Portal:Oceania/Selected article/January, 2012
Exploration of the Pacific: About 3000 BC speakers of the Austronesian languages, probably on the island of Taiwan, mastered the art of long-distance canoe travel and spread south to the Philippines and Indonesia and east to the islands of Micronesia and Melanesia. The Polynesians branched off and by about 1200 AD, had reached nearly all the Pacific islands. Polynesians may have reached the Americas.
Balboa saw the Pacific in 1513 and Magellan crossed it in 1521. From 1565 Manila galleons regularly crossed from Mexico to the Philippines and back. On the Asian side the Portuguese and Dutch built a regular trade from the East Indies to Japan and in the Americans Spanish power ran from Mexico to Chile. The vast central Pacific was visited only by the Manila galleons and an occasional explorer. The south Pacific was crossed a few times by Spaniards who found it empty.
Russian explorations of the northern Pacific in the 17th and 18th centuries resulted in the formation of Russian America. James Cook's three voyages in 1768–79 closed the last gaps in European knowledge of the Pacific coasts. After Cook large numbers of European merchant vessels began to enter the Pacific, and most of the Pacific islands were soon claimed by one European power or another.