire population was forcibly removed from the islands and relocated to Mauritius to make way for a joint United States-United Kingdom military base on Diego Garcia. The whole story of the Chagos Islands is not a happy one, and it’s hardly surprising that it’s been largely forgotten. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2010, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-part-of-the-world-was-the-last-to-have-permanent-settlement-by-humans/540748/35 "2010-05-27T14:45:36Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > What posessed ancient peoples to move to remote islands (places like Easter Island, Pitcairns Island, the Falklands)? I can see going to places like New Zealand (lots of land, good climate), but going to a remote, small island looks like it would be very dangerous..as in the case of Easter Island (the inhabitants were trapped, as the trees were cut down, so no wood to make boats). > Why didn’t the Polynesians use easter island as a stopover, from which they could go on to South America? > Islands can be OK (for a while), but eventually, they get too small, and the people living on them start killing eachother. Well, the first people to arrive at these places wouldn’t have known beforehand how big or small they were. There is some debate about whether or not Easter Islanders made it to SA, but I don’t think many archeologists buy into that. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2010, 2:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-part-of-the-world-was-the-last-to-have-permanent-settlement-by-humans/540748/36 "2010-05-27T14:49:52Z")
> [@Duke](#): > > The answer is the [Chagos Islands](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chagos_islands). > > However, the islands are now uninhabited: > > The whole story of the Chagos Islands is not a happy one, and it’s hardly surprising that it’s been largely forgotten. These would not be pre-literate people getting their “under their own steam” as opposed to being transported by sailing ships belonging to a literate culture, though. I believe that was implicit in what **Arnold** set as criteria. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-part-of-the-world-was-the-last-to-have-permanent-settlement-by-humans/540748.md?page=1)